House of Flame and Shadow, page 34
Hunt rubbed his jaw. “I hope so. We need her.”
“For what?”
Hunt gave his old enemy—now friend, he supposed—a slash of a smile. “To make these fuckers pay for what they’ve done.”
* * *
Tharion told himself to snap out of it. To focus on the fact that, against all odds, they’d succeeded in rescuing their friends from the Asteri dungeons—had even gone a step beyond and saved Lidia Cervos from certain death.
It didn’t matter, though. Holstrom had stayed behind. Holstrom, whose life Tharion had wrecked.
And not only Holstrom’s life, but the future of the wolves, too. That Fendyr heir was dead because of him. Technically because of Holstrom, but … none of it would have happened if it weren’t for Tharion’s own choices.
He hadn’t let anyone catch wind of the past day he’d spent since getting on this ship puking up his guts. Partially from the withdrawal to the Viper Queen’s venom, but also from sheer disgust at all he’d done, what he’d become.
Ariadne had been sold off, the gods knew where. To whom. And fine, she hadn’t been technically sold, because the Viper Queen hadn’t owned her, but … she’d left to avoid having to kill Holstrom. Or so the Viper Queen had let her believe, getting the advantageous trade while planning all along to put Sigrid in the ring against Ithan.
If there was a level below rock bottom, Tharion had found it.
He forced himself to stop grinding his teeth and concentrate on Sendes. She stood in the center of the bridge, taking a report from one of her soldiers.
None of the other technicians or officers on the bridge spoke to him. None even looked his way.
At least no one here called him a traitor. But they all knew he’d defected from the River Queen. And given how little she was liked on this ship, he knew it had more to do with the fact that he’d defected from the mer. From them.
He wanted to shout to this whole bridge that if he could, he’d defect from himself.
Sendes turned at last when she’d dismissed her soldier. “Sorry about that.”
Tharion waved her off. Considering how much they owed Sendes and this ship, she never needed to apologize to him for anything. “I feel like this is all I say these days, but I wanted to ask for a favor.”
She smiled faintly. “Go ahead.”
He braced himself. “If I wanted to get in touch with the Ocean Queen, arrange a meeting between her, me, and Hunt Athalar … could you facilitate it?”
Sendes’s throat bobbed. Not a good sign.
“If it’ll put you in a weird position,” Tharion amended, “don’t worry about it. But I told Athalar I’d ask you, and—”
“You’ll get your wish,” she said ruefully. “The Ocean Queen is coming here tomorrow.”
Tharion swallowed his surprise. “Okay,” he said carefully. “You sound … worried?”
Sendes tugged at the neck of her collar. “She wants to see you. All of you.”
His brows rose. “Then problem solved.”
“I got the sense from her call that she isn’t … entirely pleased you’re here.” Sendes grimaced. “Something to do with the Viper Queen and the River Queen threatening war for harboring you?”
Well, shit.
38
Ithan lunged for the book that had somehow skittered for the office doorway, landing atop it with a thud that echoed through his bones.
To his dismay, the book squirmed under him, trying to wriggle for the door and the world beyond.
“Keep it down over there,” Jesiba growled above her typing.
Ithan grunted, pressing all his considerable weight onto the errant book—
“Enough,” Jesiba snapped, and the book stilled at the command in her voice.
Yet Ithan didn’t move until he was certain the book had fully obeyed its mistress. Uncurling to peer down at the blue leather-bound book, he tensed, then reached a hand for it.
But the book just lay there. Dormant. Like any other book—
It snapped for his fingers, and Ithan lunged again.
“Lehabah was much more effective—and ate far less. Where does all that food go, wolf?”
Ithan couldn’t answer as he again wrestled the book into submission, wrapping the tome in his arms. Clutching it to his chest, he eased to his feet, then stomped toward the shelf where it was supposed to have stayed while he unpacked yet another crate—
“I said enough,” Jesiba snapped again, and the book froze in Ithan’s arms. He shoved it back on the shelf before it could get away. Then gave it another shove as a fuck you.
