Tharion stood in the old-timey stone bedroom, complete with a curtained bed and tapestries on the wall, and had no idea what to say to his wife.
Apparently, Sathia Flynn had no idea what to say to him, either, because she took a seat in a carved wooden chair before the crackling hearth and stared at the fire.
They’d barely exchanged more than a word all day. But now, having to share a room—
“You can take the bed,” he said, the words too loud, too big in the chamber.
“Thank you,” she said, arms wrapping around herself. The firelight danced on her light brown hair, setting golden strands within it shining.
“I don’t, uh—I don’t expect anything.”
That earned him a wry look over her shoulder. “Good. Neither do I.”
“Good,” he echoed, and winced, walking to the window. The starless night was a black wall beyond, interrupted only by a few glimmering fires at farmstead cottages. “Does it ever get … not gloomy here?”
“This is my first visit, so I can’t say.” Her tone was a bit sharp, as if unused to speaking normally to people, but she added, “I hope so.”
Tharion walked to the wooden chair opposite hers and sank onto it. The damn thing was hard as Hel. He shifted, trying to find a more comfortable angle, but gave up after a second and said, “Let’s start from the beginning. I’m Tharion Ketos. Former Captain of Intelligence for the River Queen—”
“I know who you are,” she said quietly, her soft tone belied by the steely calm in her eyes.
He arched a brow. “Oh? Good or bad?”
She shook her head. “I’m Sathia Flynn, daughter of Lord Hawthorne.”
“And?”
She cocked her head to the side, strands of her long hair slipping over a shoulder. “What else is there?”
He feigned contemplation. “Favorite color?”
“Blue.”
“Favorite food?”
“Raspberry tarts.”
He let out a laugh. “Really?”
She frowned. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” he said, then added, “Mine’s cheese puffs.”
She let out a hint of a laugh. But it faded as she said, “Why?”
He ticked the reasons off on his fingers. “They’re crispy, they’re cheesy—”
“No. I mean—why did you do this?” She gestured between them.
Tharion debated how to spin his story, but … “This arrangement of ours might as well be an honest one.” He sighed. “I’m a wanted male. The Viper Queen has a bounty of five million gold marks on my head.”
She choked. “What?”
“Surprise,” he said. Then added, “Sorry. I feel like … maybe I should have mentioned that before.”
“You think?” But she mastered herself, a practiced, calm demeanor stealing over her pale features before she said for a third time, “Why?”
“I … may have been indirectly responsible for burning down the Meat Market, and now she wants to kill me. That was after I defected from the River Queen, who, uh, also wants to kill me. And then the Ocean Queen harbored me and forbade me from leaving her ship, but I disobeyed her order and bailed, and now here I am and … I’m really not doing a good job of making myself seem appealing, am I?”
“My father is going to keel over dead,” Sathia said. Something like wicked amusement glinted in her eyes.
He could work with a sense of humor.
“As glad as I am to hear that,” Tharion said, earning another few millimeters of smile, “it’s a long way of saying … I’ve fucked up a lot.” Sigrid’s dead body flashed before his eyes, and he shoved it away. “Too much,” he amended.
“So this is some attempt at redemption?” Any amusement faded from her face.
“It’s an attempt to be able to look at myself in the mirror again,” he said plainly. “To know I did something good, at some point, for someone else.”
“All right,” she said, then looked back at the fire.
“You seem, uh … relatively cool with this whole marriage thing.”
“I’ve grown up knowing my fate would lead me to the marriage altar.” The words were flat.
“But you thought that would be marriage to a Fae—”
“I don’t particularly want to talk about the things that have been expected of me my entire life,” she said with the imperiousness of a queen. “Or the doors that are now closed to me. I am alive, and I didn’t have to marry Goon One or Goon Two, so—yes, I’m cool with that.”
“The mind-prying thing didn’t woo you, huh?”
“They’re brutes and bullies, even without their mind gifts. I abhor them.”
“Good to know you have standards.” Tharion extended his hand to her. “It’s nice to meet you, Sathia.”
She gingerly took the offered hand, her fingers delicate against his. But her handshake was firm—unflinching. “It’s nice to meet you, too … husband.”
Dawn broke over Avallen, though Lidia had never seen such a gloomy sunrise. Granted, given her fitful sleep last night, she wasn’t exactly in the mood to appreciate any sunrise, clear or cloudy. But as she stood on one of the small castle balconies overlooking the hilly countryside, her arms braced against the lichen-crusted stone rail, she couldn’t help but wonder if Avallen ever saw sunshine.
