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

Oh no. No, no, no.

Bryce didn’t dare reach for the tattoo of the Horn, to call attention to the letters that formed the words Through love, all is possible. She could feel them reacting to whatever had been in that spell that set her glowing and could only pray it wasn’t visible.

Her prayers were in vain.

Amren turned to Rhysand and said in that new, strange language—their language: “The glowing letters inked on her back … they’re the same as those in the Book of Breathings.”

They must have seen the words through her T-shirt when she’d been on the floor. With every breath, the tingling lessened, like the glow was fading. But the damage was already done.

They once again assessed her. Three apex killers, contemplating a threat.

Then Azriel said in a soft, lethal voice, “Explain or you die.”





2


Tharion’s blood dripped into the porcelain sink of the hushed, humid bathroom, the roar of the crowd a distant rumble through the cracked green tiles. He breathed in through his nose. Out through his mouth. Pain rippled along his aching ribs.

Stay upright.

His hands clenched the chipped edges of the sink. He inhaled again, focusing on the words, willing his knees not to buckle. Keep standing, damn you. He’d taken a beating tonight.

The minotaur he’d faced in the Viper Queen’s ring had been twice his weight and at least four feet taller than him. He had a hole in his shoulder leaking blood down the sink drain thanks to the horns he hadn’t been fast enough to avoid. And several broken ribs thanks to blows from fists the size of his head.

Tharion loosed another breath, wincing, and reached for the small medkit on the lip of the sink. His fingers shook, fumbling with the vial of potion that would blunt the edge of the pain and accelerate the healing his Vanir body was already doing.

He chucked the cork into the trash can beside the sink, atop the wads of bloodied cotton bandages and wipes he’d used to clean his face. It had somehow been more important than addressing the pain—the hole in his shoulder—that he should be able to see his face, the male beneath.

The reflection wasn’t kind. Purple smudges beneath his eyes matched the bruises along his jaw, the cuts on his lip, his swollen nose. All things that would fade and heal swiftly enough, but the hollowness in his eyes … It was his face, and yet a stranger’s.

Tharion didn’t meet his own gaze in the mirror as he tipped back the vial and chugged it. Silky, tasteless liquid coated his mouth, his throat. He’d once done shots with the same abandon. In the span of a few weeks, everything had gone to shit. His whole fucking life had gone to shit.

He’d given up everything he was and had been and ever would be.

He’d chosen this, being chained to the Viper Queen. He’d been desperate, but the burden of his decision weighed on him. He hadn’t been allowed to leave the warren of warehouses in the two days since arriving—hadn’t really wanted to, anyway. Even the need to return to the water was taken care of for him: a special tub had been prepared below this level with water pumped in directly from the Istros.

So he hadn’t been in the river, or felt the wind and the sun, or heard the chatter and rhythmic beats of normal life in days. Hadn’t so much as found an exterior window.

The door groaned open, and a familiar female scent announced the identity of the new arrival. As if at this hour, in this bathroom, it could be anyone else.

The Viper Queen had a crew of fighters. But the two of them … she treated them like prized racehorses. They fought during the prime-time slots. This bathroom was for their private use, along with the suite upstairs.

The Viper Queen owned them. And she wanted everyone to know it.

“I warmed them up for you,” Tharion rasped over a shoulder at Ariadne. The dark-haired dragon, clad in a black bodysuit that accentuated her luscious curves, turned toward him.

Tharion and Ariadne were required to look sexy and stylish, even as the Viper Queen bade them to bloody themselves for the crowd’s amusement.

Ariadne halted at a sink a few feet away, surveying the angles of her face in the mirror as she washed her hands.

“Still as pretty as ever,” Tharion managed to tease.

That earned him a sidelong assessment. “You look like shit.”

“Nice to see you, too,” he drawled, the healing potion tingling through him.

Her nostrils flared delicately. It wasn’t wise to taunt a dragon. But he’d been on a hot streak of making stupid decisions lately, so why stop now?

“You have a hole in your shoulder,” she said without taking her gaze from his.

Tharion peered at the ghastly wound, even as his skin knitted closed, the sensation like spiders crawling over the area. “Builds character.”

Ariadne snorted, returning to her reflection. “You know, you throw around your attraction to females quite a bit. I’m starting to think it’s a shield.”

He stiffened. “Against what?”

“Don’t know, don’t really care.”

“Ouch.”

Ariadne continued examining herself in the mirror. Was she hunting for herself—the person she’d been before coming here—as well? Or maybe the person she’d been before the Astronomer had trapped her inside a ring and worn her on his finger for decades?

Tharion had done what the Viper Queen had asked regarding Ari: he’d woven a web of lies to his Aux contacts about the dragon being commandeered for security purposes. So the Viper Queen didn’t technically own Ari as a slave—Ari remained a slave owned by someone else. She just … lived here now.

“Your adoring public awaits,” Tharion said, grabbing another cotton wipe and holding it under the running water before beginning to clean the blood from his bare chest. He could have jumped in one of the showers to his left, but it would have stung like Hel on his still-mending wounds. He twisted, straining for the particularly nasty slice along his left shoulder blade. It remained out of reach, even for his long fingers.

“Here,” Ariadne said, taking the wipe from his hand.

“Thanks, Ar—Ariadne.” He’d almost called her Ari, but it didn’t seem wise to antagonize her when she’d offered to help him.

Tharion braced his hands on the sink. Ariadne dabbed along the wound, wiping up blood, and he clenched the porcelain hard enough for it to groan beneath his fingers. He gritted his teeth against the stinging, and into the silence, the dragon said, “You can call me Ari.”

“I thought you hated that nickname.”

“Everyone seems inclined to use it, so it might as well be my choice for you to do so.”

“Was that your thinking when you abandoned my friends right before a deathstalker attacked them?” He couldn’t keep the bite from his voice, antagonizing her be damned. “Everyone expected the worst of you, so why not just be the worst?”

She snorted. “Your friends … you mean the witch and the redhead?”

“Yes. Real honorable of you to ditch them.”

“They seemed capable of looking after themselves.”

“They are. But you bailed all the same.”

“If you’re so invested in their safety, perhaps you should have been there.” Ari tossed the wipe in the trash and grabbed another one. “Who taught you to fight, anyway?”

He let the argument drop—it’d get them nowhere. He couldn’t even have said why he’d felt inclined to bring it up now, of all times. “Here I was, thinking you didn’t care to know anything about me.”

“Call it curiosity. You don’t seem … serious enough to be the River Queen’s Captain of Intelligence.”

“Such a flatterer.”

But embers sparked in her eyes, so Tharion shrugged. “I learned how to fight the usual way: I enrolled in the Blue Court Military Academy after school, and have spent the years since honing those skills. Nothing cool. You?”

“Survival.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but the dragon turned on a booted heel. “Ari—” he called before she could reach the door. “We didn’t, you know.”

She turned, eyebrows rising. “Didn’t what?”