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

“We aren’t doing anything,” he said. “I’m going up against them.”

“But you’re Prime,” she insisted. “You speak for all Valbaran wolves. Your choices are our choices. If you stand against the Asteri, we stand against the Asteri.”

“Then disavow me,” he said. “But I’m going.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “I don’t disagree with you—things have to change, and change for the better. But the wolves are scattered at the moment. At vacation homes, on trips … too far to reach the Blue Court before you go off to the Eternal City.”

“So?”

“So get the word out to them before you go. Give them a few hours to find shelter, either by getting to the Blue Court, or by finding somewhere in the wilds to lie low. The second the Asteri see you, the Prime, standing against them in any capacity, they’ll go after the wolves to punish you. And after what happened at the Meadows …” Her eyes flooded with pain. “I don’t think there’s any atrocity they wouldn’t commit.”

Ithan opened his mouth to object. He had to get that bullet and antidote to Bryce now. It might even be too late already.

But he couldn’t live with one more wolf death on his conscience. And if a single pup were harmed because he hadn’t given them time to hide …

“Three hours,” Ithan agreed. “You know how to send encrypted messages?”

Perry nodded.

“Then start getting the word out.” He looked to the building lobby beyond the pillars and the stairs up to it. “And I’ll start digging a grave.”

“A grave?” Perry protested. “But the Sailing—”

“There are no more Sailings,” Ithan said quietly. “The Under-King is dead.”

He was met with stunned silence. Then Perry said, “But—the Bone Quarter.”

“Is a lie. All of it.” Ithan gestured to the phone already in her hand. “Get the word out, then we’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Perry held his stare, her own full of worry and shock and determination. Then she began typing into her phone. “I’m glad, Ithan,” she said quietly, “that you’re Prime.”

That makes one of us, he almost said, but just nodded his thanks.



* * *



Tharion shoved the last gun into a rucksack and turned to where Hypaxia was nesting vials of the antidote into a satchel. “How many do you have?” he asked.

Water whispered in his ears, his heart, his veins. A steady flow of magic, as if a raging river coursed through him. Half a thought and it’d be unleashed.

“Two dozen, give or take a few,” she said quietly. “Not enough.”

“You’re going to need entire factories dedicated to getting it out there,” Tharion said.

She handed him the bag. “Here. Don’t jostle it too much on the trip. Athalar’s lightning holds them together—a little agitation can destabilize the doses to the point where they won’t work.”

He angled his head. “You’re not coming?” He planned to make his way to the Asteri’s palace itself—the most likely place for a confrontation between Bryce and the Asteri. Gods, the very notion of it was insane. Suicidal. But for his friends, for Midgard, he’d go, antidote in tow.

Hypaxia’s eyes gleamed with that greenish light. “No—I’m staying here.”

Tharion weighed the heaviness in that one word and took a seat on the edge of Roga’s desk. The sorceress was off handling some squabble between vampyrs and city medwitches over the vampyrs’ raid of a blood bank, apparently. “Why?”

“Someone has to deal with all the broken pipes in this House,” Hypaxia teased.

Tharion blushed slightly. His eruption after ingesting the antidote would take a long while to live down. But there had been so much power—all of a sudden, he’d been overflowing with water, and it was music and rage and destruction and life. But he said, “Come on, Pax. Tell me why.”

Her gaze lowered to her hands. “Because if all goes poorly over there, someone needs to remain here. To help Lunathion.”

“If it goes poorly over there, everyone is fucked anyway,” he said. “You being here, I’m sorry to say, won’t make much of a difference.”

“I want to keep making the antidote,” she added. “We need a better way to stabilize it. I want to start on it now.”

He looked at his friend—really looked at her. “You okay?”

Her eyes, so changed since taking Flame and Shadow’s throne for herself, dipped to the floor. “No.”

“Pax—”

“But I have no choice,” she said, and squared her shoulders. She nodded to the doors. “You should get your wife and go.”

“Is that a note of disapproval I detect?”

Hypaxia smiled gently. “No. Well, I disapprove of much of what led you to marry her, but not … the marriage itself.”

“Yeah, yeah, get in line to lecture me.”

“I think Sathia might be good for you, Tharion.”

“Oh?”

Her smile turned secretive. “Yes.”

Tharion gave her a smile of his own. “Knock ’em dead, Pax.”