The city—more of a town, really—had been built atop a craggy hill, and offered views from every street of the surrounding green countryside, the land a patchwork of small farms and quaint homesteads. A land lost in time, and not in a good way.
Even Ravilis, Sandriel’s former stronghold, had been more modern than this. There wasn’t so much as a trace of firstlight anywhere. The Fae here used candles.
And had apparently been given an order, considering the unusually quiet streets, to shun the visitors at every turn. But she could have sworn that countless Fae were watching her from the shuttered windows of the ancient-looking town houses flanking the streets winding up to the castle. She’d always known Morven ruled with an iron fist, but this submission was beyond what she’d expected.
She’d barely been able to sleep last night. Hadn’t been able to stop seeing her sons’ faces as she’d left that room, or how they’d blended with the memory of their faces as babies, how they’d been sleeping so peacefully, so beautifully, in their cribs that last night, when she’d looked at them one final time and left. Walked off the Depth Charger and into the submersible pod.
It had felt like dying, both then and now. Felt like Luna had shot her with a poisoned arrow and she was bleeding out, an invisible wound leaking into the world, and there was nothing that could ever be done to heal it.
Lidia scrubbed her hands over her face, finding her cheeks chilled. Maybe it would have been better to have not seen them again. To have never returned to the ship, and not reopened that wound.
There was no torture that Pollux or Rigelus could have devised for her that hurt worse than this. The chill wind whipped past, moaning through the narrow streets of the ancient, mist-wreathed city.
Below her, in the courtyard, Bryce and Athalar, Baxian, Tharion, and the mer’s new bride were preparing to leave. Ruhn and his two friends stood with them, speaking in low voices. No doubt running over all they knew regarding the Cave of Princes once more.
She didn’t really know why she’d come out here—they hadn’t bothered to tell her they’d be leaving, or invite her to the send-off. Baxian at last looked up, either sensing or spotting Lidia, and lifted a hand in farewell. Lidia returned the gesture.
The rest of the group turned, too, Bryce waving a bit more enthusiastically than the others.
Flynn and Dec just nodded to her. Ruhn merely glanced up before averting his eyes. With a final embrace for his sister, the Fae Prince stalked back into the castle and disappeared from view, his two friends with him. Bryce and her crew aimed for the castle gates. For the countryside beyond, still half asleep under the grayish light.
Shadows whispered over the stones of the balcony, and Lidia didn’t turn to acknowledge Morven as he stepped up beside her. “So sentimental of you, to see them off.”
Lidia kept her gaze on the departing group, headed for a cluster of taller hills rising against the horizon. “Is there something you want?”
A hiss at her impudence. “You’re a filthy traitor.”
Lidia slid her stare to the Fae King at last. Beheld his pale, hateful face. “And you’re a spineless coward who disavowed his own child at the first sign of trouble.”
“Had you any honor, any understanding of royal duty, you would understand why I did so.” Shadows twined over the shoulders of his fine black jacket, the silver embroidery. The Stag King, they called him. It was an insult to deer shifters. The Fae male had no affinity for the beasts, despite his throne, crafted from the bones of some noble, butchered beast. “You would know there are more important things than even one’s own children.”
There was nothing more important. Nothing. She was here today, on this island, back in the field once more, because there would never be anything more important than the two boys she’d left on the Depth Charger.
“I enjoyed watching you grovel, you know,” Lidia said. And she had—despite everything, she’d loved every second of Morven kneeling before the Asteri. Just as she loved seeing him bristle with fury as she threw his humiliation in his face.
“I have no doubt a blackheart like you did,” Morven sneered. “But I wonder: Should a better offer come along, will you betray these friends as easily as you did your masters?”
Lidia’s fingers curled at her sides, but she kept her face impassive. “Are you sulking because you did not see me for what I truly am, Morven, or because I witnessed you in your moment of shame? In the moment you traded loyalty to your son for your own life?”
He seethed, shadows poised to strike. “You know nothing of loyalty.”
Lidia let out a low laugh, and glanced toward the five figures heading out into the greenery of the countryside. Toward the red-haired female in the center of the group. “I’ve never had a leader to stir the sentiment.”
Morven noted the direction of her gaze and scowled. “You’re a fool to follow her.”
Lidia gave him a sidelong look, pushing off the stone wall of the balcony. “You’re a fool not to,” she said quietly, striding for the archway into the castle proper. “It will be your doom. And Avallen’s.”
Morven snarled, “Is that a threat?”
Lidia kept walking, leaving her enemy and the miserable dawn behind. “Just some professional advice.”
