“A trap? Is that what you thought?” Amun crossed his arms. “Makes sense, I guess. Your timing couldn’t have been worse.”
The implication being pretty damn obvious. “So, he is alive.”
“Yes.”
“I need to see him.”
“Why do you think I’m here?”
They stared at each other for a long beat as Amun made no move, then Samael raised his eyebrows. “Are you going to open the door?”
“I need you to give me your word that you’re not going to go crazy again.”
“I didn’t go crazy. I just wasn’t going to that dungeon.”
Amun shook his head, gaze turning wary. “You didn’t see you from my point of view. I’ve never seen you like that. You fought like a man possessed.”
Or like a desperate mate.
“I had reason. I’m protecting the queen.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Amun said in the lazily sarcastic way that had used to make Samael laugh. “We still have her locked up.”
Samael scoffed. “Not if her hellhound is with her, you don’t. He teleports. If Meira is still in her cell, it’s because she wants to be there.”
Amun’s eyes widened, the humor disappearing from his eyes. “Fuck me. We thought she sent him through the mirror she stepped through.”
“Doubtful. You would have been fucked if she wanted to turn him loose on you. There’s little more deadly than a hellhound, brother.”
Amun shook his head, but he also keyed in the code, and the lock sprang back with a clank. “Let’s take you to the king. Dealing with you is hurting my head.”
Outside the dungeon, Samael turned right to head up three more levels to the atrium, where they could shift and fly the rest of the way.
Amun grabbed his arm and jerked him the other direction. “If you think I’m letting you loose in dragon form, you’ve lost your mind. I’m a damn good fighter, but I’m not stupid.”
“Right,” Samael muttered. Confirm and trust later.
They took the long path through the winding human tunnels of the mountain. Though the tunnels were often fairly empty, they didn’t pass a single soul. As though the mountain itself was as empty as Samael’s heart.
“What’d you do?” Samael asked. “Clear the tunnels so no one had to lay eyes on me?”
Amun’s lips flattened. “Half the clan is gone.”
Samael stopped in his tracks to eye the other man. “Gone where?”
But Amun only shook his head. “You should discuss all this with the king.”
They made the rest of the journey in silence. At Amun’s knock a guard let them into the king’s suite. The damage from the fight had been cleaned up. A glance at Bero revealed an equally black eye, and Samael sent the man a smirk, earning a glare in return.
The sound of a voice, soft and broken, sounded from farther inside the chamber, pulling his attention from the room, and Samael turned slightly to find Amun watching him closely, as though he’d turn feral any second and start removing heads.
“Where is he?” Samael asked.
“His bed. He’s in bad shape. The healer, other than pausing to work on your ass, has been with him constantly.”
That did not help Samael’s guilt any.
Each step felt an eternity as Samael crossed through room after room of the king’s larger chamber, down a dome-topped hallway—a natural formation of the mountain caves—past an office and several other bedrooms to a doorway left wide open. Inside, he found several of the advisers who made up the king’s Curia Regis, along with more of the guard, surrounding the bed, obscuring Samael’s vision of the man lying there. Only Gorgon’s feet under the blankets showed through gaps in the crowd.
But the scent was undeniable. Familiar. Rain and smoke.
Gorgon.
The men turned and formed a wall. Against their own. Regardless of the hundreds of years he’d led them, fought at their sides.
“Let him through.”
Seven hells. Was that his king’s voice? Gorgon sounded as though a razor blade had been taken to his vocal cords.
The men parted, and Samael, ignoring the suspicion ripe in the room, got his first clear look at the king. Gorgon was black and blue from head to toe, bruising gone deep and much of it in various stages of healing. Which meant whoever had taken him had beaten him, let him heal partially, and then done it again. Over and over. The man had also lost weight, his face dramatically thinner, cheekbones protruding.
“Samael.” Gorgon reached out a hand, and he crossed to the man who had been like a second father to him. “Why do they protect me from you?”
Instant burning lanced through the skin on his hand. He didn’t need to look to know that Gorgon’s mark had returned. What did that mean? “They don’t know what to believe.”
“Why?”
Quickly he filled his leader in on what had happened in the days—had it only been days?—since the mating ceremony. Not everything. He left out his mating the woman who was meant to be Gorgon’s queen. Telling him now wouldn’t be right. Not while the king was in this condition.
“When were you taken, my lord?” Samael asked.
Gorgon’s eyebrows raised, probably at the “my lord,” then he winced and consciously relaxed his face. “After the ceremony when I talked to Brand and Ladon privately—they left me in the chamber, I don’t remember why. All it took was a minute. Someone hit me from behind. I have no idea how they got in or out. My guess is Pytheios’s witch.”
Fuck. Could that explain how Brock had been tracking them, too? If she could do that inside Ben Nevis, after expending the energy to do that flame thing, nothing could stop the false High King.
“Where is Meira now?” Gorgon asked.
“She’s here. Safe.” He left out the bit about Maul and the dungeon.
“I want to see her.”
Samael searched for the nearest mirror and, finding one, gave a nod. The men around him tensed until, from the large, ornate mirror propped against one wall, Meira appeared, stepping out of the glass like Aphrodite must’ve stepped out of the sea when
