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

The palace shuddered.

“Lidia,” Pollux said with hideous satisfaction. “You look well for someone who’s been knee-deep in trash lately.”

“Fuck you,” Ruhn spat.

Behind Pollux, still several feet down the hallway, her sons stood tall, even as they trembled. The sight short-circuited something in her brain.

But Pollux sneered at Ruhn. “Was it for you that she left, then? Betrayed all she knew? For a Fae princeling?”

“Don’t give him that much credit,” Lidia snarled. She’d say anything to keep Pollux’s attention on her—away from the boys. Ruhn could go to Hel for all she cared. But Lidia gestured between herself and Pollux. “This reckoning was years in the making.”

“Oh, I know,” Pollux said, and motioned to the two angels behind him. “See, the Ocean Queen’s fleet isn’t all that secure. Catch a mer spy, threaten to fillet them, and they’ll tell you anything. Including where the Depth Charger is headed. And the two very interesting children aboard it—their true heritage at last revealed and the talk of the ship.”

Lidia considered every scenario in which she could take on Pollux and get her sons out of here. Few of them ended with her walking out of here alive, too.

“They put up an admirable fight, you know,” Pollux said. “But they couldn’t keep their mouths shut, could they?” He glared at Actaeon. A bruise bloomed on his temple. “You learned quick enough how effective a gag is.”

A flame lit deep inside her, crackling and blazing.

“After all the trouble these two brats gave me,” Pollux said, white wings glimmering with brute power, “I’m really going to enjoy killing them in front of you.”





93


Ruhn kept perfectly still as Brann and Actaeon, bound in gorsian shackles, were shoved to their knees before Pollux by those two imperial guards.

The Hammer smiled at Lidia, who’d gone utterly still and pale. “I knew instantly that they weren’t mine, of course. No sons of my blood could be captured so easily. Pathetic,” he sneered at a seething Brann, who was sporting a bloody nose. The kid would take on the Hammer with his bare hands.

Actaeon, however, watched Pollux carefully, though the boy was equally battered. His golden eyes missing nothing. Assessing all. Trying to find an opening.

Lidia rasped, “Please.”

Pollux laughed. “Too late for niceties now, Lidia.”

Ruhn’s mind raced, sifting through every angle and advantage they might have. The math was damning.

Even if Pollux lowered the gun pointed at Ruhn’s head, he still stood close enough to kill the boys with one strike. There was no way either Lidia or Ruhn could reach the boys in time, physically or magically. A bullet would be slower than the striking Hammer.

And even with Tharion at Lidia’s side … No, there was no chance.

“Go get Rigelus,” Pollux said to the two guards, not taking his gaze off Lidia, off Ruhn. “He’ll enjoy watching this, I think.”

Without question, without so much as a blink at the atrocities they were leaving behind, the guards departed down the hall. Turned into the stairwell and out of sight.

Tharion struck.

A blast of water, so concentrated it could have shattered stone, speared for Pollux. Ruhn darted to the left as Pollux fired his gun. But not for him, he realized as the bullet raced, faster than it should have, borne on a wave of angelic power—

Pollux dove aside, the plume of water missing his wing. But his bullet and power struck true.

Tharion grunted, going down before Ruhn could see where the mer had been hit. Somewhere in the chest—

As water dripped off the walls and ceiling around them, Lidia said, “Let them go, Pollux. Your quarrel is with me.”

He snickered. “And what better way to destroy you? I suppose I can make one allowance: you can choose which boy dies first.”

Brann snarled through his gag at Pollux, but Actaeon looked at his mother, eyes sharp, as if telling her to kill this asshole.

“They’re children,” Lidia said, voice cracking. Ruhn couldn’t stand it—the pure desperation in her face. The agony.

“They’re your children,” Pollux said, power flickering at his hand. “Ordinarily, I’d like to make this last a while, but sacrifices must be made in battle.” As if in answer, the very building around them shuddered. “I hear there are deathstalkers loose in here. Perhaps I’ll feed the brats to them.”

“Don’t,” Lidia said, falling to her knees. “Tell me what you want, what I must do, and I’ll do it—anything—”

Ruhn’s heart cleaved in two. For the boys; for her, debasing herself for this prick.

He rallied his shadows. But if Tharion hadn’t been able to hit his mark …

Pollux smiled at Lidia. “I always liked you on your knees, you know.”

“Whatever you want,” Lidia pleaded. “Please, Pollux. I am begging you—”

She’d do it. Give Pollux whatever he wanted.

Her boys stiffened. Seeing that, too. Perhaps finally understanding what—who—their mother was. What had guided her all these years, and would continue to guide her in her final moments.

Ruhn just saw Lidia. Lidia, who had given so much, too much. Who would do this without a thought.