The book shoved back, as if it’d leap off the shelf and go at him for round three, but a golden ripple of light shimmered down its spine—a barrier falling back into place. Wards to seal the magical books in. The book thudded against it—and could go no further.
Jesiba said from the desk, “I thought I’d outsmarted it with the previous ward, but let’s see it try to get through that one.”
As if in answer, the book again rattled on the shelf. Ithan flipped it off, then faced the sorceress.
He’d been working nonstop for the past day, unpacking crates, inspecting the goods, cataloging the contents, rewrapping the artifacts inside, attaching new shipping labels … Busywork, but it kept him occupied.
Kept him from thinking about the blood on his hands. The body he could only hope was indeed on ice somewhere in this subterranean warren.
He didn’t leave Roga’s office. She had food delivered from the House’s private kitchens—and if he needed to rest, she ordered him to curl up on the carpet like the dog he was.
He did, ignoring the insult, and slept deeply enough that she’d had to prod him with a foot to wake him.
He might have objected had she not been the bearer of good news: Hunt Athalar, Ruhn Danaan, and Baxian Argos had escaped from the Asteri’s dungeons during a rescue operation that had incinerated the entirety of the Spine.
The Hind had done it. Tharion and Flynn and Dec had done it. Somehow, they’d pulled it off. Relief had tightened his throat to the point of pain, even as shame for not helping them twisted his gut.
Since then, Ithan and Jesiba had spoken little. Roga had mostly been on calls with clients or off at House meetings she didn’t tell him about, but now … Ithan peered at the shelf, at the magic book again shuddering against the wards holding it in place.
“During the Summit,” Ithan said, ignoring the belligerent volume, “Micah said your books were from the Library of Parthos.” Amelie had gossiped about it afterward. “That they’re all that’s left of it.”
“Mmm,” Jesiba murmured, continuing to clack away at her keyboard.
Ithan threw himself into the chair before her desk. “I thought Parthos was a myth.”
“The books say otherwise, don’t they?”
“What’s the truth, then?”
“Not one that’s easy to swallow for Vanir.” But she stopped typing. Her eyes lifted above the computer screen to find his.
“Amelie Ravenscroft claimed that Micah said the library held two thousand years of human knowledge before the Asteri.”
“And?” Her face revealed nothing.
He pointed to the pissed-off book. “So the humans had magic?”
She sighed through her nose. “No. The magic books here … they were supposed to be guardians of the library itself. At least, that’s what I enchanted them to do, centuries ago. To attack those who tried to steal the books, to defend them.” One such book, Ithan recalled Bryce telling him, had helped save her when she fought Micah. “But the volumes took on lives and desires of their own. They became … aware.” She glared at the misbehaving book. “And by the time I tried to unweave the spells of life on them, their existence had become too permanent to undo. So I needed monitors such as Lehabah to guard the guardians. To make sure they didn’t escape and become more of a nuisance.”
“Why not sell them?”
She gave him a withering look. “Because my spells are written in there. I’m not letting that knowledge loose in the world.” Roga had been a witch before she’d defected to the House of Flame and Shadow and called herself a sorceress instead. He could only imagine what she’d seen in her long, long life.
“So what do they say? The Parthos books?”
The clacking keys resumed. “Nothing. And everything.”
Ithan snorted. “Cryptic, as usual.”
Her typing stopped again. “They’d bore most people. Some are books on complex mathematics, entire volumes on imaginary numbers. Some are philosophical treatises. Some are plays—tragedies, comedies—and some are poetry.”
“All from human life before the Asteri?”
