House of Earth and Blood

She tucked away what his praise did to her heart, how it lifted the fog that had settled on her. “My dad was a Dracon captain in the 25th Legion. They stationed him at the front for the entire three years of his military service. He taught me a few things.”

“I know. Not about you being taught, I mean. But about your dad. Randall Silago, right? He’s the one who taught you to shoot.”

She nodded, an odd sort of pride wending its way through her.

Hunt said, “I never fought beside him, but I heard of him the last time I was sent to the front—around twenty-six years ago. Heard about his sharpshooting, I mean. What does he think about …” A wave of his hand to her, the city around them.

“He wants me to move back home. I had to go to the mat with him—literally—to win the fight about going to CCU.”

“You physically fought him?”

“Yeah. He said if I could pin him, then I knew enough about defense to hold my own in the city. Turns out, I’d been paying more attention than I’d let him believe.”

Hunt’s low laugh skittered over her skin. “And he taught you how to shoot a sniper rifle?”

“Rifles, handguns, knives, swords.” But guns were Randall’s specialty. He’d taught her ruthlessly, over and over and over again.

“You ever use any outside of practice?”

I love you, Bryce.

Close your eyes, Danika.

“When I had to,” she rasped. Not that it had made a difference when it mattered.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the message from Jesiba and groaned.

A client is coming in thirty minutes. Be there or you’ve got a one-way ticket to life as a vole.

Bryce set down her spoon, aware of Hunt watching her, and began to type. I’ll be at—

Jesiba added another message before Bryce could reply. And where is that paperwork from yesterday?

Bryce deleted what she’d written, and began writing, I’ll get it—

Another message from Jesiba: I want it done by noon.

“Someone’s pissed off,” Hunt observed, and Bryce grimaced, grabbing up her bowl and hurrying to the sink.

The messages kept coming in on the walk over, along with half a dozen threats to turn her into various pathetic creatures, suggesting someone had indeed royally pissed off Jesiba. When they reached the gallery door, Bryce unlocked the physical and magical locks and sighed. “Maybe you should stay on the roof this afternoon. She’s probably going to be monitoring me on the cameras. I don’t know if she’s seen you inside before, but …”

He clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Got it, Quinlan.” His black jacket buzzed, and he pulled out his phone. “It’s Isaiah,” he murmured, and nodded to the now-open door of the gallery, through which they could see Syrinx scratching at the library door, yowling his greeting to Lehabah. “I’ll check in later,” he said.

He waited to fly to the roof, she knew, until she’d locked the gallery door behind herself. A message from him appeared fifteen minutes later. Isaiah needs me for an opinion on a different case. Heading over now. Justinian’s watching you. I’ll be back in a few hours.

She wrote back, Is Justinian hot?

He answered, Who’s the pervert now?

A smile pulled at her mouth.

Her thumbs were hovering over the keyboard to reply when her phone rang. Sighing, she raised it to her ear to answer.

“Why aren’t you ready for the client?” Jesiba demanded.

This morning had been a wreck. Standing guard on the roof of the gallery hours later, Hunt couldn’t stop thinking it. Yes, they’d caught Sabine in her lie, and all signs pointed toward her as the murderer, but … Fuck. He hadn’t realized how rough it’d be on Quinlan, even knowing Sabine hated her. Hadn’t realized the other wolves had it out for Bryce, too. He should never have brought her. Should have gone himself.

The hours ticked by, one by one, as he mulled it all over.

Hunt made sure no one was flying over the roof before he pulled up the video footage, accessed from the 33rd’s archives. Someone had compiled the short reel, no doubt an attempt to get a better image of the demon than a toe or a claw.

The kristallos was a gray blur as it exploded from the front door of the apartment building. They hadn’t been able to get footage of it actually entering the building, which suggested it had either been summoned on-site or had snuck through the roof, and no nearby cameras had picked it up, either. But here it was, shattering the front door, so fast it was just gray smoke.

And then—there she was. Bryce. Hurtling through the door, barefoot and running on shards of glass, table leg in her hand, pure rage twisting her face.

He’d seen the footage two years ago, but it made slightly more sense now, knowing that Randall Silago had trained her. Watching her leap over cars, careening down streets, as fast as a Fae male. Her face was smeared with blood, her lips curled in a snarl he couldn’t hear.

But even in the grainy video footage, her eyes were hazy. Still fighting those drugs.

She definitely didn’t remember that he’d been in that interrogation room with her, if she’d asked about the messages during lunch. And, fuck—he’d known everything from her phone had leaked, but he’d never thought about what it must have been like.

She was right: people were assholes.

Bryce cleared Main Street, sliding over the hood of a car, and then the footage ended.

Hunt blew out a breath. If it really was Sabine behind this … Micah had given him permission to take out the culprit. But Bryce might very well do it herself.

Hunt frowned toward the wall of fog just visible across the river, the mists impenetrable even in the afternoon sunlight. The Bone Quarter.

No one knew what went on in the Sleeping City. If the dead roamed through the mausoleums, if the Reapers patrolled and ruled like kings, if it was merely mist and carved stone and silence. No one flew over it—no one dared.

But Hunt sometimes felt like the Bone Quarter watched them, and some people claimed that their beloved dead could communicate through the Oracle or cheap market psychics.

Two years ago, Bryce hadn’t been at Danika’s Sailing. He’d looked. The most important people in Crescent City had gone, but she hadn’t been there. Either to avoid Sabine killing her on sight, or for reasons of her own. After what he’d seen today, his money was on the former.

So she hadn’t witnessed Sabine pushing the ancient black boat into the Istros, the gray silk-shrouded box—all that remained of Danika’s body—in its center. Hadn’t counted the seconds as it drifted into the muddy waters, holding her breath with all those on shore to see if the boat would be picked up by that swift current that would bring it to the shores of the Bone Quarter, or if it would overturn, Danika’s unworthy remains given to the river and the beasts who swam within it.

But Danika’s boat headed straight for the mist-shrouded island across the river, the Under-King deeming her worthy, and more than one person had heaved a sigh. The audio from the apartment building’s shitty hall camera of Danika begging for mercy had leaked a day before.

Hunt had suspected that half the people who’d come to her Sailing hoped Danika’s begging meant she’d be given to the river, that they could deem the haughty and wild former Alpha a coward.