House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2) by Sarah J. Maas

“Your pack allowed this to happen?” Rage boiled his blood. Claws appeared at his fingertips.

“My parents had no pack,” she said hoarsely. “They roamed the tundra of Nena with me and my ten siblings. My gifts became apparent when I was three. By four, I was in there.” She pointed to the tank, and Ithan recoiled in horror.

A wolf family had sold their pup, and she’d gone into that tank—

“How long?” he asked, unable to stop his trembling anger. “How long have you been in here?”

She shook her head. “I … I don’t know.”

“When were you born? What year?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even remember how long it’s been since I made the Drop. He had some official come here to mark it, but … I don’t remember.”

Ithan rubbed at his chest. “Solas.” She appeared as young as him, but among the Vanir, that meant nothing. She could be hundreds of years old. Gods, how had she even made the Drop here? “What’s your name? Your family name?”

“My parents never named me, and I never learned their names beyond Mother and Father.” Her voice sharpened—a hint of temper shining through. “You should leave.”

“You can’t be in here.”

“There’s a contract that suggests otherwise.”

“You are a wolf,” he snarled. “You’re kept in a fucking cage here.” He’d go right to the Prime. Make him order the Astronomer to free this unnamed female.

“My siblings and parents are able to eat and live comfortably because I am here. That will cease when I am gone. They will again starve.”

“Too fucking bad,” Ithan said, but he could see it—the determination in her expression that told him he wasn’t going to pry her out of here. And he could understand it, that need to give over all of herself so that her family could survive. So he amended, “My name is Ithan Holstrom. You ever want to get out of here, send word.” He had no idea how, but … maybe he’d check in on her every few months. Come up with excuses to ask her questions.

Caution flooded her eyes, but she nodded.

It occurred to him then that she was likely sitting on the cold floor because her thin legs had atrophied from being in the tank for so long. That old piece of shit had left her here like this.

Ithan scanned the space for anything resembling a blanket and found nothing. He only had his T-shirt, and as he reached for the hem, she said, “Don’t. He’ll know you were here.”

“Good.”

She shook her head. “He’s possessive. If he even thinks I’ve had contact with someone other than him, he’ll send me down to Hel with an unimportant question.” She trembled slightly. He’d done it before.

“Why?”

“Demons like to play,” she whispered.

Ithan’s throat closed up. “You sure you don’t want to leave? I can carry you right now, and we’ll figure out the other shit. The Prime will protect you.”

“You know the Prime?” Her voice filled with whispered awe. “I only heard my parents speak of him, when I was young.”

So they hadn’t been entirely shut off from the world, then. “He’ll help you. I’ll help you.”

Her face again became aloof. “You must go.”

“Fine.”

“Fine,” she echoed back, with a hint of that temper again. A bit of dominance that had the wolf in him perking up.

He met her stare. Not just a bit of dominance … that was a glimmer of an Alpha’s dominance. His knees buckled slightly, his wolf instinct weighing whether to challenge or bow.

An Alpha. Here, in a tank. She would likely have been her family’s heir, then. Had they known what she was, even at age four? He suppressed a growl. Had her parents sent her here because she’d be a threat to their rule over the family?

But Ithan shoved the questions aside. Backed toward the doors again. “You should have a name.”

“Well, I don’t,” she shot back.

Definitely Alpha, with that tone, that glimmer of unbending backbone.

Someone the wolf in him would have liked to tangle with.

And to leave her here … It didn’t sit right. With him, with the wolf in his heart, broken and lonely as it might have been. He had to do something. Anything. But since she clearly wasn’t going to leave this place … Maybe there was someone else he could help.

Ithan eyed the small box on the worktable, and didn’t question himself as he snatched it up. She tried and failed to rise, her weakened legs betraying her. “He will kill you for taking them—”

Ithan strode to the doors, the box of fire sprites trapped inside their rings in hand. “If he’s got a problem with it, he can take it up with the Prime.” And explain why he was holding a wolf captive in here.

Her throat bobbed, but she said nothing more.

So Ithan stalked outside, onto the jarringly normal street beyond, and shut the heavy door behind him. But despite the distance he quickly put between himself and the mystics, his thoughts circled back to her, again and again.

The wolf with no name, trapped in the dark.

“I’m requesting an aquatic team of twenty-five for tomorrow,” Tharion said to his queen, hands clenched behind his back, tail fanning idly in the river current. The River Queen sat in her humanoid form among a bed of rocky coral beside her throne, weaving sea nettle, her dark blue gown drifting around her.