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

“Fuck you,” Ruhn spat.

Behind Pollux, still several feet down the hallway, her sons stood tall, even as they trembled. The sight short-circuited something in her brain.

But Pollux sneered at Ruhn. “Was it for you that she left, then? Betrayed all she knew? For a Fae princeling?”

“Don’t give him that much credit,” Lidia snarled. She’d say anything to keep Pollux’s attention on her—away from the boys. Ruhn could go to Hel for all she cared. But Lidia gestured between herself and Pollux. “This reckoning was years in the making.”

“Oh, I know,” Pollux said, and motioned to the two angels behind him. “See, the Ocean Queen’s fleet isn’t all that secure. Catch a mer spy, threaten to fillet them, and they’ll tell you anything. Including where the Depth Charger is headed. And the two very interesting children aboard it—their true heritage at last revealed and the talk of the ship.”

Lidia considered every scenario in which she could take on Pollux and get her sons out of here. Few of them ended with her walking out of here alive, too.

“They put up an admirable fight, you know,” Pollux said. “But they couldn’t keep their mouths shut, could they?” He glared at Actaeon. A bruise bloomed on his temple. “You learned quick enough how effective a gag is.”

A flame lit deep inside her, crackling and blazing.

“After all the trouble these two brats gave me,” Pollux said, white wings glimmering with brute power, “I’m really going to enjoy killing them in front of you.”





93


Ruhn kept perfectly still as Brann and Actaeon, bound in gorsian shackles, were shoved to their knees before Pollux by those two imperial guards.

The Hammer smiled at Lidia, who’d gone utterly still and pale. “I knew instantly that they weren’t mine, of course. No sons of my blood could be captured so easily. Pathetic,” he sneered at a seething Brann, who was sporting a bloody nose. The kid would take on the Hammer with his bare hands.

Actaeon, however, watched Pollux carefully, though the boy was equally battered. His golden eyes missing nothing. Assessing all. Trying to find an opening.

Lidia rasped, “Please.”

Pollux laughed. “Too late for niceties now, Lidia.”

Ruhn’s mind raced, sifting through every angle and advantage they might have. The math was damning.

Even if Pollux lowered the gun pointed at Ruhn’s head, he still stood close enough to kill the boys with one strike. There was no way either Lidia or Ruhn could reach the boys in time, physically or magically. A bullet would be slower than the striking Hammer.

And even with Tharion at Lidia’s side … No, there was no chance.

“Go get Rigelus,” Pollux said to the two guards, not taking his gaze off Lidia, off Ruhn. “He’ll enjoy watching this, I think.”

Without question, without so much as a blink at the atrocities they were leaving behind, the guards departed down the hall. Turned into the stairwell and out of sight.

Tharion struck.

A blast of water, so concentrated it could have shattered stone, speared for Pollux. Ruhn darted to the left as Pollux fired his gun. But not for him, he realized as the bullet raced, faster than it should have, borne on a wave of angelic power—

Pollux dove aside, the plume of water missing his wing. But his bullet and power struck true.

Tharion grunted, going down before Ruhn could see where the mer had been hit. Somewhere in the chest—

As water dripped off the walls and ceiling around them, Lidia said, “Let them go, Pollux. Your quarrel is with me.”

He snickered. “And what better way to destroy you? I suppose I can make one allowance: you can choose which boy dies first.”

Brann snarled through his gag at Pollux, but Actaeon looked at his mother, eyes sharp, as if telling her to kill this asshole.

“They’re children,” Lidia said, voice cracking. Ruhn couldn’t stand it—the pure desperation in her face. The agony.

“They’re your children,” Pollux said, power flickering at his hand. “Ordinarily, I’d like to make this last a while, but sacrifices must be made in battle.” As if in answer, the very building around them shuddered. “I hear there are deathstalkers loose in here. Perhaps I’ll feed the brats to them.”

“Don’t,” Lidia said, falling to her knees. “Tell me what you want, what I must do, and I’ll do it—anything—”

Ruhn’s heart cleaved in two. For the boys; for her, debasing herself for this prick.

He rallied his shadows. But if Tharion hadn’t been able to hit his mark …

Pollux smiled at Lidia. “I always liked you on your knees, you know.”

“Whatever you want,” Lidia pleaded. “Please, Pollux. I am begging you—”

She’d do it. Give Pollux whatever he wanted.

Her boys stiffened. Seeing that, too. Perhaps finally understanding what—who—their mother was. What had guided her all these years, and would continue to guide her in her final moments.

Ruhn just saw Lidia. Lidia, who had given so much, too much. Who would do this without a thought.

So Ruhn stepped forward. “I’ll trade you. Me, for them.”

Any other opponent would have dismissed it. But Pollux looked him over with a cruel, hungry sort of curiosity.

Ruhn snarled, saying the words he hadn’t dared voice until now, “She’s my mate, you fucker.”

Lidia inhaled a sharp breath.

Ruhn taunted the Hammer, “You want me to tell you how she said we measured up?” Crass, crude words—but ones he knew would strike the Hammer’s fragile ego.

The blow landed. “I’ll kill the lot of you,” Pollux seethed, his beautiful face ugly with rage.

“Nah,” Ruhn said. “You touch her or the boys, and your attention will be split. Giving me the opening I need to blast you to Hel.”

He should have taken that shot when Tharion attacked. He’d wasted the mer’s blow—and now Tharion was lying on the ground, alarmingly still, blood leaking from a hole in his chest.

“Ruhn,” Lidia warned.

“But,” Ruhn went on smoothly, “you hand over the boys unharmed, you let them and Lidia and Tharion go, and I’ll walk right up to you. With no guns, no magic. You can pull me apart piece by piece. Take all the time you want.”

“Ruhn,” Lidia’s voice broke.

He didn’t look at her. Didn’t have the strength to see whatever was in her eyes. He knew she hated him for putting that bullet in her thigh—but it had been to save her. To keep them from this terrible fate that they’d all arrived at anyway.

So he said to her, mind-to-mind, I love you. I fell in love with you in the depths of my soul, and it’s my soul that will find yours again in the next life.

He shut off the connection between them before she could reply.

Then Ruhn faced the white-winged angel, lifting his hands. “All yours, Hammer.”





94


Unarmed, Ruhn kept his gaze on the Malleus. “What’s it gonna be, Pollux?”

Lidia’s sons were watching him closely. Lidia said nothing. But the Hammer looked toward her. “I don’t see why I can’t have everything I want,” the angel said. Then grinned at Ruhn. “Wait your turn, princeling.”

It happened so fast.

Pollux pivoted to the boys. Fixed his stare on Brann. Pure, brute power flared around the angel.

Lidia screamed as Pollux unleashed a lethal spear of his power toward Brann.

Ruhn couldn’t turn away. Didn’t want to watch, and yet he knew he had to witness this crime, this unforgivable atrocity—

But Lidia ran, swift as the wind. Swifter than a bullet.

Ruhn didn’t understand what he saw next: How Lidia reached Brann in time. How she threw herself over her son, knocking him to the ground as she burst into white-hot flames.

They erupted from her like a brimstone missile, blasting Pollux off his feet. Not some freak accident or bomb, but fire magic, pouring out of Lidia. Searing from her.

“Brann,” she was panting down at her son, the boy untouched by the flame, scanning his stunned face, tugging the gag from his mouth. “Brannon.” She stifled a sob around the boy’s full name, but then Actaeon was there, hauling his brother away as best he could with the bonds still restraining them.