Jesiba Roga moved Ithan from the bar pretty damn quickly after he’d said precisely who he wanted to raise from the dead. He found himself transported to an office—her office, apparently—crammed full of crates and boxes of what had to be relics for her business.
She shoved him into a chair in front of a massive black desk, took a seat on the other side in a tufted white velvet armchair, and ordered him to tell her everything.
Ithan did. He needed her help, and he knew he wouldn’t get it without honesty.
When he finished, Roga leaned back in her seat, the dim golden light from her desk lamp gilding her short platinum hair.
“Well, this wasn’t how I expected my evening to go,” the sorceress said, rubbing her groomed brows. On the built-in bookshelf behind her sat three glass terrariums filled with various small creatures. People she had turned into animals? For their sake, he hoped not.
But maybe she could turn him into a worm and step on him. That’d be a mercy.
Jesiba’s eyes gleamed, as if sensing his thoughts. But she said quietly, “So you want a necromancer to raise this Sigrid Fendyr.”
“It hasn’t been very long,” Ithan said. “Her body is probably still fresh enough that—”
“I don’t need a wolf to tell me the rules of necromancy.”
“Please,” Ithan rasped. “Look, I just … I fucked up.”
“Did you?” A cold, curious question.
He swallowed against the dryness in his throat as he nodded. “I was supposed to rescue her—and she was supposed to make the Fendyrs better, to save everyone.”
Roga crossed her arms. “From what?”
“From Sabine. From how fucking awful the wolves have become—”
“As far as I remember, the wolves were the ones who raced to Asphodel Meadows this spring.”
“Sabine refused to let us go.”
“Yet you defied her and went anyway. The others followed you.”
“I’m not here to debate wolf politics.”
“But this is politics. You raise Sigrid, and … what then? Have you thought that through?”
Ithan growled, “I need to fix it.”
“And you think a necromancer will solve that problem.”
He bared his teeth. “I know what you’re thinking—”
“You don’t even know what you’re thinking, Ithan Holstrom.”
“Don’t talk to me like—”
She lifted a finger. “I will remind you that you are in my House, and asking for a gargantuan favor. You came here uninvited, which itself is a violation of our rules. So unless you want me to hand you over to the vamps to be sucked dry and left to rot on the dock, I suggest you check that tone, pup.”
Ithan glared, but shut his mouth.
Roga smiled slightly. “Good dog.”
Ithan reined in his growl. She smiled wider at that.
But after a moment she said, “Where’s Quinlan?”
“I don’t know.”
Roga nodded to herself. “I do nothing for free, you know.”
He met her stare, letting her see that he’d give her whatever she wanted. Her lips pursed with distaste at his desperation. He didn’t care.
“Most necromancers,” she continued, “are arrogant pricks who will fuck you over.”
“Great,” he muttered.
“But I know one who might be trustworthy.”
“Name your price. And theirs.”
“I told you already: I need a competent assistant. As far as memory serves, you were a history major at CCU.” At his questioning look, she said, “Quinlan used to prattle on and on about how proud of you she was.” His chest ached unbearably. Roga rolled her eyes, either at her words or at whatever was on his face, then gestured to the crates and boxes around her. “As you can see, I have goods that need sorting and shipping.”
Ithan slowly blinked. “You mean … work for you, and you’ll get me in touch with this necromancer?”
A dip of her chin.
“But I need it done now,” he said, “while her body’s still fresh—”
“I shall arrange to have the body transported from wherever the Viper Queen has thrown it, and keep it … on ice, as it were. Safe and sound. Until the necromancer becomes available.”
“Which is how long?”
Her lips curved. “What’s the rush?”
He couldn’t answer. He didn’t believe The weight of my own guilt is killing me and I can’t stand it another moment would make any difference to her.
“Let’s start with a couple days, Holstrom. A couple honest days of work … and we’ll assess whether you do a good enough job to merit the aid you seek.”
“I could walk right out of here and ask the nearest necromancer—”
“You could, but the vamps might take a bite before you can. Or you might ask the wrong necromancer and wind up … unsatisfied.”
Jesiba opened her laptop. She typed in her password, then said without looking up from the screen, “That big crate marked Lasivus needs unpacking and cataloging. There’s an extra laptop on the credenza over there. Password JellyJubilee. Both words capitalized, no spaces. Don’t give me that look, Holstrom. Quinlan set it.”
