House of Earth and Blood
Bryce Quinlan leaned against the large ironwood desk in the center of the space, her snow-white dress clinging to every generous curve and dip.
Hunt smiled slowly, showing all his teeth.
He waited for it: the realization of who he was. Waited for her to shrink back, to fumble for the panic button or gun or whatever the fuck she thought might save her from the likes of him.
But maybe she was stupid, after all, because her answering smile was saccharine in the extreme. Her red-tinted nails idly tapped on the pristine wood surface. “You have fifteen minutes.”
Hunt didn’t tell her that this meeting would likely take a good deal longer than that.
Isaiah turned to shut the door, but Hunt knew it was already locked. Just as he knew, thanks to legion intel gathered over the years, that the small wood door behind the desk led upstairs to Jesiba Roga’s office—where a floor-to-ceiling internal window overlooked the showroom they stood in—and the simple iron door to their right led down into another full level, stocked with things that legionaries weren’t supposed to find. The enchantments on those two doors were probably even more intense than those outside.
Isaiah loosed one of his long-suffering sighs. “A murder occurred on the outskirts of the Meat Market last night. We believe you knew the victim.”
Hunt marked every reaction that flitted across her face as she maintained her perch on the edge of the desk: the slight widening of her eyes, the pause in those tapping nails, the sole blink that suggested she had a short list of possible victims and none of the options were good.
“Who?” was all she said, her voice steady. Wisps of smoke from the conical diffuser beside the computer drifted past her, carrying the bright, clean scent of peppermint. Of course she was one of those aromatherapy zealots, conned into handing over her marks for the promise of feeling happier, or being better in bed, or growing another half a brain to match the half she already had.
“Maximus Tertian,” Isaiah told her. “We have reports that you had a meeting with him in the VIP mezzanine of the White Raven two hours before his death.”
Hunt could have sworn Bryce’s shoulders sagged slightly. She said, “Maximus Tertian is dead.” They nodded. She angled her head. “Who did it?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Isaiah said neutrally.
Hunt had heard of Tertian—a creep of a vamp who couldn’t take no for an answer, and whose rich, sadistic father had taught him well. And shielded him from any fallout from his hideous behavior. If Hunt was being honest, Midgard was better off without him. Except for the headache they’d now have to endure when Tertian’s father got word that his favored son had been killed … Today’s meeting would be just the start.
Isaiah went on, “You might have been one of the last people to see him alive. Can you walk us through your encounter with him? No detail is too small.”
Bryce glanced between them. “Is this your way of feeling out whether I killed him?”
Hunt smiled slightly. “You don’t seem too cut up that Tertian’s dead.”
Those amber eyes slid to him, annoyance lighting them.
He’d admit it: males would do a lot of fucked-up things for someone who looked like that.
He’d done precisely those sort of things for Shahar once. Now he bore the halo tattooed across his brow and the slave tattoo on his wrist because of it. His chest tightened.
Bryce said, “I’m sure someone’s already said that Maximus and I parted on unfriendly terms. We met to finish up a deal for the gallery, and when it was done, he thought he was entitled to some … personal time with me.”
Hunt understood her perfectly. It lined up with everything he’d heard regarding Tertian and his father. It also offered a good amount of motive.
Bryce went on, “I don’t know where he went after the Raven. If he was killed on the outskirts of the Meat Market, I’d assume he was heading there to purchase what he wanted to take from me.” Cold, sharp words.
Isaiah’s expression grew stony. “Was his behavior last night different from how he acted during previous meetings?”
“We only interacted over emails and the phone, but I’d say no. Last night was our first face-to-face, and he acted exactly as his past behavior would indicate.”
Hunt asked, “Why not meet here? Why the Raven?”
“He got off on the thrill of acting like our deal was secretive. He claimed he didn’t trust that my boss wasn’t recording the meeting, but he really just wanted people to notice him—to see him doing deals. I had to slide him the paperwork in a bill folio, and he swapped it with one of his own, that sort of thing.” She met Hunt’s stare. “How did he die?”
The question was blunt, and she didn’t smile or blink. A girl used to being answered, obeyed, heeded. Her parents weren’t wealthy—or so her file said—yet her apartment fifteen blocks away suggested outrageous wealth. Either from this job or some shady shit that had escaped even the legion’s watchful eyes.
Isaiah sighed. “Those details are classified.”
She shook her head. “I can’t help you. Tertian and I did the deal, he got handsy, and he left.”
Every bit of the camera footage and eyewitness reports from the Raven confirmed that. But that wasn’t why they were here. What they’d been sent over to do.
Isaiah said, “And when did Prince Ruhn Danaan show up?”
“If you know everything, why bother asking me?” She didn’t wait for them to answer before she said, “You know, you two never told me your names.”
Hunt couldn’t read her expression, her relaxed body language. They hadn’t initiated contact since that night in the legion’s holding center—and neither of them had introduced themselves then. Had she even registered their faces in that drug-induced haze?
Isaiah adjusted his pristine white wings. “I’m Isaiah Tiberian, Commander of the 33rd Imperial Legion. This is Hunt Athalar, my—”
Isaiah tripped up, as if realizing that it had been a damn long time since they’d had to introduce themselves with any sort of rank attached. So Hunt did Isaiah a favor and finished with, “His Second.”
If Isaiah was surprised to hear it, that calm, pretty-boy face didn’t let on. Isaiah was, technically, his superior in the triarii and in the 33rd as a whole, even if the shit Hunt did for Micah made him directly answerable to the Governor.
Isaiah had never pulled rank, though. As if he remembered those days before the Fall, and who’d been in charge then.
As if it fucking mattered now.
No, all that mattered about that shit was that Isaiah had killed at least three dozen Imperial Legionaries that day on Mount Hermon. And Hunt now bore the burden of paying back each one of those lives to the Republic. To fulfill Micah’s bargain.
Bryce’s eyes flicked to their brows—the tattoos there. Hunt braced for the sneering remark, for any of the bullshit comments people still liked to make about the Fallen Legion and their failed rebellion. But she only said, “So, what—you two investigate crimes on the side? I thought that was Auxiliary territory. Don’t you have better things to do in the 33rd than play buddy cop?”
Isaiah, apparently not amused that there was one person in this city who didn’t fall at his feet, said a tad stiffly, “Do you have people who can verify your whereabouts after you left the White Raven?”