Page 71 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

He trailed off, but I could see it in his eyes, the first spark of hope he’d shown in a while. And it completely creeped me out because Pritkin . . . no. Just no.

He hated the hells and everything to do with them.

But maybe he hated this place more. He’d come here expecting to lose, knowing far more about Faerie than I had. And expecting to die shortly after that, which was something he had long ago come to terms with.

But then I’d shown up, the fey had freaked out, and he’d had to watch me in danger on almost an hourly basis ever since. No wonder he wanted to flee and take me with him! It wasn’t like the thought had never occurred to me.

“You know what I used to daydream about?” I asked him. “Sometimes in Vegas, after a particularly close call, but especially at Gertie’s. After one of those days when I’d had my ass handed to me by Agnes a dozen times, and I was sure I’d never figure this out. That the only thing I was proving was that I wasn’t worthy of my title?”

His jawline alone said that I wasn’t getting through. But it didn’t stop me because he needed to hear this and to understand—he wasn’t the only one who’d ever been caught in a pit of despair that seemed to have no way out. I’d lived there for months, maybe years; I didn’t even know anymore.

But long enough to recognize it on someone else’s face.

“I thought about you,” I said. “About picking you up and just . . . going. Somewhere, somewhen, where nobody would find us. First as a vacation, and God knows we’ve earned one! And then. . .

“Well, it’s not like anyone would know we were gone, would they? Or if I extended it for a little while, maybe even a long while. Time enough to have a life—”

“What’s wrong with that?” Pritkin rasped, even though I saw the truth in his eyes. He knew what was wrong with it, just as I had every time I’d looked at myself in the mirror. Which is why I hadn’t much, not wanting to meet my own eyes.

Because I could have done it. My God, I could have! So many times.

Even with the risk that somebody, maybe Gertie herself, would come after me, because what was that next to the dangers I faced every day? And perhaps she’d have had pity, even let me stay. After all, if there was no future, what was there for me to go back for?

“To make sure that there is one,” I could hear the words in her voice and see her gimlet eyes boring a hole through my soul.

Gertie had never let me get away with anything. Gertie, who had given up everything to be Pythia, understood the price she’d paid, that we all had. And she’d made sure that I did, too.

And why.

“Because if I did that,” I said softly. “I might never come back. Might not be able to; the Pythian power might desert me. But even if it didn’t . . . after years, after a child or two—” Pritkin closed his eyes as if in pain. “After what we have becomes all there is, could you give it up? For the war, for everyone else’s good, while knowing the cost—”

“I could give a fuck about the war!” he said savagely, those green eyes flying open. “I’m here for you. Not Faerie, whoever the hell she is, not the human realm, who never accepted me and never will, and not the damned demons. They and the fey can all burn, but not you. Not you!”

And then he kissed me, and it was all there, every word he’d said written in another language, a harsher, darker, more primal one, that raised something similar in me. Something dangerous because he could talk me into this; oh, yes, he could. Not because it was right—there was nothing right about it. But because it was easy, like kissing him, like falling into his arms and never looking back.

So easy that it took everything I had to wrench away.

“And what exactly would be the point in having that life,” I demanded harshly. “Those children, that future—when we’d know, every single day, that it was a lie? That we weren’t building something lasting, something real? Just living on borrowed time until it all fell apart, for us, for them, in a blaze of hate and retribution from a bunch of divine monsters we weren’t willing to fight?”

“To fight, but not to defeat,” Pritkin said, his face white and terrible. “If we can’t even take a bunch of fey—”

“Fuck the fey!” I said, because yeah, he knew. John Pritkin was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t get lost in fantasy sometimes when the reality felt so very bleak. But he knew everything that I’d been saying.

He just didn’t see a way out.

I took his hands. “You keep saying that they’re winning, but so far, there’s only one point on the board, and it’s ours. And yeah, they’ve been trying their best to kill us ever since we got here, but we’re not dead yet. It seems like they’re the ones who are losing, and they know it. Why bother to risk so much to take us down if we’re not a threat?”

“They know exactly how much of a threat you are—”

“And they’re right.” I looked at him steadily. “But they’re underestimating you. Prince of two realms, holder of all four elements, commander of three forms of magic—”

“When I have any to command.”

“—and all-around badass. They should worry.”

“So should I,” Pritkin muttered and pulled me down.

Chapter Twenty-One

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