“So all that talk, all those myths and hand-wringing about the Cave of Princes,” Hunt said to Bryce, sweating lightly from their hours-long trek across the rolling fields to this craggy cluster of hills, the castle now a lone spike on the horizon behind them, “and this is it?”
Bryce looked around. “Underwhelming, isn’t it?”
The entrance to the cave was little more than a sliver between two boulders. Ancient, weatherworn runes were etched into the stones, but that was all that set this place apart from any other crack in the rock face.
That, and the tongue of mist slithering out from the gloom.
“Morven needs a decorator,” Tharion said, peering into the darkness beyond. “I think he could really move beyond his ancestors’ shadows-and-misery theme.”
“This is how he likes it,” Sathia said. “The way Avallen was when it was first built—right after the First Wars ended. His father kept it that way, and his father before him, going all the way back to Pelias himself.”
Hunt swapped a look with Bryce. That was precisely why they’d come. If there was a place any bit of truth might be preserved, it was here. He didn’t relish the thought of going into a cave; some intrinsic part of him bucked at the idea of being so far from the wind, so far belowground, trapped once again. But he forced himself past the bolt of fear and dread and said to Sathia, “Do you have any idea how the mists keep the Asteri out of Avallen?” She hadn’t volunteered the information yesterday, but maybe it was because they hadn’t thought to ask.
“No,” Sathia said. “The rumor is that the magic of the mists is so old, it predates even the Asteri’s arrival.”
“Well,” Tharion said, gesturing dramatically, “ladies first, Legs.”
“Such chivalry,” Bryce retorted.
“You’re the one with a built-in flashlight,” Hunt reminded her.
She rolled her eyes and said to a wary Sathia, “Word of advice: don’t let them push you around.”
“I won’t,” Sathia said. For some reason, Hunt believed her.
Bryce was looking at Flynn’s sister as if she was thinking the same thing. “It’s good to have another female around here.” She nodded to Baxian, Tharion, and Hunt. “The Alphahole Club was getting too crowded for my liking.”
Bryce halted at the line between light and shadow. The mist trickling along the cave floor reached for her pink sneakers with white, curving claws. Her starlight didn’t pierce the darkness beyond a few feet ahead. It only illuminated a thicker cloud of mist. Masking any threats waiting beyond.
She couldn’t bring herself to cross that line.
“This place feels wrong,” Baxian murmured, coming up beside Bryce.
“Here’s hoping we see daylight again,” Tharion said with equal quiet from a step behind them.
“We will,” Hunt said, adjusting the heavy pack strapped between his wings. “Nothing to worry about except some ghouls. And wraiths. And ‘scary shit,’ Ruhn claimed.”
“Oh, just that,” Bryce said, throwing him a wry glance. She added to Sathia, pointing to the spires barely poking over the green horizon, “It’s not too late to head back to the castle.”
“I’m not going to sit around with those mind-reading bastards lurking about,” Sathia hissed.
They all turned toward her.
“Did something … happen?” Hunt asked carefully. Tharion was watching her closely.
“I’m not going to be left alone in that castle,” Sathia insisted, wrapping her arms around herself, fingers digging into her white sweater, and Bryce knew she didn’t want to discuss it further.
“Fair enough,” Hunt said, reading Sathia’s tone, too. “But Ruhn warned me that most of what’s in here is old, and wicked, and likes to drink blood. And eat souls. I’m not sure of the order, though.”
“Sounds like your run-of-the-mill Fae nobility, then,” Bryce said, hefting her heavy pack higher. She winked at Sathia. “You’ll be right at home.”
The Fae female gave her a watery smile, but to her credit, didn’t run screaming from the cave and its grasping, misty fingers. If Sathia did indeed prefer to face what lurked in this cave over the Murder Twins, maybe Bryce owed it to her and females everywhere to kick some ass when they got back.
If they got back.
“Right,” Hunt said. “According to Declan, Pelias’s tomb and the Starsword’s resting place lie right in the center of the cave network.” They’d swiped food and water from the surprised-looking kitchen staff, preparing for a few days’ journey. “But there are lots of things that will try to eat us along the way.”
Bryce ignored the twisting in her stomach. She’d gone to another world, she’d faced an Asteri—she could deal with a few ghouls and wraiths. She had three badasses with her. Plus Sathia. She could do this.
Bryce faced the others and held out her hand at waist level. “Go Team Caves on three?”
They all looked at her, but didn’t cover her hand with theirs. Not even Hunt, the bastard. After the way they’d fucked last night, the least he could do was indulge her with some team spirit. But he gave her a look, as if to say, Gravitas, Quinlan.
