The Viper Queen burst out laughing. And Tharion could have sworn that something like pain shown in McCarthy’s bright blue eyes—just a glimmer.
“You leave him alone,” Sathia said again, and vines curled at her fingers.
“Him and Colin.”
“That’s not an option I’m interested in, girl,” the Viper Queen said, and inclined her head to one side. The assassins, Colin included, aimed their guns. Did he imagine it, or was McCarthy’s weapon trembling slightly?
Tharion sheathed his knife and held up his hands, again stepping in front of Sathia. “Your business is with me.”
He’d accomplished what he needed to with the River Queen. And if Sathia became a widow … she could remarry, by Fae law. Maybe even find some way to save that poor bastard McCarthy and marry him. So Tharion said, “Let her walk out of here before you put a bullet in my head.”
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you that quickly,” the Viper Queen said. “Not a chance, Ketos.”
She advanced a step, her assassins flowing with her.
“You take one more step toward my friend,” said a familiar female voice, “and you die.”
Tharion’s knees wobbled as he glanced over a shoulder—and found Hypaxia Enador striding in from the quay, Ithan Holstrom bristling with menace at her side.
84
“I don’t take orders from former witch-queens,” the Viper Queen said. Her guards didn’t back down an inch. But Colin McCarthy’s gun was definitely trembling, like he was fighting the order with everything he had.
“What about from the Head of the House of Flame and Shadow?”
Hypaxia countered. Tharion’s knees gave out abruptly at the greenish light
that flared in her eyes.
Sathia caught him around the waist, grunting as she held him up.
Tharion whispered, “Pax?”
But his friend—this female who had been his friend from the moment they’d met each other at the Summit, who always seemed to see the real male beneath his veneer of charm—only glowered at the Viper Queen.
“You touch him, or his friend, and you bring down the wrath of Flame and Shadow upon you.”
Holstrom stepped up to her side, brimming with power—with magic, cold and foreign—and added, “And the wrath of all Valbaran Wolves.”
There was only one person who could claim that.
The male before him was Prime. There was no doubt about it. But that strange power rippling from him … what the Hel was that?
The Viper Queen stared long and hard at Ithan, then at Hypaxia.
“Power shift,” she murmured, pulling a cigarette from her jumpsuit pocket and putting it in her mouth. “Interesting.” The cigarette bobbed with the word, and she lit it, taking a long drag. She fixed her snake’s eyes on Tharion. “Your bounty still stands.”
“Drop the bounty,” Ithan ordered, pure Alpha echoing in his voice.
“I won’t forgive or forget what Ketos did to me and mine. But he’ll walk out of here today—I’ll allow that much.”
Hypaxia gave her a look dripping with disdain. “You will walk out of here today. We will allow that much.”
The Viper Queen took another long drag of her cigarette and blew the air toward Hypaxia. “Give a witch a scrap of true power and it goes right to her pretty little head.”
“Fuck you,” Ithan snarled.
But the Viper Queen stepped back into the alley, whistling sharply to her assassins before striding away. They turned as one and marched after her.
Colin McCarthy didn’t so much as look back.
“What the fuck?” Tharion exploded at Ithan, at Hypaxia. The Prime of the Valbaran Wolves and the Head of the House of Flame and Shadow.
“What happened?”
“What happened to you?” Ithan countered. “Where are the others? Is Bryce here?”
“Bryce? No—she’s in Nena. She …” Now wasn’t the time for a catch-up.
But Ithan said, “Nena?” He dragged his hands through his hair. “Fuck.”
“Why?” Tharion asked.
Hypaxia said gravely, “We need to get to Bryce. Immediately.”
“Okay,” Tharion said. “I’ll see if I can reach her or Athalar.”
Hypaxia and Ithan began walking, and Tharion followed, Sathia a few feet behind. When the door to the House of Flame and Shadow loomed before them, Hypaxia lifted a hand and it swung open silently. Hers to command.
Ithan walked right in. But Tharion at last mastered his shock enough to ask Hypaxia, “How did you wind up—”
“It’s a long story,” she said, tucking a dark curl behind her ear. “But get inside first. It’s the only safe place in this city.”
Tharion glanced back at Sathia, who was pale-faced at the open door before them. “Give me a minute,” he said, and Hypaxia nodded and walked into the gloom.
“Hypaxia is a friend,” Tharion explained softly to Sathia. “No harm will come to you in there.”
Sathia lifted her gaze, bleak and despairing, to his face. Like she’d seen a ghost.
And maybe she had. “It was my Ordeal.” Her lips were so, so white. “I only realized it afterward,” she murmured. “After Colin … left. Losing him was my Ordeal.”
Tharion laid a gentle hand on her back, surprised by the strange tightness in his gut, and eased her toward the doorway. “I’m sorry,” he said, and led his wife into the gloom.
It was all he could offer her.
“The reception in Nena is shit—there’s some weird interference happening right now,” Tharion announced. They stood in Jesiba Roga’s office, of all places. “But from the few words I managed to make out, they’re heading for the Eternal City immediately.”
“Good,” Holstrom said, pacing in front of Roga’s desk. “That’s what Jesiba told me earlier. But where do we rendezvous?”
“That’s the tough part,” Tharion admitted, sliding into one of the chairs.
Sathia sat quietly in the other one, lost in thought. “The reception cut off before we could get to that. I tried calling him back, and Quinlan, and her parents, but … nothing.”
“Maybe they got the Rift open,” Hypaxia mused. “Magic pouring into Midgard from Hel could be disrupting the connection. Demons cause power outages sometimes with their presence. Imagine what a lot of them all at once might do.”
“It’s possible, but doesn’t change the issue at hand,” Holstrom said. The wolf had changed—somehow, in the span of a day, he’d gone from lost to focused.
From lone wolf to Prime. Tharion had gotten a vague story out of him about