House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City, #2)

Ithan stared at the sprites, especially the fourth, radiant one who seemed so … angry. He didn’t blame her. He murmured to his roommates, “You sure you’re cool with freeing a bunch of pissed-off fire sprites in your house?”

But Flynn waved him off. “We’ve got sprinklers and smoke alarms.”

“I’m not reassured,” Marc said.

“Got it,” Declan called, trotting from the kitchen with a hammer.

Marc rubbed his temples and leaned back against the cushions. “This cannot end well.”

“Ye of little faith,” Flynn said, catching the hammer as Declan tossed it to him.

Ithan winced. “Just … be careful.”

“I don’t think that word’s in either of their vocabularies,” Marc quipped, earning an elbow in the ribs from Declan as the male settled onto the couch beside him.

Flynn tugged the box toward him and said to the sprites, “Cover your heads.” The three visible ones crouched down. The fourth one remained a ball of flame, but shrank slightly.

“Careful,” Ithan warned again. Flynn, with a snap of the wrist, cracked the top of the first ring. It splintered, and he tapped it again. It broke into three pieces on the third rap of the hammer, but the sprite remained crouched.

Flynn moved onto the next, then the next.

By the time he’d cracked open the third ring, the sprites were poking their fiery heads out like chicks emerging from eggs. Flynn moved the hammer above the fourth one. And as it came down, Ithan could have sworn one of the sprites shouted, in a voice almost too hoarse to hear, “Don’t!”

Too late.

All it took was one crack, and the flame within shoved outward, rupturing the glass.

They all leapt over the couch with a shout, and fuck, it was hot and bright and wind was roaring and something was screeching—

Then something heavy thudded on the coffee table. Ithan and the others peeked over the couch.

“What the fuck?” Flynn breathed, smoke curling from where the shoulders of his shirt had been singed.

The three sprites cowered in their shattered orbs. All shrinking from the naked, human-sized female smoldering on the coffee table beside them.

The female pushed up onto her arms, hair like darkest iron falling in curling waves around her delicately featured face. Her tan body simmered, the wood table beneath her charring everywhere her nude, luscious form touched. She lifted her head, and her eyes—fucking Hel.

They blazed crimson. More boiling blood than flame.

Her back heaved with each long, sawing breath, ripples of what seemed like red-and-gold scales flowing beneath her skin.

“He is going to kill you,” she said in a voice rasping with disuse. But her eyes weren’t on Ithan. They were on Flynn, his hammer raised again, as if it would do anything against the sort of fire she bore. “He is going to find you and kill you.”

But Flynn, stupid, arrogant asshole that he was, got to his feet and grinned cheerfully down at the curvy female on the coffee table. “Good thing a dragon now owes me a debt.”

Athalar was a time bomb—one that Ruhn had no idea how to defuse. He supposed that honor went to his sister, who kept a step away from the angel, one eye on him and the other on the unfolding race for the seafloor.

His sister was mated. It was rare enough among the Fae, but finding a mate who was an angel … His mind reeled.

Ruhn shook off the thought, approaching Commander Sendes and saying, “I don’t hear any engine noise.”

“You won’t,” Sendes said, opening an air lock door at the end of the long glass tunnel. “These are stealth ships, fueled by the Ocean Queen’s power.”

Tharion whistled, then asked, “So you think we can outrun an Omega in something this big?”

“No. But we’re not outrunning it.” She pointed through a wall of thick glass to the dimness below. “We’re going into the Ravel Canyon.”

“If you can fit,” Ruhn challenged, hoisting Cormac up a little higher as the male groaned, “then so can the Omega-boats.”

Sendes gave him a secret, knowing smile. “Watch.”

Ruhn nodded to the prince hanging off his shoulder. “My cousin needs a medwitch.”

“One is already coming to meet us,” Sendes said, opening another air lock. The tunnel beyond was massive, with halls branching out in three directions like the arteries of a mighty beast. The hall directly ahead … “Well, that’s a sight,” Ruhn murmured.

A cavernous biodome bloomed at the end of the hall, brimming with lush tropical trees, streams winding through the fern-covered floor, and orchids blooming in curling mists. Butterflies flitted around, and hummingbirds sipped from the orchids and neon-colored flowers. He could have sworn he spied a small, furred beast running beneath a drooping fern.

“We have desalinators on this ship,” Sendes explained, pointing to the biodome, “but should they ever fail, this is a wholly separate ecosystem that generates its own fresh water.”

“How?” Tharion asked, but Sendes had halted at the intersection of the three halls. “The River Queen has a similar one, but nothing that can do this.”

“I doubt your bleeding friend would appreciate the lengthy explanation right now,” Sendes said, turning down the hallway to their right. People—mer, from their scents—walked past them, a few gaping, a few throwing confused looks their way, some waving to Sendes, who waved back.

Their surroundings had the air of a corporate building—or a city block. People going about their days, dressed in business or casual clothes, some exercising, some sipping from coffee cups or smoothies.

Bryce’s head swiveled this way and that, taking it all in. Athalar just kept crackling with lightning.

“No one’s concerned about who’s on our tail?” Ruhn asked Sendes.

She halted before another massive window, again pointing. “Why should they be?”

Ruhn braced his feet as the ship plowed right for a dark, craggy wall rising from the seafloor. But as easy as a bird shifting directions, it pulled up alongside the wall and drifted down—then halted, hovering.

Ruhn shook his head. “They’ll find us like this.”

“Look down the body of the ship.”

Pressing against the glass, Cormac a ballast on his other side, Ruhn obeyed. Where a mammoth ship had been, now … there was only black rock. Nothing else.

“This ship can become invisible?”

“Not invisible. Camouflaged.” Sendes smiled with pride. “The Ocean Queen imbued her vessels with many gifts from the seas. This one has a squid’s ability to blend into its surroundings.”

“But the lights inside—” Tharion started.

“The glass is one-way. It blocks the light and any glimpse within once the camouflaging is activated.”

“What about radar?” Ruhn asked. “You might be invisible to the naked eye, but surely the imperial ships would pick you up.”

Another one of those proud smiles. “Again, the Ocean Queen’s power fuels our ship, not the firstlight that the Omega radar is programmed to pick up. We register no signs of life, either—not even as a whale or a shark might on a radar. We are completely undetectable. To a passing Omega-boat, we are only a cluster of rock.”

“What if they run into you?” Tharion asked.