Ithan blinked again. But slowly got to his feet. Walked to the crate.
He summoned his claws, using them in lieu of a crowbar, and pried the lid off the crate. It landed on the carpeted floor with a dull thud and a spray of dust.
“You break it, Holstrom,” the sorceress drawled from her desk as she typed away, “you buy it.”
Wasn’t that the truth.
Bryce didn’t see the Autumn King for the rest of the day. She foraged dinner from the kitchen so she didn’t need to endure another meal and game of twenty questions with him.
She was carrying her plate up to her bedroom when her captor appeared at the top of the stairs. “I was looking for you.”
Bryce lifted the plate and the ham-and-butter sandwich atop it. “And I’m looking to eat. Bye.”
The Autumn King remained directly in her path as she crested the stone steps. “I want to talk to you.”
She peered up at him, hating that he stood taller than her. But she managed to give him a look down her nose—one that had worked wonders on irritating Hunt when they’d first met. And despite herself and all that had happened between them, she asked, “Why haven’t you cleared out Ruhn’s old room?”
He angled his head. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting a question like that. “Is there a reason I should have done so?”
“Seems awfully sentimental of you.”
“I have ten other bedrooms in this house. Should I ever need his, I will have it cleared.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Is there a specific answer you’re looking for?”
She opened her mouth to bite out a reply, but shut it. She surveyed him coolly.
He said a shade quietly, “Go ahead and ask.”
“Do you ever wonder?” she blurted. “What might have happened if you hadn’t sent your goons to hunt us down, or hadn’t tossed me to the curb when I was thirteen?”
His eyes flickered. “Every single day.”
“Then why?” Her voice cracked a bit. “You hit her, and then felt bad about it—you still feel bad about it. Yet you hunted us down, nearly killed her in the process. And when I showed up years later, you were nice to me for, like, two days before you kicked me out.”
“I don’t answer to you.”
She shook her head, disgust chasing away any trace of appetite. “I don’t get it—get you.”
“What is there to get? I am a king. Kings do not need to explain themselves.”
“Fathers do.”
“I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”
“And that hasn’t changed. But why not be a nice fucking person?”
He stared at her for a long, unbearable moment with that look she knew she so often had on her own face. The expression she’d inherited from him, cold and merciless.
He said, “Here I was, thinking you had a real father in Randall Silago and didn’t have any need of me whatsoever.”
She nearly dropped her plate. “Are you—are you jealous of Randall?”
His face was like stone, but his voice hoarsened as he said, “He got your mother in the end. And got to raise you.”
“That sounds awfully close to regret.”
“I have already told you: I live with that regret every day.” He surveyed her, the plate of food in her hands. “But perhaps we might eventually move past it.” He added after a moment, “Bryce.”
She didn’t know what to feel, to think, as he spoke her name. Without her last name attached, without any sort of sneer. But she cleared her throat and replied, “You help me find a way to get Hunt and Ruhn out of the Asteri dungeons, and then we can talk about you becoming a better dad.” She said the last words as she stepped around him, heading for her bedroom. Even if she no longer wanted to eat, she needed to put some distance between them, needed to think—
Her father called after her, “Who said Athalar and Ruhn are still in the dungeons? They haven’t been since this morning.”
Bryce halted and turned slowly.
“Where are they?” Her voice had gone dead—quiet. The way she knew his voice went when his temper flared.
But her father only crossed his arms, smug as a cat. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? They escaped. Vanished into the sea, if rumor is to be believed.”
Bryce let the words sink in. “You … you let me think they were in the dungeons. When you knew all along they were free.”
“They were in the dungeons when you arrived. Their status has now changed.”
“Did you know it was about to change?” White, blinding fury filled her head, her eyes. Even as part of her wondered if he, too, had needed some distance between them after their conversation, and revealing this truth … it was his best way to shove her away again.
“I answered your questions, as you stipulated. You asked where the Asteri took them after your encounter. I told you the truth. You didn’t ask for an update today, so—”
One heartbeat, the plate and sandwich were in her hands. The next, they were hurling through the air toward his head. “You asshole.”
Her father blasted away both plate and food with a wall of fire. Cinders of crisped bread and meat fell to the floor among shards of broken ceramic.
“Such tantrums,” he said, surveying the mess on the carpet, “from someone who just learned her brother and mate are free.”
