Descendant

gently. “Stopping the end of the world notwithstanding.”

“I wonder if she even knew I was there. I wonder . . .”

“Look.” Fennrys reached over and took her hand in his. “If we can—I mean, when all of this weirdness has settled itself out—I promise we’ll go back and look for your mom. Okay?”

Mason smiled at him, but she shook her head sadly. “I know that’s never going to happen,” she said. “It’s okay. Thank you for saying so anyway.”

Fennrys squeezed her hand tightly and said, “Never going to happen? I don’t know if you noticed, but Asgard is in real danger of becoming my local hangout. I spend more time there than I do at my apartment. If we live through this—whatever this turns out to be—we’ll go. And if we don’t . . . well . . . hell.” He shrugged. “We’ll probably just wind up back there anyway.”

Mason actually found herself laughing at that.

With the toe of her boot, she kicked idly at a small rock. The thin line of foam that marked the water’s edge was only a few feet away, gleaming bone white in the darkness, and Mason got to wondering exactly what had happened to Rafe’s ferryman. She frowned and reached down with her free hand to pluck up the stone and then heaved it out into the river.

There was a moment of stillness as rings of ripples flowed outward and faded. And then, suddenly, the whole surface of the river erupted.

Only nine or ten feet from the shoreline, the lithe, shimmering figure of a gorgeous girl suddenly breached the surface of the water like a dolphin, followed by another and another. The first one’s head whipped around toward them, spinning her iridescent green hair out like streamers, and Mason saw that, beautiful as she was, the sea maid’s eyes blazed with a cold fire and her open mouth was full of serrated teeth. She bared them at Mason in a terrifying grimace before she dropped back into the water and disappeared beneath the surface.

“Whoa . . . ,” Mason murmured, shocked to stillness by the sight of a whole school of what were clearly some kind of mermaids or sea nymphs or something. “I guess that explains what happened to Aken.”

“What, yeah,” Fennrys agreed, trying to look casual as he drew his feet back from the edge of the water. “But why is another matter.”

“I wonder if those are Calum’s psycho playmates,” Mason mused tartly. “Funny . . . Cal talked about them being gorgeous, but he never mentioned the teeth.”

At her side, Fennrys suddenly went rigid with silent tension.

Mason turned to look at him, but he sat there, silent, his lips pressed together in a white line. It looked as if he was about to say something, but he didn’t. Mason decided not to push him. Whatever it was, he’d tell her if it was important. She turned back to where the frenzied, boiling surface of the water had turned still and calm once again.

“Cal’s gonna freak when I tell him one of his new girlfriends ate poor Aken,” she said.

“I . . . no,” Fenn said. “He’s not.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Mason shrugged. “I can’t honestly predict how he’ll react to things these days. It’s like I don’t even know him anymore. And anyway, I don’t even know if I’ll get the opportunity to tell him. I don’t actually think we’re speaking at the moment.”

“Mason . . .”

She kicked a smaller rock, which rolled to a stop just before the water’s edge. “We had this huge argument right before the competition,” she said, “and I really let him rattle me. It’s a big part of why I lost. And . . . Fenn . . . I’m so sorry for taking it out on you afterward.”

“Mase . . .”

“I know, I know . . .” She pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear. “It’s just that it all seems so stupid now with everything else that’s happening. But at the same time, I knew Calum was upset, and I didn’t do anything to make it any better for him. I mean, maybe I really am partly to blame for what happened. I just—”

“Mase—” Fenn’s grip on her hand tightened spasmodically.

She winced as the bones of her fingers ground together. “What is it?”

He loosened his grip, grimacing as he looked down at their clasped hands. “Cal’s . . . gone,” he said finally.

Mason looked at him, blinking in confusion for a moment. She saw something in his expression that might have been guilt and thought she knew what he was talking about. He must have run into Cal at the gym after the competition. She could only imagine how that little conversation had gone. . . .

“It’s okay,” she said.

“It is?” Fennrys frowned at her.

“Fenn . . . Whatever Cal might have said to you—or you to him—I don’t care. He hates me? He never wants to see me again? It doesn’t matter.” She smiled at him and shook her head. “I’ll always consider him a friend, but it’s probably for the best anyway if he wants to distance himself from me. I just seemed to keep pushing all the wrong buttons with him. And anyway, I . . . I don’t feel like that,” she said. “Like I feel about you.”

A whispered groan of anguish escaped from Fennrys’s lips as Mason looked up at him, her eyes shining, full to the brim with exactly how she felt about him in that moment. A moment that should have been perfect. She was so beautiful, her hair a gleaming dark curtain lifting on the breeze, her pale skin washed with moonlight, lips curved in the hint of a smile. . . .

She was perfect. She was his.

And Fennrys knew she was on the verge of saying she loved him.

All he had to do was nothing. Let her say those words that no one else had ever said to him. Take her in his arms and kiss her and forget all about telling her how brave, handsome, stupid Calum Aristarchos had died helping Fennrys as he tried to rescue Mason on the Hell Gate.

You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to tell her.

No, he didn’t. He could just keep his mouth shut.

“Mason. I have to tell you something else.” There had already been so many awful revelations for her to absorb, he thought. And yet, this one might be the worst. One of the beautiful things he’d discovered about Mason was that she cared more about other people than she did about herself. And she’d cared deeply for Cal.

The smile in her eyes wavered the longer he stayed silent, trying to figure out what he could say that would soften the blow. To the south, a cascade of lightning flashes illuminated the distant twisted wreckage of the Hell Gate where it clawed at the sky with broken iron fingers. Fennrys couldn’t even look at it. And he couldn’t bring himself to look at Mason, either.

“What is it, Fenn?” Mason asked quietly.

Fennrys took a deep breath.

“On the bridge,” he said, nodding downriver. “When I got to you on the bridge, it’s because Cal was the one who got me there. When Roth came to tell us what was happening, Cal insisted on coming along. . . .”

You don’t have to tell her that he was a hero and got you to the train on time—and then you didn’t do much of anything particularly useful. You don’t have to tell her the details.

Except, yeah. He did. Cal deserved that much.

“He was driving the bike that we were both on. It was rough on the bridge, but he managed to keep it steady long enough for me to jump the train and then . . .”

“Then what?” The muscles in Mason’s throat jumped as she swallowed convulsively.

“Then something happened. I didn’t see it—Rafe told me about it afterward—but there was an accident. Cal lost control of his bike and drove off the bridge into the river. Rafe said he hit one of the girders and—”

“Where is he?” Mason interrupted. “Is he okay?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“What do you mean no?” She grabbed him hard by the arm. Hard enough to bruise. “Who found him? Where is he?”

“Mason—the bridge blew up. We didn’t have time to even look.”

He didn’t bother reminding her that he’d also been shot and fallen off a train and that Rafe almost had to