“A great civilization lived on Midgard long before the Asteri conquered it.” He could have sworn she sounded sad. “One that prized knowledge in all its forms. So much so that a hundred thousand humans marched at Parthos to save these books from the Asteri and Vanir who came to burn them.” She shook her head, face distant. “A world where people loved and valued books and learning so much that they were willing to die for them. Can you imagine what such a civilization was like? A hundred thousand men and women marched to defend a library—it sounds like a bad joke these days.” Her eyes blazed. “But they fought, and they died. All to buy the library priestesses enough time to smuggle the books out on ships. The Vanir armies intercepted most of them, and the priestesses were burned, their precious books used as kindling. But one ship …” Her lips curved upward. “The Griffin. It slipped through the Vanir nets. Sailed across the Haldren and found safe harbor in Valbara.”
Ithan slowly shook his head. “How do you know all this, when no one else does?”
“The mer know some of it,” she hedged. “The mer aided the Griffin across the sea, at the behest of the Ocean Queen.”
“Why?”
“That’s the mer’s story to tell.”
“But why do you know this? How do you have this collection?”
“I’ll refrain from making the comparison to a dog with a bone.” Jesiba closed her laptop with a soft click. Interlaced her fingers and set them upon the computer. “Quinlan knew when to keep her mouth shut, you know. She never asked why I have these books, why I have the Archesian amulets that the Parthos priestesses wore.”
Ithan’s mouth dried out. He whispered, “What—who are you?”
Jesiba burst out laughing, and several of the books on the shelf shuddered. Ithan was barely breathing as Jesiba snapped her fingers.
Her short hair flowed out—down into long, curling tresses that softened her face. Her makeup washed away, revealing features that somehow seemed younger … more innocent.
It was Jesiba, yet it wasn’t. It was Jesiba, as if she’d been trapped in the bloom of youth. Of innocence. But her voice was as jaded as he’d always heard it as she said, “Lest you think me lying … This is the state I will always revert to—can revert to, at a mere wish.”
“So you’re … able to do magical makeovers?”
She didn’t smile. “No. I was cursed by a demon. By a prince who intercepted my ship and the books on it.”
Ithan’s heart thundered.
“We had almost reached the Haldren Sea when Apollion found the Griffin.” Her voice was flat. “He’d heard about the doomed stand at Parthos, and the ships, and the priestesses burned with their books. He was curious about what might be so valuable to the humans that we were willing to die for it. He didn’t understand when I told him it was no power beyond knowledge—no weapon beyond learning.” Her smile turned bitter. “He refused to believe me. And cursed me for my impudence in denying him the truth.”
Ithan swallowed hard. “What kind of a curse?”
She gestured to her longer hair, her softer face. “To live, unchanging, until I showed him the true power of the books,” she said simply. “He still believes they’re a weapon, and that I’ll one day grow tired enough of living that I’ll hand them over and reveal all their supposed secret weapons.”
“But … I thought you were a witch.”
She shrugged. “I was, for a time. How do you categorize a human woman who stops aging? Who always reverts to the same age, the same physical condition as she was when she was cursed? I’d cherished my years with my fellow priestesses at Parthos. When the witch-dynasties rose, I thought I might find similar companionship with them. A home.”
“You … you were a priestess at Parthos?”
She nodded. “Priestess, witch … and now sorceress.”
“But if you were human, where’d your magic come from?” She’d said Apollion granted her long life, not power.
Her gray eyes darkened like the stormy sea she’d sailed across long ago. “When Apollion found my ship, he was ripe with power. He’d just consumed Sirius. I don’t think he intended it, but when his magic … touched me, something transferred over.”
From the way she said touched, Ithan knew exactly how she viewed what he’d done to her.
“It took me a while to realize I had powers beyond the stasis of eternal youth,” she said blandly. “And fortunately, I’ve had fifteen thousand years to master them. To let them become part of me, take on a life of their own, as the books did.”
Horror sluiced through him. “Do you want to … start aging again?”
It was a dangerously personal question, but to his surprise, she answered. “Not yet,” Jesiba said a shade quietly. “Not until it’s time.”
“For what?” he dared ask.
She looked over a shoulder at the small library, at the feisty book that had at last simmered down, as if sulking. “For a world to emerge where these books will be truly safe at last.”
