Vérzavar Ház

Chapter 5: Idle Minds Prone to Wandering

Hunt almost pitied Ephraim for inheriting the Harpy. "And the Hawk?"

"Doing what he does best: trying to outdo Pollux in cruelty and brutality." The hawk shifter had long been Pollux's main rival for power. Hunt had steered clear of him for decades.

-House of Sky and Breath, pg. 165

It had been a week since the Hind had last visited his cell. Not that Ruhn was counting. A week without cold, calculating words. No golden glares. No questions or interrogations. In fact, he hadn't been so much as touched since the Hammer had returned to Lunathion, much less bled at the tip of a knife or the tail of a whip. And there had been no attempts to reach him through his mind. Perhaps she had finally given up.

"About fucking time," he muttered into the emptiness. The walls he'd built were as impenetrable as they were dark, but that didn't keep him from experiencing her attempts to get through. Anything from desperate pleas to pointed demands. If he chose to dig down deep, he might find his relief stemmed from his weakening resolve - if she kept knocking, he may not be able to resist for much longer

So he didn't dig down deep. The Valbaran prince contented himself on fucking with the cook who brought his food twice a day on that gods-forsaken cart whose wheels screamed in his sensitive fae ears for what felt like hours after he'd finished his meal. Made himself grin wryly thinking of all the names he could come up with for Pollux, to make those cobalt eyes darken and lips curl in feral annoyance. He'd created quite the list in his mind, and was prepared to check each one off as he found creative ways to insult the angel. Buzzard, Big Bird, Angel Baby, Bird Brain.

Yeah, he was a fucking genius.

But contemplating ways to be a menace to one of the most sadistic males on the face of the planet was so much less soul-crushing than the other avenues that beckoned to his subconscious. Because thinking about Bryce or his friends threatened to break him before the Hind or the Hammer next stepped foot into his cell.

Ruhn had come to the conclusion that he would know if Bryce was dead. Their sibling bond, their Starborn bloodline, something would snap or burn or tingle or break if her light was extinguished. It had to be so.

And nothing like that had happened, aside from his heart breaking at the notion that he would likely never see her again. But as the days and weeks dragged on, it was at least becoming slightly more likely that he would make it to the day she returned. From... wherever she was.

The plan, if he could call it that, had been for her to go to Hel. To rally the armies and return to Midgard with a great host to take down the Asteri, as the Prince of the Chasm had implied. But could Bryce open the gates back to Midgard on her own? Did Aidas or Appolion possess the kind of power that would assist her in doing so if she needed it? And how would he know, from his current living arrangements below the crystal palace, that she had made her triumphant return?

And then there were thoughts about Flynn and Dec. And Ithan. The pack-less pup had become a member of his family, in spite of how he'd dismissed Bryce in the years after the slaughter of the Wolf Pack. The wolf wasn't the only one who had made mistakes during that time. Mistakes that had wounded his sister more than she had ever dared let show. And if Ruhn were to hold that against Ithan, he would have to lay down and perish in the pit of his own guilt and self-loathing along with him.

Declan, his tech guru, was the cause for the most concern. It had been his brainchild, to hack into the cameras and doctor the footage, allowing him and his sister and her mate to roam the corridors of the palace undetected. If he knew Dec at all, he knew that the male had likely not dismantled his monitoring equipment. That he was watching, along with Flynn, to find any trace at all of where he could be or what was happening. Flynn hadn't been there during the mission, and it killed Ruhn to think of what his friend had walked into when he returned to the house that day. Killed him to think that they may be targets for the likes of Pollux and the Hind, knowing that they were clearly the first people that might know his own plans. That hurting them would be an obvious strategy to get what they needed.