House of Earth and Blood

“Bryce. Just stay out of trouble—on all fronts. For whatever reason, this Summit is important to him. He’s been on edge about it—beyond the whole everyone-needing-to-behave-themselves bullcrap.” He sighed. “I haven’t seen him this riled since two years ago …”

The words trailed off as he caught himself. But she got his meaning. Since two years ago. Since Danika. And Connor.

The glass in her hands cracked.

“Easy,” Ruhn murmured. “Easy.”

She couldn’t stop clutching the glass, couldn’t get her body to back down from the primal fury that surged up, up—

The heavy crystal glass exploded in her hands, water spraying across the golden bar. The bartender whirled, but kept away. No one along the bar dared look for more than a breath—not at the Crown Prince of the Valbaran Fae.

Ruhn gripped Bryce’s face with a hand. “Take a fucking breath.”

That horrible, useless Fae side of her obeyed the dominance in his command, her body falling back on instincts that had been bred into her, despite her best attempts to ignore them.

Bryce sucked in a breath, then another. Gasping, shuddering sounds.

But with each breath, the blinding wrath receded. Eddied away.

Ruhn held her gaze until she stopped snarling, until she could see clearly. Then he slowly released her face—and took a deep breath of his own. “Fuck, Bryce.”

She stood on wobbling legs and adjusted the strap of her purse over her shoulder, making sure Maximus’s outrageous check was still inside. “Message received. I’ll lie low and act my classiest until the Summit.”

Ruhn scowled and slid off the stool with familiar Fae grace. “Let me walk you home.”

“I don’t need you to.” Besides, no one went to her apartment. Which wasn’t technically even her apartment, but that was beside the point. Only her mom and Randall, and occasionally Juniper if she ever left the dance studio, but no one else was allowed inside. It was her sanctuary, and she didn’t want Fae scents anywhere near it.

But Ruhn ignored her refusal and scanned the bar. “Where’s your coat?”

She clenched her jaw. “I didn’t bring one.”

“It’s barely spring.”

She stomped past him, wishing she’d worn boots instead of stilettos. “Then it’s a good thing I have my alcohol sweater on, isn’t it?” A lie. She hadn’t touched a drink in nearly two years.

Ruhn didn’t know that, though. Nor did anyone else.

He trailed her. “You’re hilarious. Glad all those tuition dollars went to something.”

She strode down the stairs. “At least I went to college and didn’t sit at home on a pile of Daddy’s cash, playing video games with my dickbag friends.”

Ruhn growled, but Bryce was already halfway down the staircase to the dance floor. Moments later, she was elbowing her way through the crowds between the pillars, then breezing down the few steps into the glass-enclosed courtyard—still flanked on two sides by the temple’s original stone walls—and toward the enormous iron doors. She didn’t wait to see if Ruhn still trailed before she slipped out, waving at the half-wolf, half-daemonaki bouncers, who returned the gesture.

They were good guys—years ago, on rougher nights, they had always made sure Bryce got into a taxi. And that the driver knew exactly what would happen if she didn’t get home in one piece.

She made it a block before she sensed Ruhn catching up, a storm of temper behind her. Not close enough for someone to know they were together, but near enough for her senses to be full of his scent, his annoyance.

At least it kept any would-be predators from approaching her.

When Bryce reached the glass-and-marble lobby of her building, Marrin, the ursine shifter behind the front desk, buzzed her through the double doors with a friendly wave. Pausing with a hand on the glass doors, she glanced over a shoulder to where Ruhn leaned against a black-painted lamppost. He lifted a hand in farewell—a mockery of one.

She flipped him off and walked into her building. A quick hello to Marrin, an elevator ride up to the penthouse, five levels above, and the small cream-colored hallway appeared. She sighed, heels sinking into the plush cobalt runner that flowed between her apartment and the one across the hall, and opened her purse. She found her keys by the glow of the firstlight orb in the bowl atop the blackwood table against the wall, its radiance gilding the white orchid drooping over it.

Bryce unlocked her door, first by key, then by the finger pad beside the knob. The heavy locks and spells hissed as they faded away, and she stepped into her dark apartment. The scent of lilac oil from her diffuser caressed her as Syrinx yowled his greeting and demanded to be immediately released from his crate. But Bryce leaned back against the door.

She hated knowing that Ruhn still lurked on the street below, the Crown Fucking Prince of Possessive and Aggressive Alphaholes, staring at the massive floor-to-ceiling wall of windows across the great room before her, waiting for the lights to come on.

His banging on the door in three minutes would be inevitable if she refused to turn on the lights. Marrin wouldn’t be stupid enough to stop him. Not Ruhn Danaan. There had never been a door shut for him, not once in his entire life.

But she wasn’t in the mood for that battle. Not tonight.

Bryce flicked on the panel of lights beside the door, illuminating the pale wood floors, the white plush furniture, the matching white walls. All of it as pristine as the day she’d moved in, almost two years ago—all of it far above her pay grade.

All of it paid for by Danika. By that stupid fucking will.

Syrinx grumbled, his cage rattling. Another possessive and aggressive alphahole. But a small, fuzzy one, at least.

With a sigh, Bryce kicked off her heels, unhooked her bra at last, and went to let the little beast out of his cage.

9

“Please.”

The male’s whimper was barely discernible with the blood filling his mouth, his nostrils. But he still tried again. “Please.”

Hunt Athalar’s sword dripped blood onto the soaked carpet of the dingy apartment in the Meadows. Splatters of it coated the visor of his helmet, speckling his line of vision as he surveyed the lone male standing.

Kneeling, technically.

The male’s friends littered the living room floor, one of them still spurting blood from what was now his stump of a neck. His severed head lay on the sagging sofa, gaping face rolled into the age-flattened cushions.

“I’ll tell you everything,” the male pleaded, sobbing as he pressed his hand against the gash on his shoulder. “They didn’t tell you all of it, but I can.”

The male’s terror filled the room, overpowering the scent of blood, its reek as bad as stale piss in an alley.

Hunt’s gloved hand tightened on his blade. The male noted it and began shaking, a stain paler than blood leaking across his pants. “I’ll tell you more,” the man tried again.

Hunt braced his feet, rooting his strength into the floor, and slashed his blade.

The male’s innards spilled onto the carpet with a wet slap. Still the male kept screaming.

So Hunt kept working.

Hunt made it to the Comitium barracks without anyone seeing him.

At this hour, the city at least appeared asleep. The five buildings that made up the Comitium’s complex did, too. But the cameras throughout the 33rd Legion’s barracks—the second of the Comitium’s spire-capped towers—saw everything. Heard everything.