House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3)

She turned on her side, looking at him full in the face. Gods, she was beautiful.

How are you feeling? Her question was gentle. After … what happened with your father.

I don’t know, Ruhn said. It felt right in the moment, felt good, even. But now … He shook his head. I keep thinking about my mother, of all people. And what she’ll say. She might be the only person who’ll mourn him.

She loved him?

She was attached to him, even if he treated her as little more than a broodmare. But he kept her in comfort all these years, as a reward for birthing him a son. She was always grateful for that.

Lidia reached a hand across the narrow space between them and found his own—his fingers still strangely pale and uncalloused. But her skin was so soft and warm, the bones beneath so strong. You’ll find a way to live with what you did to your father. I did.

Ruhn lifted a brow. You …?

I killed him, yes. The words were frank, yet weary.

Why?

Because he was a monster—to me, and to so many others. I made it look like a rebel attack. Told Ophion to get their mech-suits and be waiting for him when his car drove through a mountain pass on its way to a meeting with me. They left a flattened vehicle and a corpse in their wake. Then burned the whole thing.

Ruhn blinked. Beheading my father seems like it was much … faster.

It certainly was. Her eyes held nothing but cold anger. I told the Ophion agents in the mech-suits to take their time squashing him in his car. They did.

Cthona, Lidia.

But I, too, wondered, about my mother after that, she said quietly. About Hecuba. Wondered what the Queen of the Valbaran Witches made of her ex-lover’s death. If she thought of me. If she had any interest, any at all, in reaching out to me after he died. But I never heard from her. Not once.

I’m sorry, he offered, and squeezed her hand. After a beat he asked, So you’re really not going back to the Ocean Queen?

No. Not as her spy. I meant every word earlier. I serve no one.

Is it weird to say I’m proud of you? Because I am.

She huffed a laugh and interlaced their fingers, her thumb stroking over the back of his hand. I see you, Ruhn, she said gently. All of you.

The words were a gift. His chest tightened. He couldn’t stop himself from leaning across the space and quietly, so no one around them might hear, pressing his mouth to hers.

The kiss was gentle, near silent. He pulled away after a heartbeat, but her free hand slid to his cheek. Her eyes glowed golden, even in the moonlit dimness of the stables. When we’re not sleeping in a stable surrounded by people, she said, mind-voice low—a purr that curled around his cock and gripped tight—I want to touch you.

His cock hardened at that, aching. He shut his eyes, fighting it, but her lips brushed his, silently teasing.

I want to ride you, she whispered into his mind, and slipped her hand from his to palm him through his pants. Ruhn bit down on his lower lip to keep from groaning. Her fingers slid down the length of him. I want this inside of me. She dug the heel of her palm along him, and he stifled a moan. I want you inside of me.

Fuck yeah was all he could manage to say, to think.

Her laughter echoed in his mind, and her lips slid from his to find the spot beneath his ear. Her teeth grazed over his too-hot skin, and he writhed against the hand she still had on him, the crackling hay so gods-damned loud—

“Please don’t fuck right next to us,” Flynn muttered from a few feet away.

“Ugh,” Bryce called from across the stables. “Really?”

Ruhn squeezed his eyes shut, fighting his arousal.

But Lidia laughed quietly. “Sorry.”

“Pervs,” Declan muttered, hay crinkling as he turned over.

Ruhn looked back to Lidia and saw her smiling, delight and mischief brightening her face.

And damn if it wasn’t the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.





68


“You’re hovering.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Ithan paced the morgue that Hypaxia had swiftly converted into a lab. “I just don’t know what to do with myself while you’re working on all that science stuff.”

Hunched over the desk, Hypaxia was setting up the things she’d need to begin her experiments.

She said idly, without lifting her head, “I could use a sample of the parasite.”

He halted. “How?” He answered his own question. “Oh. A glass of water.” He glanced to the sink. “You think there are tons of them swimming around?”

“I doubt it’s that obvious, considering how many scientists and medwitches have studied our water over the years. But it must be in there somewhere, if we’re all infected.”

Ithan sighed and walked over to the sink, grabbing a mug that said Korinth University College of Mortuary Science. He filled it with water and plunked it down beside Hypaxia. “There. The Istros’s finest.”

“That mug could be contaminated,” Hypaxia said, using a ruler to sketch out a grid on a piece of paper. “We need a sterile container first. And samples from several different water sources.”

“Did I mention that I hate science?”

“Well, I love it,” Hypaxia said, still without looking up. “There are sterile cups in the cabinet along the back wall. Get multiple samples from this tap, from the Istros itself, and one from a bottle of store-bought water. We’ll need a wider sample base, but that’ll do for the initial phases.” Ithan gathered a bunch of the sterile containers and headed for the door.

He was a glorified water boy. He’d never hear the end of it from his sunball buddies. That is, if he ever talked to them again.

But Ithan said nothing before slipping out, and Hypaxia didn’t call after him.



* * *



Ithan bottled and labeled the various samples, gave Hypaxia a few vials of his blood as a base for an infected person, and then she sent him back out for more water samples from different sources. The dining hall, a nearby restaurant, and—best of all—the sewers.

He was on his way back through the dark door of the House of Flame and Shadow when the hair on the back of his neck rose. He knew that eerie, unsettled feeling. He whirled—

It wasn’t Sigrid. A different female Reaper, veiled head to toe in black, glided smoothly over the quay. People outright fled—the street behind her was wholly empty.

But she continued toward the door, where Ithan stood frozen. He had no option, really, but to hold the door open for her.

The Reaper drifted by, black veils billowing. Acid-green eyes gleamed beneath the dark fabric over her face, and her rasping voice turned his bowels watery as she said, “Thank you,” and continued into the stairwell.

Ithan waited five whole minutes before following. She had no scent at all. Not even the reek of a corpse. As if she’d ceased to exist in any earthly way. It drove his wolf nuts.

But—

Ithan sniffed the air of the stairwell again as he descended toward the lowest levels of the House and the morgue-lab. As he slipped into the lab and shut the door behind him, he asked, “What happens to the parasite when we die?”

Hypaxia finally looked up from her papers and vials and forms. “What?”

“I just saw a Reaper,” he said. “They’re dead. Well, they died. So do they still have the parasite? They don’t eat or drink, so they couldn’t be reinfected, right? But does the parasite disappear when we die? Does it die, too?”

Hypaxia blinked slowly. “That’s an interesting question. And if the parasite does indeed die when the host does, then Reapers might provide a way to locate the parasite simply by the lack of it in their own bodies.”

“Why do I feel like you’re going to ask me to—”

“I need you to get me a Reaper.”



* * *



Dawn broke, purple and golden, over the islands of Avallen. But Bryce only had eyes for the helicopter making its descent onto the grassy, blooming field before the ruins of Morven’s castle. She smiled grimly.