House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City #3) by Sarah J. Maas

“Then open the mists—invite them here. Let’s have them over for brunch.”

Morven’s silence was damning.

Bryce smiled. “I thought so.” She nodded to Sathia. “One more thing: she doesn’t marry anyone, and she comes with us.”

Sathia gaped at Bryce. But Bryce threw the Fae female a warning look. Bryce had only seen Sathia Flynn from a distance at parties. Usually, the female’s hair was dyed varying shades of shining dark brown or blond. Now her locks were an ordinary light brown—her natural color, perhaps. It was like seeing a glimpse of the real female beneath.

“I cannot allow that,” Morven said. “She is an unwed female.”

“Her brother is here,” Bryce said, nodding to Flynn. “Irresponsible party boy that he is, at least he has the parts that matter to you.”

Flynn glared, but Dec elbowed him hard enough that he stepped up and said, “I’ll, uh, take responsibility for Sathia.”

Sathia bristled like an angry cat, but kept her mouth shut.

“No,” Morven said, a shadow wrapping itself around his wrist like a bracelet. An idle, bored bit of magic. “You are an unsuitable chaperone, as you have demonstrated time and again.”

Hunt gave Bryce a look, and she knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing Ruhn said into her mind a heartbeat later:

As much as it kills me to say this … we might have to let this go. Sathia is Flynn’s sister and all, but it’s not our battle to fight.

Bryce subtly shook her head. You really want to leave her to Morven’s mercy?

Trust me, Bryce, Sathia can handle herself.

But Bryce glanced back at Lidia, who’d been watching all this with a cold, clear focus. Staying completely silent in that way of hers that made others forget her presence. Even Morven, it seemed, hadn’t noticed who stood in his throne room—because he now let out a low grunt of surprise at the sight of her.

Yet the Hind met Bryce’s gaze. What would you do? Bryce tried to convey.

Lidia seemed to grasp the general direction of her thoughts, because she said quietly, “I never had anyone to fight for me.”

Well, that did it.

Bryce opened her mouth, rallying power to her star, but Tharion spoke from behind them.

“I’ll marry Sathia.”



* * *



It took Hypaxia seven hours, seven minutes, and seven seconds to raise Sigrid.

Ithan barely moved from his stool the entire time Hypaxia stood over the corpse and chanted. Jesiba left, came back with her laptop, and worked for some of the time. She even offered Ithan some food, which he refused.

He had no appetite. If this didn’t work …

Hypaxia’s now-hoarse chanting stopped suddenly. “I—”

Ithan hadn’t been able to watch as she’d sewed Sigrid’s head back on. Only when she’d covered the body again had he returned his gaze to the spectacle.

Hypaxia staggered back from the examination table. From the shape under the sheet. Ithan was instantly up, catching her smoothly.

“What have you done?” Jesiba demanded, laptop shutting with a click.

Ithan set Hypaxia on her feet, and the former witch-queen looked between them, helpless and—terrified. Out of the corner of his eye, something white shifted.

Ithan turned as the body on the table sat up. As the sheet rippled away, revealing Sigrid’s grayish face, her eyes closed. The thick, unforgiving stitches in an uneven line along her neck. She still wore her clothes, stiff with old blood.

Stitches popping, Sigrid slowly turned her head.

But her chest … it didn’t rise and fall. She wasn’t breathing.

The lost Fendyr heir opened her eyes. They burned an acid green.

“Reaper,” Jesiba breathed.





49


“I’m telling you, Ketos, she is the worst,” Flynn growled at Tharion in the shadows of the pillars flanking one side of the throne room. Normal shadows, thankfully. Not the awful ones the Fae King commanded. “This is a terrible idea. It will ruin your life.”

“My life is already ruined,” Tharion said, voice as hollow as he felt. “If we live through this, we can get a divorce.”

“The Fae don’t divorce.” Flynn gripped his arm hard. “It’s literally marriage until death.”

“Well, I’m not Fae—”

“She is. If you divorce her, she won’t have any chance of ever marrying again. She’ll be sullied goods. After the first marriage, the only ways out are death or widowhood. A widow can remarry, but a divorcée … it’s not even a thing. She’d be persona non grata.”

On the opposite side of the room, Declan and Ruhn were talking to Sathia in hushed tones. Likely having the same conversation.

Morven glowered away on his throne, shadows like a hissing nest of asps around him, the monstrous twins now flanking him on either side. Tharion had detected the oily shadows creeping toward his mind the moment the twins had arrived. He’d instinctively thrown up a roaring river of water, creating a mental moat around himself. He had no idea what he was doing, but it had worked. The shadows had drowned.

It only made this decision easier. To have anyone forced to endure the Murder Twins’ presence, to marry someone who could pry into minds—

Tharion now said to Flynn, “Your sister would be a pariah amongst the Fae only. Normal people won’t have a problem with divorce.”