Declan Emmet had set up the system for him: capable of hacking into any non-imperial email within moments. Emmet had charged him an arm and a fin for it, but it had proved more than useful. The first time Tharion had used it had been to help track down his sister’s murderer.
The sick fuck had emailed himself photos of his victims. Even what Tharion had done to him afterward hadn’t erased the image seared into his brain of his sister’s brutalized body.
Tharion swallowed, looking toward the wall of glass that opened into clear cobalt waters. An otter shot past, yellow vest blazingly bright in the river water, a sealed tube clenched between his little fangs.
A creature of both worlds. Some of the messenger otters dwelled here, in the Blue Court deep beneath the Istros, a small metropolis both exposed and sealed off from the water around them. Other otters lived Above, in the bustle and chaos of Crescent City proper.
Tharion couldn’t ever move Above, he reminded himself. His duties required him here, at the River Queen’s beck and call. Tharion peered at his bare feet, digging them into the cream shag carpet beneath his desk. He’d been in human form for nearly a day now. He’d have to enter the water soon or risk losing his fins.
His parents found it odd that he’d chosen to live in one of the dry glass-and-metal buildings anchored into a sprawling platform at the bottom of the river, and not near them in the network of underwater caves that doubled as apartments for the mer. But Tharion liked TV. Liked eating food that wasn’t soggy at best, cold and wet at worst. He liked sleeping in a warm bed, sprawled over the covers and pillows, and not tucked into a seaweed hammock swinging in the currents. And since living on land wasn’t an option, this underwater building had become his best bet.
The computer pinged, and Tharion pivoted back to the screen. His office was in one of the glass-domed bubbles that made up the Blue Court Investigative Unit’s headquarters—the River Queen had only allowed their construction because computers had to stay dry.
Tharion himself had been forced to explain that simple fact.
His queen was almighty, beautiful, and wise—and, like so many of the older Vanir, had no idea how modern technology worked. Her daughter, at least, had adapted better. Tharion had been instructed to show her how to use a computer. Which was how he’d wound up here.
Well, not here in this office. But in this place. In his current life.
Tharion skimmed through Sofie Renast’s email archive. Evidence of a normal existence: emails with friends about sports or TV or an upcoming party; emails from parents asking that she pick up groceries on her way home from school; emails from her little brother. Emile.
Those were the ones that he combed through the most carefully. Maybe he’d get lucky and there’d be some hint in here about where Sofie was headed.
On and on, Tharion read, keeping an eye on the clock. He had to get in the water soon, but … He kept reading. Hunting for any clue or hint of where Sofie and her brother might have gone. He came up empty.
Tharion finished Sofie’s inbox, checked the junk folder, and then finally the trash. It was mostly empty. He clicked open her sent folder, and groaned at the tally. But he began reading again. Click after click after click.
His phone chimed with an alert: thirty minutes until he needed to get into the water. He could reach the air lock in five minutes, if he walked fast. He could get through another few emails before then. Click, click, click. Tharion’s phone chimed again. Ten minutes.
But he’d halted on an email dated three years ago. It was so simple, so nonsensical that it stood out.
Subject: Re: Dusk’s Truth
The subject line was weird. But the body of her email was even weirder.
Working on gaining access. Will take time.
That was it.
Tharion scanned downward, toward the original message that Sofie had replied to. It had been sent two weeks before her reply.
From: BansheeFan56
Subject: Dusk’s Truth
Have you gotten inside yet? I want to know the full story.
Tharion scratched his head, opened another window, and searched for Dusk’s Truth.
Nothing. No record of a movie or book or TV show. He did a search on the email system for the sender’s name: BansheeFan56.
Another half-deleted chain. This one originating from BansheeFan56.
Subject: Project Thurr
Could be useful to you. Read it.
Sofie had replied: Just did. I think it’s a long shot. And the Six will kill me for it.
He had a good feeling he knew who “the Six” referred to: the Asteri. But when Tharion searched online for Project Thurr, he found nothing. Only news reports on archaeological digs or art gallery exhibits featuring the ancient demigod. Interesting.
There was one other email—in the drafts folder.
BansheeFan56 had written: When you find him, lie low in the place I told you about—where the weary souls find relief from their suffering in Lunathion. It’s secure.
A rendezvous spot? Tharion scanned what Sofie had started to reply, but never sent.
Thank you. I’ll try to pass along the info to my
She’d never finished it. There were any number of ways that sentence could have ended. But Sofie must have needed a place where no one would think to look for her and her brother. If Sofie Renast had indeed survived the Hind, she might well have come here, to this very city, with the promise of a safe place to hide.
But this stuff about Project Thurr and Dusk’s Truth … He tucked those tidbits away for later.
Tharion opened a search field within Declan’s program and typed in the sender’s address. He started as the result came in.
Danika Fendyr.
Tharion burst from his office, sprinting through the glass corridors that revealed all manner of river life: mer and otters and fish, diving birds and water sprites and the occasional winding sea serpent. He only had three minutes before he had to be in the water.
Thankfully, the hatch into the pressurization chamber was open when he arrived, and Tharion leapt in, slamming the round door behind him before punching the button beside it.
He’d barely sealed the door when water flooded his feet, rushing into the chamber with a sigh. Tharion sighed with it, slumping into the rising water and shucking off his pants, his body tingling as fins replaced skin and bone, his legs fusing, rippling with tiger-striped scales.
He pulled off his shirt, shuddering into the scales that rippled along his arms and halfway up his torso. Talons curled off his fingers as Tharion thrust them into his hair, slicking back the red strands.
Fucking inconvenient.
Tharion glanced at the digital clock above the air lock door. He was free to return to human form now, but he liked to wait a good five minutes. Just to make sure the transformation had been marked by the strange magic that guided the mer. It didn’t matter that he could summon water from thin air—the shift only counted if he submerged completely in the currents of wild magic.
Danika Fendyr had known Sofie Renast. Had swapped emails during a six-month window leading up to Danika’s death, all relating to something about Dusk’s Truth and this Project Thurr, except that one detailing a secure spot.
But had Danika Fendyr known Emile as well? Had Emile been the person Sofie had meant to pass along the safe location info to? It was a stretch, but from what the River Queen had told him, everything Sofie had done before her death had been for her brother. Why wouldn’t he be the person she was eager to hide, should she ever get him free from Kavalla? The trouble now was finding them somewhere in this city. Where the weary souls find relief from their suffering, apparently. Whatever that meant.