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

“Flynn?” Lidia asked.

“Flynn’s behind them. Mordoc and company are crossing onto your road. They’ll be on your tail within ten minutes at your current speed. So go faster.”

“I’m already driving at top speed.”

“Then you’ll have to find a way to ditch them.”

Cold washed through Ruhn that had nothing to do with his injuries or bleeding arm. He dared himself to look at Lidia—really look at her.

She merely stared at the road ahead. The wind ripped strands of her golden hair free from the chignon high on her head. Calculation swirled in her eyes.

Baxian said over the wind, “They’ll have every guard between here and the coast watching the road.”

And they’d just lost their machine gun. Lidia reached for the holster at her thigh and handed her sidearm back to Athalar.

“That’s all we have?” Athalar demanded, checking the bullets. Ruhn didn’t need to look to know there weren’t enough in the gun to get them through this.

“If I’d packed more, someone would have been suspicious,” Lidia said coolly.

Declan’s voice crackled over the radio. “What’s the plan, Daybright?”

Ruhn watched her beautiful, perfect face. Watched as determination set her features. “Have the ship at the planned coordinates,” she told Declan. “Ready the hatch for an aerial landing.”





34


The Autumn King stayed holed up in his study for the rest of the day, so Bryce took the opportunity to go poking about. First in the kitchen, which was utilitarian enough that it was clearly built for a team of chefs. The walk-in fridge was, thankfully, stocked with freshly cooked food. She helped herself to some poached trout and herbed rice for lunch, along with a glass of the fanciest champagne she could find—swiped from a cold case in the massive wine cellar—and tried all the door handles to the outside once before settling for a walk through the villa halls.

She wandered past white columns and soaring atriums, expanses of floor-to-ceiling windows, and artfully concealed panels for tech. She’d opened a few of the latter as she walked, hoping for something to connect her to the outside world, but so far they had revealed only controls for the radiant flooring, the automatic blinds, and the air conditioner.

Bryce swigged directly from the bottle as she meandered through the basement. A gym, steam room, massage room, and a sauna occupied one wing. The other wing held an indoor lap pool, a screening room, and what seemed to be the Autumn King’s security office. All the computers and cameras were dark and locked. No amount of trying to turn them on worked.

He’d thought of everything.

Cursing him to darkest Hel, she wandered through the ground level: a formal living room, the dining room, his study—doors shut in a quiet message to keep the fuck out—the kitchen again, a den, and a game room complete with a pool table and shuffleboard table.

None of the TVs worked. A check revealed that their power cords were missing. No interweb routers to be found, either.

She tried not to picture her mom here, young and innocent and trusting.

On the next level up, doors had been left open to reveal various guest rooms, all as beautiful and bland as her own. One wing was locked—surely her father’s private suite.

Yet the double doors at the end of the other wing had been left unlocked. She opened them to a familiar scent that had her heart clenching.

Ruhn.

Posters of rock bands still hung on the walls. The massive four-poster bed with its black silk sheets was really the only sign of princely wealth. The rest screamed rebellious youth: ticket stubs taped by the mirror, a record of all the concerts he’d ever been to. A closet full of black shirts and jeans and boots, mixed with a jumble of discarded knives and swords.

It was a time capsule, frozen right before Ruhn returned from Avallen after enduring his Ordeal and emerging victorious with the Starsword. Had he even come back here, or had he immediately found a new place to live, knowing the sword gave him some degree of leverage over his father?

Or maybe it hadn’t gone down like that at all. Maybe the Autumn King had kicked him out, jealous and bitter over the Starsword. Or maybe Ruhn had just up and left one day.

She’d never asked Ruhn about it. About so many things.

She opened the drawers of the desk by the window to discover a lighter, various drug paraphernalia, chewed-up cheap pens, and …

Her chest tightened as she pulled out the tub of silver nitrate balm. Grade A medwitch stuff—to treat burns. Her fingers clenched around the plastic, so hard it groaned. She set the tub carefully back into the drawer and sank onto Ruhn’s bed. The gorsian shackles at her wrists shone faintly in the dim light.

Ruhn had gotten out of this festering place, and she was glad of it. She offered up a silent prayer to Cthona that she’d get to tell her brother that.

For right now, though, she was alone in this. And it was only a matter of time until the Autumn King’s patience wore thin.



* * *



It was nothing short of miraculous, what the Hind had done. Declan, Flynn, and Ophion had helped, but Hunt knew that the female driving the car had orchestrated it all.

She’d somehow found Irithys, Queen of the Fire Sprites … and convinced her to be the spark to ignite this enormous, unheard-of attack. For the Fallen, for the sprites who had become Lowers for standing with them—the smallest among the Vanir, the outcasts—this blow had been for them. Struck by the person who would hold the most meaning to those looking for a sign.

Irithys was not only free in the world. She was on the attack.

Hunt shook his head in wonder and glanced to Ruhn, slumped against the passenger-side door.

The strike had been for the rebellion, Hunt knew, but the escape—the escape had been entirely for Ruhn.

“What do you mean, aerial landing?” Baxian demanded, panting heavily.

Lidia veered the car off the paved road, down a dirt lane that wended between the dry hills, and toward the mountains near the shore. The car bumped and shook on the dusty ground, and each of Hunt’s injuries screamed. Ruhn moaned.

Lidia didn’t answer, and pushed the car to its limit, winding up and around the hills, through the patchy shade of the olive trees flanking the road, the wind in their faces hot and dry.

Without warning, Lidia slammed on the brakes, the car skidding on the loose gravel. Hunt crashed into the back of the driver’s seat, grimacing at the impact.

“Shit,” Lidia hissed amid the swirling dust. “Shit.”

The dust cleared enough that Hunt could finally see what had triggered her sudden stop. A few feet ahead, the road had ended. A thick grove of olive trees blocked the way, too dense to even try to drive through.

“Lidia,” Baxian demanded, and she twisted in her seat, looking at them.

“I’d hoped this road would take us closer to the water,” she said, out of breath for the first time since Hunt had known her. She peered over a shoulder at Hunt, then at Baxian. “You’ll have to get into the skies from here.”

“What?” Ruhn demanded, trying to push himself up from where he’d been thrown against the passenger door.

But Lidia leapt out of the car without opening her own door. Her eyes were wild as she asked Hunt and Baxian, flinging open the back door, “Do you think you can fly?”

Hunt managed to crawl out of the back seat and stand, head spinning with pain and exhaustion. With a hand braced on the side of the car, he spread his newly formed wings.

Pain lanced down his back, sharp and deep. Gritting his teeth, Hunt made them move. Made them flap—once, twice. Their beats stirred the dirt and dust into clouds that gathered at their feet. “Yeah,” he said roughly, fighting through the agony. “I think so.”