House of Earth and Blood
Aidas shrugged with one shoulder. “It is as real a place as Midgard, though most of us would have you believe it wasn’t.” The prince pointed to him. “Your kind, Fallen, were made in Midgard by the Asteri. But the Fae, the shifters, and many others came from their own worlds. The universe is massive. Some believe it has no end. Or that our universe might be one in a multitude, as bountiful as the stars in the sky or the sand on a beach.”
Bryce threw Hunt a look that told him she, too, was wondering what the Hel the demon prince was smoking in the Chasm. “You’re trying to distract us,” Bryce said, arms crossing. Hoarfrost crept across the floors. “You’re not rattling the Northern Rift?”
“The lesser princes do that—levels one through four,” Aidas said, head angling again. “Those of us in the true dark have no need or interest in sunshine. But even they did not send the kristallos. Our plans do not involve such things.”
Hunt growled, “Your kind wanted to live here, once upon a time. Why would that change?”
Aidas chuckled. “It is dreadfully amusing to hear the stories the Asteri have spun for you.” He smiled at Bryce. “What blinds an Oracle?”
All color leached from Bryce’s face at the mention of her visit to the Oracle. How Aidas knew about it, Hunt could only guess, but she countered, “What sort of cat visits an Oracle?”
“Winning first words.” Aidas slid his hands into his pockets again. “I did not know what you might prefer now that you are grown.” A smirk at Hunt. “But I may appear more like that, if it pleases you, Bryce Quinlan.”
“Better yet: don’t appear again at all,” Hunt said to the demon prince.
Bryce squeezed his arm. He stepped on her foot hard enough to get her to cut it out.
But Aidas chuckled. “Your temperature drops. I shall depart.”
“Please,” Bryce said. “Just tell me if you know what killed Danika. Please.”
A soft laugh. “Run the tests again. Find what is in-between.”
He began to fade, as if a phone call were indeed breaking up.
“Aidas,” she blurted, stepping right to the edge of their circle. Hunt fought the urge to tuck her to his side. Especially as darkness frayed the edges of Aidas’s body. “Thank you. For that day.”
The Prince of the Chasm paused, as if clinging to this world. “Make the Drop, Bryce Quinlan.” He flickered. “And find me when you are done.”
Aidas had nearly vanished into nothing when he added, the words a ghost slithering through the room, “The Oracle did not see. But I did.”
Silence pulsed in his wake as the room thawed, frost vanishing.
Hunt whirled on Bryce. “First of all,” he seethed, “fuck you for that surprise.”
She rubbed her hands together, working warmth back into them. “You never would have let me summon Aidas if I’d told you first.”
“Because we should be fucking dead right now!” He gaped at her. “Are you insane?”
“I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Or anyone with me.”
“You want to tell me how you met Aidas when you were thirteen?”
“I … I told you how badly things ended between me and my biological father after my Oracle visit.” His anger banked at the lingering pain in her face. “So afterward, when I was crying my little heart out on one of the park benches outside the temple, this white cat appeared next to me. It had the most unnatural blue eyes. I knew, even before it spoke, that it wasn’t a cat—and wasn’t a shifter.”
“Who summoned him that time?”
“I don’t know. Jesiba told me that the princes can sneak through cracks in either Rift, taking the form of common animals. But then they’re confined to those forms—with none of their own power, save the ability to speak. And they can only stay for a few hours at a time.”
A shudder worked its way down his gray wings. “What did Aidas say?”
“He asked me: What blinds an Oracle? And I replied: What sort of cat visits an Oracle? He’d heard the screaming on his way in. I suppose it intrigued him. He told me to stop crying. Said it would only satisfy those who had wronged me. That I shouldn’t give them the gift of my sorrow.”
“Why was the Prince of the Chasm at the Oracle?”
“He never told me. But he sat with me until I worked up the nerve to walk back to my father’s house. By the time I remembered to thank him, he was gone.”
“Strange.” And—fine, he could understand why she hadn’t balked from summoning him, if he’d been kind to her in the past.
“Perhaps some of the feline body wore off on him and he was merely curious about me.”
“Apparently, he’s missed you.” A leading question.
“Apparently,” she hedged. “Though he barely gave us anything to go on.”
Her gaze turned distant as she looked at the empty circle before them, then took her phone out of her pocket. Hunt caught a glimpse of who she dialed—Declan Emmet.
“Hi, B.” In the background, music thumped and male laughter roared.
Bryce didn’t bother with niceties. “We’ve been tipped off that we should run various tests again—I’m assuming that means the ones on the victims and crime scenes a few years ago. Can you think of anything that should be reexamined?”
In the background, Ruhn asked, Is that Bryce? But Declan said, “I’d definitely run a scent diagnostic. You’ll need clothes.”
Bryce said, “They must have done a scent diagnostic two years ago.”
Declan said, “Was it the common one, or the Mimir?”
Hunt’s stomach tightened. Especially as Bryce said, “What’s the difference?”
“The Mimir is better. It’s relatively new.”
Bryce looked at Hunt, and he shook his head slowly. She said quietly into the phone, “No one did a Mimir test.”
Declan hesitated. “Well … it’s Fae tech mostly. We loan it out to the legion for their major cases.” A pause. “Someone should have said something.”
Hunt braced himself. Bryce asked, “You had access to this sort of thing two years ago?”
Declan paused again. “Ah—shit.” Then Ruhn came on the line. “Bryce, a direct order was given not to pursue it through those channels. It was deemed a matter that the Fae should stay out of.”
Devastation, rage, grief—all exploded across her face. Her fingers curled at her sides.
Hunt said, knowing Ruhn could hear it, “The Autumn King is a real prick, you know that?”
Bryce snarled, “I’m going to tell him just that.” She hung up.
Hunt demanded, “What?” But she was already running out of the apartment.
52
Bryce’s blood roared as she sprinted through the Old Square, down rain-soaked streets, all the way to Five Roses. The villas glowed in the rain, palatial homes with immaculate lawns and gardens, all fenced with wrought iron. Stone-faced Fae or shifter sentries from the Auxiliary were posted at every corner.
As if the residents here lived in abject terror that the peregrini and few slaves of Crescent City were poised to loot at any moment.