Descendant

She also wore a heavy golden rope crossways over her torso, and from it a curved horn, bone-pale and chased with more gold—ornately wrought, gleaming golden filigree—hung at her hip. She looked like a queen.

And she was waiting for her only daughter to step forward into an embrace that Mason had dreamed about, but known all her life she would never experience. Her mother Yelena, beloved wife of Gunnar Starling, had died giving birth to Mason, and she’d always carried that small, secret guilt deep in her heart. She’d yearned to know the woman that her father had spoken of with such tenderness and devotion. And now, here she was, waiting for Mason to step into the circle of her arms. And so Mason left Loki behind and walked forward, determined not to look back as her mother stepped toward her and wrapped her cloak around Mason’s shoulders.

She turned her back on the chained god and, following in her mother’s footsteps, left him lying there alone.

V

“How long do you think he’s gonna lie there feeling sorry for himself?” a voice in the darkness asked. The familiar voice was male, full of candor and a wry amusement that held hints of both concern and exasperation.

Fennrys tried to ignore it, except he couldn’t. Music, coming from another room, kept him awake. Singing—a throaty, smoke-and-whiskey kind of voice—curled around Fennrys’s mind and beckoned him back from the edge of the abyss. He struggled against the lure of that sound, wanting nothing more than to sink back into nothingness, where every molecule of his body didn’t pulse with the kind of dull, fiery ache that seemed to eat away at his very core. More than that, he wanted to escape the pain in his head—and in his heart—that was born from the knowledge that he had failed, again. Failed to protect Mason. Failed to save her.

His facial muscles must have twitched, because the voice spoke again.

“Right, then,” it said. “C’mon, Sleeping Ugly. Wakey wakey . . .”

Fennrys could feel someone nudging his foot. And he suddenly placed both of the voices he’d heard. The singer was a girl—a Siren, actually—named Chloe. The other voice, the one irritating Fennrys out from his blissful insensibility, belonged to an ex-coworker, for lack of a better term. Fennrys cracked open one eye and gazed blearily up at the young man, whose name was Maddox Whytehall, and who used to be one of Fenn’s fellow Janus Guards. There had been thirteen of them once, guardians of the gateway between the mortal realm and the Kingdoms of Faerie. Fennrys saw that Maddox still wore the iron medallion—the Janus Guard badge of office, similar to Fenn’s own but with symbols unique to him—around his neck.

Fennrys’s medallion had disappeared along with Mason Starling when he’d lost her on the Bifrost. He heard himself groan in pain at the thought.

“There he is!” Maddox said cheerfully. “Just in time for the finale . . .”

He waved a hand, and Fennrys opened his other eye to see someone else standing beside him where he lay, shirtless, on what seemed to be a banquet table in a low-lit room—apparently the unused back room of a club or a restaurant or something, judging from the stacked chairs and table linens and shelves lined with red glass candleholders and columns of dinner plates. The person standing there, tall and rather homely featured, was one of the Fair Folk. Fennrys recognized him instantly.

Webber was one of the Ghillie Dhu, a race of Fae with certain uncanny abilities. “Webber” wasn’t his real name. Rather, he was nicknamed for the iridescent membranes that stretched between the long fingers of his hands. Hands that, at that very moment, he had pressed to the wound on Fennrys’s shoulder. The blood flow had slowed to a dark, sullen trickle thanks to Webber’s healing magick.

Fennrys rolled his head to the side and watched with detached fascination, as a small crumpled ball of dull gray metal rose up out of his shoulder, with a small, sucking pop sound. It passed between the tips of Webber’s fingers, hovered in the air for a moment, and then, with a disdainful glance from him, it vaporized with a flash and a tiny puff of acrid smoke.

“Ta-da!” Maddox enthused with a grin.

“Humans and their nasty little toys,” Webber muttered, his goatish face drawn with disgust. “Barbaric. That’s the last of the damage taken care of. Couldn’t do much about Scylla’s sea-dog venom, but that’ll probably just give him a taste like cilantro in his mouth for a few hours. Horrible, sure, but no real danger of expiring from it.”

He glanced down at Fennrys and smiled. Fenn noticed that there was a hint of wariness—or perhaps, worry—in the expression. But the healer-Fae just nodded briskly, and with another pass of those long, webbed hands, a wave of numbness washed over Fennrys’s wounds, dulling the pain enough for him to try to sit up.

“Oh, good,” Rafe said drily from where he stood over by a red velvet curtain that hung in a doorway. “I’d hate for you to be the first person to ever actually expire in my club.”

Fennrys glanced around the room. “This is your place?” he asked.

Rafe nodded. “Welcome to the Obelisk.” He raised an eyebrow and looked over at the healer Fae. “You sure he’s not going to die? He sure looks like he is.”

“No, no,” Webber said, dusting his palms together. “Everything should be right as rain now. Or near enough, at least, for him to go out and try to get himself killed again . . .”

“What happened?” Fennrys sat up slowly and swung his legs over the side of the table he’d been lying on. He ran a hand over his face. His brain felt cottony, his thoughts unfocused. And, yeah—his mouth tasted like he’d been eating at a cheap Mexican restaurant.

“You got shot and fell off a train,” Maddox cheerfully enlightened him as he held out a hand to help Fennrys stand. “Then the bridge you were on exploded. Then you fought a sea monster. As far as I understand it, that is.”

“Right . . .” Fennrys nodded stiffly. That account seemed to correlate with his own impressions of the night’s events. And with his various aches and pains. He groaned and rolled his uninjured shoulder. He still wore his jeans and boots, but they’d obviously had to cut the shirt off him so that Webber could do his work.

“Where’s Roth Starling?” he asked, remembering suddenly that he hadn’t seen Mason’s older brother since the moments before the bridge explosion. He wondered what had happened to him—whether he was okay, or had suffered a fate similar to Cal Aristarchos. He hoped it was the former. He knew how dearly Mason loved Roth.

Rafe put his glass back down on the bar. “After the Hell Gate exploded, he took off to go see if he could find his father and do damage control. The old man is going to be wanting to know just exactly what happened to his little girl, and why his bridge to Asgard suddenly vaporized.”

“So I’m guessing we have no idea who would’ve wanted the bridge destroyed.”

“Not a clue.” The ancient god shook his head. “Well . . . aside from everyone who knew that it was actually a secret gateway to another realm—and who didn’t necessarily want anyone else using it to go there. I guess.”

“Wouldn’t it have made more sense, in that case, to blow it up before anyone decided to use it as Bifrost?”

Maddox and Rafe exchanged shrugs.

“Right.” Fennrys eased himself off the edge of the table and stood.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to find Mason.”

Rafe just raised an eyebrow at him as he wavered a bit on his feet.

“Wait . . .” Maddox reached behind him and retrieved something from a sideboard that he handed to Fennrys. It was a knife. More like a short sword, really. The hilt was plain but with a good strong grip and, knowing Maddox, the blade was doubtless sharp enough to shave with. It was housed in a sturdy leather sheath that the wearer could attach to a belt and tie down to their leg for ease of movement if necessary—which Fennrys proceeded to do. “Thought you might need a loaner. Rafe told me you left your standby buried hilt-deep in monster brains.”

“Yeah. I did,” Fennrys grunted as he tied the thong securely above his knee. “I liked that knife, too.” He checked the hang of the sheath, making sure the knife was secure but ready to draw. “What are you doing here, Maddox?”