“How about this,” Bryce seethed, hating the gorsian shackles around her wrists more than ever. “You let me go right now, and I’ll toss your ass straight through a portal and into the original Fae world. Go pack your bags.”
He chuckled. “You’ll bring me to that Fae world whether I let you go or not.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I hear your mother and Randall have adopted a son. It’d be a shame if something happened to the boy.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t come crying to me when Mom and Randall kick your ass. They did it once—I’m sure they’ll be happy to remind you what they’re capable of.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t be me darkening their doorstep.” He smirked, wholly confident. “A whisper to Rigelus, let’s say, of your parents harboring a rebel boy …”
Bryce rolled her eyes again. “Did you take some sort of class in school? Intro to Bad Guys? Get fucking serious. You’re not going to conquer any world.”
“If you should open a door between worlds at my behest, Rigelus may be grateful enough to me that he grants me a good chunk of it.”
Bryce eyed the shards of broken plate. Sharp enough to slit his throat.
He gave her a condescending smile, like he knew what she was contemplating.
Her father wasn’t for or against the Asteri. He was just an opportunist. If removing them got him more power, he’d fight them. If bowing to the Asteri proved more lucrative, he’d prostrate himself before their crystal thrones. For all his talk of helping the Fae, he believed in nothing except advancing himself.
She said tightly, “You’re already a king here.”
“Of a continent. What is that to an entire planet?”
“You know, you might not be the Starborn Chosen One, but I think out of all of us, you’ve got the most in common with Theia. She thought the same damn thing. But she learned too late that Rigelus doesn’t share.”
“With the knife you brought back in play, he might find himself willing to bargain.”
Bryce gave him a flat look. “What makes you think the blades will do anything to him?”
“Those blades, united, would end him.”
“Trust me: I tried it on an Asteri and it didn’t do anything.” At least, not before Nesta had interfered.
If he was shocked by her confession, he didn’t let on. “Did you order them to work?”
“Hard to order them, shithead, when I don’t know what they can even do.”
“Open a portal to nowhere,” the Autumn King said, the flame guttering in his eyes.
“What do you mean?” Bryce demanded.
“The Starsword is Made, as you called it.” He waved an idle hand, sparks at his fingertips. “The knife can Unmake things. Made and Unmade. Matter and antimatter. With the right influx of power—a command from the one destined to wield them—they can be merged. And they can create a place where no life, no light exists. A place that is nothing. Nowhere.”
Her knees wobbled. “That’s not … that’s not possible.”
“It is. I read about it in the Avallen Archives centuries ago.”
“Then how do I do it? Just say ‘merge into nowhere’ and that’s that?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “My research has not revealed the steps to merge the blades. Only what they could do.”
Bryce stared at the male before her for a long moment. Glanced down the steps to the lower level—toward his study. “I want to see this research myself.”
“It is on Avallen, and females are not allowed beyond the lobby of the archives.”
“Yeah, our periods would probably get all over the books.”
His lip curled. “Perhaps it is lucky you weaseled out of your engagement to Cormac. Your coarseness wouldn’t have been well tolerated in Avallen.”
“Oh, they’d warm up to me once they saw me swinging around the Starsword and remembered who and what I am.”
“That would be an affront all on its own. A female has never possessed the blade.”
“What?” She barked a laugh that echoed off the stone walls. “In fifteen thousand years, you mean to tell me only males have claimed it?”
“As females are not allowed in the Cave of Princes, they had no opportunity to attempt to claim it, even if they had the starlight in their veins.”
Bryce gaped at him. “Are you fucking kidding me? They banned females from the Cave of Princes to keep us from getting our hands on the sword?”
His silence was answer enough.
She snapped, “I’m pretty sure there are rules, even in this shitty empire, against treating females like that.”
“Avallen has long been left mostly to govern itself, its ways hidden from the modern world behind its mists.”
“But there’s information, somewhere on Avallen, about what these blades can do.”
“Yes, but you must be invited in order to cross the mists. And considering where you stand with Morven …”
She was never getting in. Certainly not without the assistance of the male before her.
Her head swam, and for a heartbeat, everything that she had done and still had to do weighed so heavily she could barely breathe.
“I need to go lie down,” she rasped.
The Autumn King didn’t stop her as she again turned toward her bedroom. Like he knew he’d won.
She strode in silence down the hall, steps muffled by the stone.
But not to her room. Instead, she walked all the way to Ruhn’s room, where she collapsed onto the bed. She didn’t move for a long while.
