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

He flexed his fingers, wincing, then slowly sat up and rolled his neck. He was on his third rotation when he looked at the bed and noticed Lidia staring at him.

He went wholly still.

Her golden eyes were hazy with pain and exhaustion, but they were open, and she was … she was …

Ruhn blinked, making sure he wasn’t dreaming.

Lidia rasped, “Am I dead or alive?”

His chest caved in. “Alive,” he whispered, hands beginning to shake.

Lidia’s lips curled faintly, like it took all her effort to do so. The weight of it hit him—of what she was and who she was and what she had done.

The Hind lay before him—the fucking Hind. How could he feel such relief about someone he hated so much? How could he hate someone whose life mattered more to him than his own?

Her glazed eyes shifted from his. Glanced around the windowless room, taking in the machines and her IV. Her nostrils flared, scenting the room beneath the antiseptics and various potions. Something sharpened in her stare. Something like recognition.

Then Lidia asked very quietly, “Where are we?”

The question surprised him. She’d planned this escape. Had her injury affected her mind? Gods, he hadn’t even thought about the potential damage from going without oxygen for so long. Ruhn said softly, “On the Depth Charger—”

She moved.

Tubing and monitors came flying off her, ripped from her arm so fast blood sprayed. Machines blared, and Ruhn couldn’t act quickly enough to stop her as she leapt out of the bed, feet slipping on the floor as she hurtled to the door.

The glass hissed open, revealing Flynn with two cups of coffee in hand. He dodged to the side with a “What the fuck!”

Lidia barreled out, hardly able to stand, and it was all Ruhn could do to race after her.

The few medwitches in the hall at this hour let out surprised cries at the deer shifter stumbling past in her pale blue medical gown, careening into the walls with the grace of a newborn colt. Her legs had been rebuilt—she’d never used these ones before.

“What the Hel,” Flynn said, a step behind Ruhn, smelling of the coffee that had spilled on him when he’d dived out of Lidia’s way.

Lidia hit the stairwell, and just before the door shut behind her, Ruhn saw her trip, falling to her knees on the steps, then surge up again.

“Lidia,” he panted, each step singeing his lungs. Fuck his still-healing body—

He slammed into the stairwell door, but she was already halfway up, long legs pale and thin against the gray tiles.

She charged up and up, around and around, either unaware or uncaring that Ruhn ran close behind. She threw open an unmarked door, then bolted down the hall. People in civilian clothes pressed back against the walls at the sight of her—then him. The walls here were covered with bright art and flyers.

Sharp inhales came from Lidia. She was sobbing, craning her neck to see through the windows of the rooms she passed. Ruhn read the words on each wooden door: Year Three. Year Seven. Year Five.

She skidded to a halt, gripping a doorjamb. Ruhn reached her side as she shoved her face up to the glass.

Year Nine.

A group of teenagers—most of them mer, with striped skin and various coloring—sat in rows of desks in the classroom. Lidia pressed a hand against the door. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

And then a boy, golden-haired and blue-eyed, looked away from his teacher and toward the window. The kid wasn’t mer.

The ground slid out from under Ruhn. The boy had Lidia’s face. Her coloring.

Another boy to his left, also not mer, had dark hair and golden eyes. Lidia’s eyes.

Behind them, Flynn grunted with surprise. “You’ve got brothers on this ship?”

“They’re not my brothers,” Lidia whispered. Her fingers curled on the glass. “They’re my sons.”





40


Hunt leaned against the wall of the massive tactical room on the Depth Charger, arms crossed. Tharion and Baxian flanked him, the former feigning nonchalance, the latter the portrait of menace.

Only a conference table occupied the room, and though they’d been told to take a seat upon walking in five minutes ago, they all remained standing.

Hunt ran through all the things he needed to say. The Ocean Queen had told Sendes that she wanted Tharion presented to her, but Hunt knew he wouldn’t get a better opportunity to ask her his questions. Assuming Tharion wasn’t turned into a bloody pulp before Hunt could start talking. That would throw a wrench in his plans.

If Tharion was nervous, the mer didn’t show it. He just removed invisible flecks of lint from his aquatic suit and glanced at the digital clock on the far wall every now and then. But Hunt had noted his dead-eyed stare. A male prepared to face his end. Who might think he deserved it.

Power shuddered through the ship, like an undersea earthquake. As menacing and deadly as a tsunami. Ancient and cold as the bottom of an oceanic trench.

“She’s here,” Tharion murmured.

Baxian’s dark wings tucked in tighter, and he glanced sidelong at Hunt. “You ever meet the Ocean Queen?”

“Nope,” Hunt said, folding in his own wings. He wished he had a weapon—any weapon. Even with his lightning and brute strength, there was something comforting in the weight of a gun or sword at his side. Though neither would be helpful against the being who’d arrived on the ship. “Never even seen her. You?”

Baxian ran a hand over his tightly curled black hair. “No. Ketos?”

“No,” was the mer’s only reply, his eyes again fixed on the clock.

It was no surprise that even Tharion hadn’t met the Ocean Queen. She was more of an enigma than the River Queen, rumored to have been born of Ogenas herself. The daughter of a goddess, who could likely bring the force of this entire ocean crashing down upon this ship and—

The door clicked open. Sendes appeared on the threshold and announced, “Her Depthless Majesty, the Ocean Queen.” The commander stepped aside, bowing at the waist as a tiny female entered behind her.

Hunt blinked. Even Tharion seemed to be restraining his shock, his breath shallow.

Her luscious body measured barely more than four feet. Her skin was as pale as the belly of a fish; her angular eyes as dark as a shark’s. Her heart-shaped face was neither pretty nor plain, and the rosebud-shaped lips were the reddish pink of a snapper. She walked with a strange sort of lightness—like she was unused to being on solid ground—and the gown of kelp and sea fans she wore trailed behind her, the shells and coral in the train tinkling as she moved.

Pushing off the wall, the three of them followed Sendes’s lead and bowed.

Hunt watched the Ocean Queen as he did so, though, and noted the slow sweep of her eyes over them. She only moved her eyes—nothing else. An apex predator assessing her prey.

When she’d decided they had suitably worshipped her, she stalked to the head of the table. Each step left behind a wet footprint on the tiles, though she appeared entirely dry. Barnacles adorned some strands of her hair like beads.

“Sit,” she ordered, voice deep and rolling and utterly chilling.

Wings rustled and chairs groaned as they obeyed. Hunt could only wonder if he’d pissed off Urd today as he realized he had claimed the chair nearest to the head of the table—to the monarch standing there. Baxian sat on his other side, and Tharion, the worm, had wriggled his way to the seat farthest away—within leaping distance of the door.

Adjusting his wings around the chair back, Hunt caught Baxian’s eye. The Helhound gave him a look that pretty much said: Well, I’m shitting my pants.

Hunt glanced pointedly at his own chair, as if to say, You’re not the one sitting closest to her.

The queen surveyed them with ageless, pitiless eyes.

Hunt couldn’t help his swallow. He’d never felt so small, so insignificant. Even in front of the Asteri, he’d remembered that he was a warrior, and a damned good one, and might at least make a last stand against them. But before this female … He saw it in her eyes, sensed it in his blood: one thought from her, and she’d wipe him from existence with a tidal wave of power.