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She stopped typing at the seventh mystic, and stalked along the rows of tubs.
Ruhn moved to the doorway to keep watch, hiding himself in shadows as he monitored the hall, the stairs at their far end. They’d be lucky if it took even a minute for inquiring ears to get down here—
Lidia gasped. Ruhn whirled toward her, but she was already running.
“Pollux has got them under the palace,” she said as she reached the door and raced out, Ruhn running alongside her.
“Under?” Ruhn asked, trailing her down the stairs.
“In the hall with the firstlight core that your sister discovered—under the archives.”
“Lidia,” Ruhn said, grabbing her arm. “It has to be a trap. To have them at the core—”
She pointed the gun at his head. “I’m going. If it’s a trap, then it’s a trap. But I’m going.”
Ruhn held up his hands. “I know, and I’m going with you, but we have to think through the—”
She was already sprinting again, the gun back at her side. The castle had filled with sound now, a cacophony of shouting, scared people trying to get out as fast as possible. It masked the sound of their creeping about, but … Lidia was frantic—desperate. Which made for a dangerous ally, Hind or no. She’d get herself killed, and her sons, too.
He couldn’t let her jeopardize herself like that. If anyone was going to put themselves in that lethal danger …
It’d be him.
Ruhn vaulted down the stairs behind Lidia. And when he caught up to her, he clicked the safety off his gun.
Lidia heard that click and halted. Turned to him—slow, disbelieving. She didn’t glance at the gun. She already knew it was there. Her eyes were on his. Unreadable, cold. The eyes of the Hind.
Ruhn rasped, “I can’t let you get yourself killed.”
“I will never forgive you for this,” she said, voice like ice itself. “Never.”
“I know,” Ruhn said. And fired.
One shot, right to her thigh.
She shouted in pain as she crumpled, the bullet passing through the wound and ricocheting off the stairs behind her, the thunder of the gun and her scream spinning into a chorus that shredded his soul. A chorus that, thankfully, was muffled by the chaos unfolding levels above.
She pressed her palm to the open wound, which he’d inflicted far from any dangerous artery, and her eyes blazed with pure, flaming rage. “I will kill you—”
She reached for the gun at her other thigh, as if she really would blast his face off.
Ruhn bolted down the stairs before she could take aim. Holstering his own gun, he raced onward, leaving her to bleed behind him.
* * *
The waterways of the Eternal City were old, and strange, and unfriendly.
Tharion hated them. Especially with the amplified power in his veins, freed from its bonds. His body and soul recognized the very essence of his surroundings. They did not like what they encountered.
There was no mer court in the river wending like a snake through the city. There was barely any life at all beyond bottom-feeders and skittering things that clung to the shadows.
Above, the world was chaos. Armies and missiles and wings.
Here, the sounds were muffled. The water whispered to him where to go, where to bring the bag of sealed antidotes. Flowed with him, guided his powerful tail, right to the grate in the riverbank. His gills flared as he hauled away the metal. As he swam into the dark, lightless tunnel and switched on the aquatic headlamp he’d had the good sense to bring.
And with the water guiding him, Tharion swam like Hel for the Asteri’s palace.
* * *
