Hunt shut off his phone as he shouldered his way through the doors and into the open air.

He was a stain against the brightness. A shadow standing against the sun.

A flap of his wings had him skyborne. And he did not look back.

Something was wrong.

Bryce had known it the moment she realized she hadn’t heard from him after an hour in the Comitium.

The feeling had only worsened at his vague response to her message. No mention of why he’d been called in, what he was up to.

As if someone else had written it for him.

She’d typed out a dozen different replies to that not-Hunt message.

Please tell me everything is okay.

Type 1 if you need help.

Did I do something to upset you?

What’s wrong?

Do you need me to come to the Comitium?

Turning down an offer of dumpling soup—did someone steal this phone?

On and on, writing and deleting, until she’d written, I’m worried. Please call me. But she had no right to be worried, to demand those things of him.

So she’d settled with a pathetic Okay.

And had not heard back from him. She’d checked her phone obsessively the whole workday.

Nothing.

Worry was a writhing knot in her stomach. She didn’t even order the soup. A glance at the roof cameras showed Naomi sitting there all day, her face tight.

Bryce had gone up there around three. “Do you have any idea where he might have gone?” she asked, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

Naomi looked her over. “Hunt is fine,” she said. “He …” She stopped herself, reading something on Bryce’s face. Surprise flickered in her eyes. “He’s fine,” the angel said gently.

By the time Bryce got home, with Naomi stationed on the adjacent rooftop, she had stopped believing her.

So she’d decided to Hel with it. To Hel with caution or looking cool or any of it.

Standing in her kitchen as the clock crept toward eight, she wrote to Hunt, Please call me. I’m worried about you.

There. Let it shoot into the ether or wherever the messages floated.

She walked Syrinx one final time for the night, her phone clutched in her hand. As if the harder she gripped it, the more likely he’d be to respond.

It was eleven by the time she broke, and dialed a familiar number. Ruhn picked up on the first ring. “What’s wrong?”

How he knew, she didn’t care. “I …” She swallowed.

“Bryce.” Ruhn’s voice sharpened. Music was playing in the background, but it began to shift, as if he were moving to a quieter part of wherever he was.

“Have you seen Hunt anywhere today?” Her voice sounded thin and high.

In the background, Flynn asked, “Is everything okay?”

Ruhn just asked her, “What happened?”

“Like, have you seen Hunt at the gun range, or anywhere—”

The music faded. A door slammed. “Where are you?”

“Home.” It hit her then, the rush of how stupid this was, calling him, asking if Ruhn, of all people, knew what the Governor’s personal assassin was doing.

“Give me five minutes—”

“No, I don’t need you here. I’m fine. I just …” Her throat burned. “I can’t find him.” What if Hunt was lying in a pile of bones and flesh and blood?

When her silence dragged on, Ruhn said with quiet intensity, “I’ll put Dec and Flynn on it right—”

The enchantments hummed, and the front door unlocked.

Bryce went still as the door slowly opened. As Hunt, clad in battle-black and wearing that famed helmet, walked in.

Every step seemed like it took all of his concentration. And his scent—

Blood.

Not his own.

“Bryce?”

“He’s back,” she breathed into the phone. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said to her brother, and hung up.

Hunt paused in the center of the room.

Blood stained his wings. Shone on his leather suit. Splattered the visor of his helmet.

“What—what happened?” she managed to get out.

He began walking again. Walked straight past her, the scent of all that blood—several different types of blood—staining the air. He didn’t say a word.

“Hunt.” Any relief that had surged through her now transformed into something sharper.

He headed for his room and did not stop. She didn’t dare to move. He was a wraith, a demon, a—a shadow of death.

This male, helmeted and in his battle clothes … she didn’t know him.

Hunt reached his room, not even looking at her as he shut the door behind him.

He couldn’t stand it.

He couldn’t stand the look of pure, knee-wobbling relief on her face when he’d walked into the apartment. He’d come right back here after he’d finished because he thought she’d be asleep and he could wash off the blood without having to go back to the Comitium barracks first, but she’d been just standing in the living room. Waiting for him.

And as he’d stepped into the apartment and she’d seen and smelled the blood …

He couldn’t stand the horror and pain on her face, either.

You see what this life has done to me? he wanted to ask. But he had been beyond words. There had been only screaming until now. From the three males he’d spent hours ending, all of it done to Micah’s specifications.

Hunt strode for the bathroom and turned the shower up to scalding. He removed the helmet, the bright lights stinging his eyes without the visor’s cooling tones. Then he removed his gloves.

She had looked so horrified. It was no surprise. She couldn’t have really understood what he was, who he was, until now. Why people shied away from him. Didn’t meet his eyes.

Hunt peeled his suit off, his bruised skin already healing. The drug lords he’d ended tonight had gotten in a few blows before he’d subdued them. Before he’d pinned them to the ground, impaled on his blades.

And left them there, shrieking in pain, for hours.

Naked, he stepped into the shower, the white tiles already sweating with steam.

The scalding water blasted his skin like acid.

He swallowed his scream, his sob, his whimper, and didn’t balk from the boiling torrent.

Didn’t do anything as he let it burn everything away.

Micah had sent him on a mission. Had ordered Hunt to kill someone. Several people, from the different scents on him. Did each one of those lives count toward his hideous debt?

It was his job, his path to freedom, what he did for the Governor, and yet … And yet Bryce had never really considered it. What it did to him. What the consequences were.

It wasn’t a path to freedom. It was a path to Hel.

Bryce lingered in the living room, waiting for him to finish showering. The water kept running. Twenty minutes. Thirty. Forty.

When the clock crept up on an hour, she found herself knocking on his door. “Hunt?”

No answer. The water continued.

She cracked the door, peering into the dim bedroom. The bathroom door stood open, steam wafting out. So much steam that the bedroom had turned muggy.

“Hunt?” She pushed forward, craning her neck to see into the bright bathroom. No sign of him in the shower—

A hint of a soaked gray wing rose from behind the shower glass.