39
Bryce found the Autumn King in his study, his red hair aglow in the morning light. Contemplating the Starsword and Truth-Teller on his desk.
What she’d said the other night must have struck a nerve, then. Good.
“So close,” she purred as she shut the door and approached the desk, “but so far. So unworthy.”
Flames danced in his eyes. “What is it you want, girl?”
She swept around the desk to stand beside his chair, peering at the weapons from his angle. He frowned, as if her mere proximity was distasteful. “Did my mom ever tell you what happened that night she was trying to get me to safety? When your goons caught up to her and Randall?”
“I’d consider your words carefully,” he snarled.
Bryce smiled. “Randall hadn’t picked up a gun in years. Not since he’d gotten home from the front and vowed he’d never use one again. He was on the verge of swearing his vows to Solas when he got the request from the High Priest to go help a single mom and her three-year-old daughter get away from you. And that night your loser guards caught up with us … that was the first time Randall picked up a gun again. He put a bullet right through your chief security officer’s head. Randall hated every single fucking second of it. But he did it. Because in that moment, even after only three days on the run, he knew that he was already in love with my mom. And that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.”
The Autumn King’s nose crinkled with annoyance. “Is there a point to this story?”
“My point,” she said, leaning closer to her father, “is that I didn’t just learn about love from my mom. I learned about it from my dad, too. My true dad. My weak human dad who you’re so jealous of that you can’t stand it. He taught me to fight like Hel for the people I love.”
“I grow bored of this.” The Autumn King made to pull away, but Bryce grabbed his arm.
“Way ahead of you there. I grew bored of you the instant you opened your mouth.”
Stone clicked.
The Autumn King reeled back, but too late. The gorsian shackle had already clamped on his wrist.
“You little bitch,” he hissed, and Bryce let the shackle from her other wrist tumble to the ground. “You have no idea who you’re fucking with—”
“I do. A useless, pathetic loser.”
He lunged to his feet, but she’d already snatched up both Truth-Teller and the Starsword. He halted as she unsheathed the blades and pointed both at him.
Bryce said smoothly, the knife and sword steady in her hands, “Here’s the bargain: you don’t put up a fight, and I don’t impale you with these and experiment on how to open a portal to nowhere in your gut.”
Flame burned and then died out in his eyes as the shackle held him firm.
She smiled, inclining her head. “Thanks for that intel about the blades, by the way. I thought you might know something of use. It’s really too bad that you sent all the servants away, isn’t it? No one to hear you scream.”
His face whitened with rage. “You arrived here intentionally.”
“Guilty as charged,” she said, shaking her hair over a shoulder with a toss of her head. “I knew you’d been doing all this research for centuries. You’re the one person who’s obsessed with the Starsword and its secrets, sad Chosen One reject that you are. So I came here for answers. To learn what, exactly, a weapon like this could do. How to get rid of our little intergalactic friends.” She grinned. “And you assumed I landed here because …?”
He glowered.
“Oh right,” she said. “Because I’m your stupid, bumbling daughter. I landed here by accident—is that it?” She laughed, unable to help herself. “You probably even convinced yourself it was Luna sending you some sort of gift. That you were given the gods’ favor and this was destined by Urd.”
His silence was confirmation enough.
She made an exaggerated pout. “Tough luck. And really tough luck about the shackle. Though I guess it’s fitting that I used the key Ruhn kept in his room. He told me about it once, you know. That’s what he had to use when you’d bind him with these and burn him. You put these delightful things on him so he couldn’t fight back. And it happened often enough that he invested in a disarming key that he left in his desk so he could free himself when you sent him back to his room to suffer.”
Again, the Autumn King said nothing. The bastard wouldn’t deny it.
Bryce flashed her teeth, searing white rage creeping over her vision. But her voice was cold as ice as she said, “To be honest, I’d really like to kill you right now. For my mom, but also for Ruhn. And for me, too, I guess.” She nodded to the doorway. “But we do have a bargain, don’t we? And I’ve got a hot date today.”
