Lothaire

“She nearly beheaded me! I’ve never been closer to death in all my years!”

“So now you’re pouting in your castle. After the miseries you’ve inflicted on legions? You can dish it out, but you can’t take it?”

“It’s different.”

“How?”

He stabbed his fingers into his hair. “It simply is.”

“How?” she insisted.

“Because I think . . . because I was falling in love with her!”

“Then why isn’t she here with you now?”

“It was unrequited!” He’d shocked himself by saying that aloud.

Lothaire Daciano, a king, admitting to falling for a female who disdained him?

“Do you believe that because of her dream memories? Or because of her actions?”

“I can’t see her memories, Nïx. But I know why—it’s because vampires don’t see what they can’t handle!” I can’t handle knowing she played me. She’d bested him. “Just tell me what I . . . tell me what should I have done differently, to make her love me.”

Nïx rolled her eyes. “Where to begin?”

“Fuck off!”

“Why should I help you with Elizabeth, anyway? You’ve betrayed me worse than I ever did you. Why did you strike out at Furie instead of exacting your revenge directly on me?”

“Where would be the sport in that? You’re more crazed than I am! Why can’t you find Furie, soothsayer? Is she another blank spot in your visions? I never doubted you would locate her.”

“Would that have changed your decision to imprison her?”

“No. I followed my king’s orders. You of all people should know why I was bound to obey him in all things.”

“In any case, will you help the Valkyries find Furie now?”

“As I told Regin, I don’t know where she is.”

“But you did once, Lothaire. You are the one who chained her to the bottom of the ocean.”

“For your interventions in the past, I should be honor-bound to help you,” Lothaire said. “Alas, I have no honor.”

Her face fell. “I can’t help you like this. You’re more eaten up with hate than I’d ever thought, and more ignorant about females than I’d ever imagined. I’m wasting time I need for other things.” She turned to leave.

Behind her, he called, “I drank Commander Webb, Valkyrie. I have his memories. I know you were working for him.”

Lothaire also now knew that Webb had probably been . . . reborn. As an immortal.

Before Lothaire had bitten him, the wily bastard had popped a sample of blood, like a cyanide capsule. As Webb died, he’d had the blood of an immortal running through him, one so powerful that even Lothaire had been overcome after drinking it.

Webb would rise, as gods only knew what.

Perhaps I ought to tell Chase all the dark secrets I’ve learned about his surrogate father, to relieve some of his guilt.

And to prepare him.

But Lothaire was still Lothaire, and blood tie or not, Chase was still a dick. I don’t give without receiving.

Yet hadn’t he with Elizabeth?

Nïx turned back to him, her face marred with fatigue. “I wasn’t working with Webb, I was using him.”

“How would your allies feel to learn of your connection to him? Through Webb, you sent a witch to the island. Hell, you sent your own sister. I wonder why you gave him my name to add to the capture list. Yet another betrayal.”

She tilted her head at him, her eyes gone silvery. “Had to catch you before you used the ring, Lothaire. One more second and you would seriously have rewritten the wrong female. You do not even want to contemplate what would have happened to your Bride if Saroya had been made a vampire, with the ability to trace. . . . And more, I needed you on the island for six purposes: Wendigo extermination, saving Thaddeus’s life, giving Chase blood to stabilize him until his berserkertude took over. I forgot the others,” she said with growing agitation. “No matter. Your takeaway: sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.”

“So after this night, am I supposed to feel beholden to you? Do you expect me to just turn off my animosity toward you?”

He couldn’t even if he wanted to. She was right; he was eaten up with hatred.

“I see Furie drowning, but can never find her. She is my sister! And you wouldn’t spare me that?”

Perhaps I ought to tell Nïx where I left her. . . .

But there was more on the line. “You and I both know to whom she’s bound. Sinking her was also strategic.”

Nïx looked dejected. Lips moving silently, she hugged her arms around her chest.

Understanding hit him. In order to help me tonight, she has hurt herself in whatever way. “Nïx?” She was weary, bewildered, hardly the malicious being he’d thought her for so long.

In Old Norse, she asked him, “How will I remember the apocalypse?” Her voice was haunted, her slim frame shaking. “There’s so much to see, to remember, so many faces . . .”

For all that the memories had been shadowing his thoughts, visions of the future had been obscuring hers. He’d played his one Endgame; apparently, she’d been playing thousands.

“How?” she cried. Lightning flashed, bolts inside the great caverns of Dacia for the first time in history.

In the streets below, screams rang out. Thunder rocked the entire kingdom, echoing until rubble quaked. The unknown threat Hag spoke of.

“Calm yourself, Valkyrie!” He grabbed her shoulders, giving her a jostle.

She thrashed against him harder, and two more bolts speared down in rapid succession. Like detonations. She could topple the castle!

“Phenïx, calm yourself!” He lifted her into his arms to trace her away—

At once, the lightning ebbed. Seconds passed. A muted scream here and there. Disaster averted.

“Phenïx?” she whispered up at him. “No one calls me that but you. Everyone who used to is dead. They’re all dead.”

He exhaled a gust of breath. “They always die before us, don’t they?”

“Without fail.”

“When was the last time you slept?”

“Not since I saw you on the island.”

That had been several weeks ago. “Why? The shrieks at Val Hall keep you up?”

“I like to drift off to the sound of shrieks. No, it’s because someone always needs my help. Loreans are incessant, skulking around the manor, with their languishing hearts and unfulfilled desires. I can feel them ache, like a bad tooth I can never yank free.”

“You need a male to keep those beings at bay.”

“You have no idea.”

He muttered a curse, then said, “You may rest here this eve.” Tracing to the sitting room couch, he gently laid her down. “I’ll keep the Loreans away for one night.”

“It is blessedly peaceful here, high in this castle. White queen and black king can call a draw for a time. . . .”

My enemy, my onetime friend. Why had she continued to help him? With a brusque