Fuck that. She lifted her hand in the air and shouted, “Gooooo Team Caves!”
The words echoed off the boulders, down the passage, and into the misty darkness beyond. Where they suddenly cut off, as if the caves themselves had devoured them.
“That’s not creepy at all,” Hunt murmured.
“Totally normal,” Baxian agreed.
“Don’t worry,” Bryce crooned. “I’ll protect you from the scary cave.” And with that, she strode into the dark.
Morven cornered Ruhn outside the dining hall just before he and his friends left for the archives again after breakfast.
“A word,” Morven said, hooking a finger toward him. The mass of shadows from the day before was gone, but the crown of them remained floating atop his head.
“Here I was,” Ruhn drawled, nodding at Flynn and Dec to keep going down the hall, “thinking I didn’t exist to you.”
Morven leveled a cold look at him—it made Ruhn’s father seem downright cheerful. But Ruhn noticed that the king waited to speak until Lidia had walked past, out the door, not sparing a glance for either of them.
“What are your sister’s intentions in coming here?”
“Bryce told you,” Ruhn said tightly. “She wants information.”
“The sword and knife, for one thing. The rest is classified.” Asshole, he didn’t need to add.
Morven’s eyes darkened to blackest night. “And does she plan to claim Avallen for herself?”
Ruhn burst out laughing. “What? No. If she did, I wouldn’t tell you, but trust me: this place …” He surveyed the dark, crypt-like hall. “This isn’t her style. Just ask my father.”
“That is another thing: Your sister must have done something to him. How else would she come to possess his journal?”
“If she has, it didn’t involve trying to claim his crown. She’s said nothing about it.” Ruhn glared at the king. “And again: If she was planning some sort of Fae coup, why the Hel would I tell you about it?”
“Because you are true Fae, not some half-breed—”
“I’d mind how you speak about my sister.”
Morven’s shadows gathered at his fingers, his shoulders. Wild, angry shadows that Ruhn’s own balked to meet. They seemed corrupted somehow, like those Seamus and Duncan wielded mentally. “You are Starborn. You have an obligation to our people.”
“To do what?”
“To ensure they survive.”
“Bryce is Starborn, too.”
Ruhn, Dec, and Flynn had given his sister and the others all the pointers they could regarding what they’d face in the dark labyrinth of the Cave of Princes, but their own journey through the misty cave network had been so chaotic that they had little to offer when it came to a direct route to Pelias’s tomb. Bryce hadn’t seemed too concerned, despite her comment last night about time running out. But maybe she was putting on a brave face.
“Yes,” Morven sneered, “and what has your sister done with her Starborn heritage except show contempt for the Fae?”
“You don’t know a damn thing about her.”
“I know she spat on her Fae lineage when she announced her union with that angel.” His shadows quivered with rage.
“All right,” Ruhn said, turning to go. “I’m officially done. Bye.”
Morven grabbed him by the arm. Shadows slithered up from his hand onto Ruhn’s forearm, squeezing tight. “After dealing with your sister yesterday, I prayed all night to Luna for guidance.” His eyes gleamed with a fanatic’s fervor. “She allowed me to see that you, despite your … transgressions … are our people’s only hope of regaining some credibility in future generations.”
Ruhn sent his own shadows racing down his arm, biting at Morven’s and snapping free of their grip with satisfying ease. “Luna doesn’t strike me as the type who’d stoop to talking to assholes like you.”
Despite his shredded shadows, Morven’s fingers dug into his arm. “There are females here who—”
“Nope.” Ruhn shrugged off his uncle’s hand. Kept a wall of shadows at his back as he walked away. “Bye.”
“Selfish fool,” Morven hissed. Ruhn could have sworn the king’s shadows hissed, too.
But Ruhn lifted his arm above his head and flipped him off without looking back. He found Dec and Flynn waiting by a courtyard fountain outside, a safe distance from Lidia.
“What was that all about?” Flynn asked, falling into step beside Ruhn.
“Not worth explaining,” Ruhn replied, keeping his eyes on the archives dome a few streets away.
Declan asked Lidia, “Any chance Morven will run to the Asteri?”
“Not yet,” she said quietly. “Bryce’s claims yesterday were true—she handled him well.” She added, turning toward Ruhn, “You could learn a thing or two from your sister.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ruhn demanded.
Flynn and Dec pretended to be busy looking into a closed butcher shop as they passed by.
“You’re a prince,” Lidia said coolly. “Start acting like one.”
