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Tharion studied the male’s broad, callused hand, its golden skin flecked with sea spray. Behind Tharion, Sendes had already waved to his friends and was now heading for the hatch.

If he was to make his move, it had to be now. Because if he stayed on this ship another day … it wouldn’t end well for him.

Which left him with one choice, really.

Sendes paused at the open hatch and beckoned Tharion below. Places to be and all that.

Flynn frowned at the hand he still held extended, at Tharion, standing there—

Tharion moved.

Bracing his hands on the rail, he vaulted over the side, landing in the white boat with a thud that had the others cursing at him.

“Ketos,” Athalar demanded, a steadying hand on the side of the boat as it rocked, “what the fuck?”

But Flynn landed behind Tharion a second later, saying, “Go, go, go,” to the boat or whatever magic controlled it.

Tharion’s blood raced in his veins as the boat began to pull away from the Depth Charger, and then Sendes was at the rail, her eyes wide with shock.

“She’ll kill you,” Sendes cried. “Tharion—”

Tharion flashed the commander a grin. “She’ll have to breach the mists first.”

He barely got the last word out before the prow of the boat entered the famed mists.

Yet he could have sworn a shudder went through the ocean behind them, as if a great leviathan of power was already surging, rising for him—

They crossed into the dense mists. The sense of pure power vanished. Nothing remained except the gray water around the boat and the drifting mists, too thick to see more than a few feet beyond the glow of the stag’s eyes.

Tharion faced forward at last and found his friends staring at him in varying degrees of alarm. Lidia Cervos was slowly shaking her head—like she understood the gravity of what he’d done better than any of them.

“Well,” he said as casually as he could, sitting down and crossing his legs, “not to invite myself to the party, but I’m coming with you guys as well.”

47

“You have no idea how many people I had to convince not to eat her carcass on her way down here,” Jesiba drawled as Ithan stared blankly at the shape of the body beneath the white sheet in the morgue.

At the sagging place between neck and head.

Hypaxia, working on something at the counter, called over, “This might take a while.”

Ithan peered around the sterile, tiled morgue and managed to say, “Why do you guys have a morgue down here?”

Jesiba sat on a medical-looking stool, back straight. “Where else are we supposed to raise dead bodies?”

“I don’t know why I asked.”

“You did a number on her, you know.”

Ithan glared at the sorceress. Jesiba winked at him.

But Hypaxia turned to them, and Ithan got his first good look at her face since coming down here. Exhaustion etched deep lines into it, and her eyes were bleak. Hopeless.

What had swearing her allegiance to this House cost her? Jesiba had claimed the ritual had been unusually fast—was that why she looked so drained? Part of him didn’t want to know.

He opened his mouth to tell her she didn’t have to do this for him, that she should rest, but … he didn’t have time. The longer they waited, the less chance they had to be successful at raising the decapitated—

Decapitated—