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Gods, what did he do to you?
Anger and grief filled the question as it came from all around him, from inside him.
Ruhn managed to say, Nothing you haven’t done a thousand times yourself.
Then she stood there with him, on his raft. Lidia. Fire streamed off her body, but he could see her perfect face. The most beautiful female he’d ever seen. A flawless mask over a rotted heart.
His enemy. His lover. The soul he’d thought was—
She knelt and extended a hand toward him. I’m so sorry.
Ruhn shifted beyond her reach. As much movement as he could manage, even here. Something like agony flashed in her eyes, but she didn’t try to touch him again.
He must have been killed today. Or come close to it, if she was here. If he had no defenses left and she’d broken through that mental wall for the first time since he’d learned who she was.
What had they done to Cormac to render him irrevocably dead?
He couldn’t stop the memory from flooding him, of sitting beside Cormac in that bar before they went to the Eternal City, of that one moment he thought he’d glimpsed the person his cousin might have been. The friend Cormac might have become, if he hadn’t been systematically stripped of kindness by King Morven.
It shouldn’t have been a shock to Ruhn, that the two kings had disowned their sons. Though one king had fire in his veins and the other shadows, Einar and Morven were more alike than anyone realized.
Ruhn had always held some scrap of hope that his father saw the Asteri for what they truly were, and that if it ever came down to it, his father would make the right choice. That the orrery in his study, the years spent looking for patterns in light and space … that it had meant something larger. That it wasn’t simply the idle studying of a bored royal who needed to feel more important in the grand scheme of things than he actually was.
That hope was dead. His father was a spineless fucking coward.
Ruhn, Lidia said, and he hated the sound of his name on her lips. He hated her. He turned on his side, putting his back to her.
I understand why you’re angry, why you must hate me, she began hoarsely. Ruhn, the … the things I’ve done … I need you to understand why I did them. Why I’ll keep doing them.
Save your sob story for someone who gives a shit.
Ruhn, please.
The raft groaned, and he knew she was reaching for him again. But he couldn’t bear that touch, the pleading in her voice, the emotion that no one else in the world but him had ever heard from the Hind.
So Ruhn said, Fuck your excuses. And rolled off that mental raft to let the sea of pain drown him.
5
Ithan’s heart stalled as Sabine smiled savagely, advancing toward the warehouse’s side door. The alley behind her was empty—no witnesses. Exactly what Ithan and all those who served under Sabine had been trained to ensure.
Sigrid backed up a step, right into Declan. The sprites clung to her neck, yellow flames trembling.
“I knew my brother let me find him and your sister too easily,” Sabine snarled, eyes fixed wholly on Sigrid, as if the two Fae warriors with guns pointed at her head were nothing. “I knew he lied about how many pups he had.”
Sigrid halted her retreat. Ithan didn’t dare take his eyes off Sabine to read her face.
“All that effort—for you?” Sabine surveyed her curving claws. “I promise to make this quick, at least. It’s more than I can say for your sister. Poor pup.”
“Leave her alone,” Ithan snarled, balancing on the balls of his feet, readying to leap for Sabine. To make this final, disastrous stand.
Sabine laughed humorlessly, acknowledging his existence at last. “Some guard, Holstrom.”
“You have two fucking seconds, Sabine, to get lost,” Declan said.
Sabine’s smile crinkled her nose—sheer lupine fury. “You’ll need more than bullets to down me, Faeling.” Ithan had told Flynn that Sabine wasn’t dumb enough to start shit on the Viper Queen’s turf, but at the sight of the Prime Apparent’s hateful expression, he wondered if her rage and fear had overridden any scrap of common sense.
He unsheathed his claws. “How about these?” He snarled again. “You’re dead fucking meat when we tell the authorities about this.”
