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“Shall I reassign you to waiting on the Reapers?” A cruel smile. “They’d enjoy a taste or two of you, girl.”

“I only want five minutes with my brother,” Ithan interrupted.

“To do what?” The Under-King leaned forward.

“I need to tell him a few things.”

“The goodbye you never got to say,” the Under-King taunted.

“Yes,” Ithan said sharply.

The Under-King angled his head. “And you promise not to warn him of what awaits?”

“Does it matter if I do? He’s trapped here already,” Ithan said, gesturing to the temple, the barren land beyond.

“I have no interest in civil unrest—even amongst the dead,” the Under-King said. “And too much unrest would bring unwanted attention and questions.” From the Asteri, no doubt.

Ithan crossed his arms. “That didn’t seem to be your position when you sold my friends out to Pippa Spetsos.”

“Pippa Spetsos stood to assist in expanding my kingdom significantly,” the creature said. “It was an investment for my Reapers—to keep them contented and fed.”

Ithan blocked out the flash of the Prime’s broken body, the way Sigrid had sucked out his soul.

Hypaxia said calmly, “Why did the Reapers first defect from Apollion and join you?”

The Under-King flinched. “Do not speak his name here.”

“My apologies,” Hypaxia murmured. She didn’t sound at all sorry.

But the Under-King settled himself. “In Hel, the Reapers fed on and ruled the vampyrs, and when the vampyrs defected to this world, the Reapers followed their food source. And found the other beings on Midgard to be a veritable feast. So they have left the vampyrs to themselves, feeding as they please on the rest of the populace.”

Ithan couldn’t stop his shudder this time. He couldn’t imagine what Hel was like, if Reapers and vampyrs had just been walking about—

“But you are not from Hel,” Hypaxia said.

“No.” The Under-King’s milky eyes settled on Ithan. “I was birthed by the Void, but my people …” He smiled cruelly at Ithan. “They were not unknown to your own ancestors, wolf. I crept through when they charged so blindly into Midgard. This place is much better suited to my needs than the caves and barrows I was confined to.”

Ithan reeled. “You came from the shifters’ world?”

“You were not known as shifters then, boy.”

“Then what—”

“And she,” the Under-King went on, gesturing to that unusual depiction of Urd towering above him, “was not a goddess, but a force that governed worlds. A cauldron of life, brimming with the language of creation. Urd, they call her here—a bastardized version of her true name. Wyrd, we called her in that old world.”

“That is all well and good,” Hypaxia said, “but my friend’s request—”

“Go speak to your brother, boy,” the Under-King drawled, almost melancholy. As if all the talk of his old world had exhausted him. “You have seven minutes.”

Ithan’s mouth dried out. “But where—”

The Under-King pointed to the exit behind them. “There.”

Ithan turned. And there was Connor, as vibrant as he’d ever been in life, standing in the temple doorway.

82

Ithan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he sat beside his brother on the front steps of the temple. Hypaxia remained inside, speaking quietly with the Under-King.