House of Earth and Blood
“Just get inside.” Bryce left Hunt in the doorway and walked to her desk, where she hauled open the bottom drawer to yank out a reusable bottle. She drank straight from it.
Hunt shut the door after himself. “A little early to be drinking, isn’t it?”
She didn’t bother to correct him, just took another sip and slid into her chair.
He eyed her. “You gonna tell me what this is about?”
A polite but insistent thump-thump-thump came from the iron door down to the library. Hunt’s wings snapped shut as he turned his head toward the heavy metal slab.
Another tap-tap-tap filled the showroom atrium. “BB,” Lehabah said mournfully through the door. “BB, are you all right?”
Bryce rolled her eyes. Cthona spare her.
Hunt asked too casually, “Who is that?”
A third little knock-knock-knock. “BB? BB, please say you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” Bryce called. “Go back downstairs and do your job.”
“I want to see you with my own eyes,” Lehabah said, sounding for all the world like a concerned aunt. “I can’t focus on my work until then.”
Hunt’s brows twitched toward each other—even as his lips tugged outward.
Bryce said to him, “One, hyperbole is an art form for her.”
“Oh, BB, you can be so terribly cruel—”
“Two, very few people are allowed downstairs, so if you report to Micah about it, we’re done.”
“I promise,” Hunt said warily. “Though Micah can make me talk if he insists.”
“Then don’t give him a reason to be curious about it.” She set the bottle on her desk, and found her legs were surprisingly sturdy. Hunt still towered over her. The horrible twining thorns tattooed across his brow seemed to suck the light from the room.
But Hunt rubbed his jaw. “A lot of the stuff down there is contraband, isn’t it.”
“Surely you’ve realized most of the shit in here is contraband. Some of these books and scrolls are the last known copies in existence.” She pursed her lips, then added quietly, “A lot of people suffered and died to preserve what’s in the library downstairs.”
More than that, she wouldn’t say. She hadn’t been able to read most of the books, since they were in long-dead languages or in codes so clever only highly trained linguists or historians might decipher them, but she’d finally learned last year what most of them were. Knew the Asteri and the Senate would order them destroyed. Had destroyed all other copies. There were normal books in there, too, which Jesiba acquired mostly for her own uses—possibly even for the Under-King. But the ones that Lehabah guarded … those were the ones people would kill for. Had killed for.
Hunt nodded. “I won’t breathe a word.”
She assessed him for a moment, then turned to the iron door. “Consider this your birthday present, Lele,” she muttered through the metal.
The iron door opened on a sigh, revealing the pine-green carpeted staircase that led straight down into the library. Hunt almost crashed into her as Lehabah floated up between them, her fire shining bright, and purred, “Hello.”
The angel examined the fire sprite hovering a foot away from his face. She was no longer than Bryce’s hand, her flaming hair twirling above her head.
“Well, aren’t you beautiful,” Hunt said, his voice low and soft in a way that made every instinct in Bryce sit up straight.
Lehabah flared as she wrapped her plump arms around herself and ducked her head.
Bryce shook off the effects of Hunt’s voice. “Stop pretending to be shy.”
Lehabah cut her a simmering glare, but Hunt lifted a finger for her to perch on. “Shall we?”
Lehabah shone ruby red, but floated over to his scarred finger and sat, smiling at him beneath her lashes. “He is very nice, BB,” Lehabah observed as Bryce walked down the stairs, the sun-chandelier blinking to life again. “I don’t see why you complain so much about him.”
Bryce scowled over her shoulder. But Lehabah was making mooncalf eyes at the angel, who gave Bryce a wry smile as he trailed her into the library’s heart.
Bryce looked ahead quickly.
Maybe Lehabah had a point about Athalar’s looks.
Bryce was aware of every step downward, every rustle of Hunt’s wings mere steps behind her. Every bit of air that he filled with his breath, his power, his will.
Other than Jesiba, Syrinx, and Lehabah, only Danika had been down here with her before.
Syrinx stirred enough from his nap to see that they had a guest—and his little lion’s tail whacked against the velvet sofa. “Syrie says you can brush him now,” Lehabah told Hunt.
“Hunt is busy,” Bryce said, heading for the table where she’d left the book open.
“Syrie talks, does he?”
“According to her, he does,” Bryce muttered, scanning the table for—right, she’d put the list on Lehabah’s table. She aimed for it, heels sinking deep into the carpet.
“There must be thousands of books in here,” Hunt said, surveying the towering shelves.
“Oh yes,” Lehabah said. “But half of this is also Jesiba’s private collection. Some of the books date all the way back to—”
“Ahem,” Bryce said.
Lehabah stuck out her tongue and said in a conspiratorial whisper to Hunt, “BB is cranky because she hasn’t been able to make her list.”
“I’m cranky because I’m hungry and you’ve been a pain in my ass all morning.”
Lehabah floated off Hunt’s finger to rush to her table, where she plopped on her doll’s couch and said to the angel, who looked torn between wincing and laughing, “BB pretends to be mean, but she’s a softie. She bought Syrie because Jesiba was going to gift him to a warlord client in the Farkaan mountains—”
“Lehabah—”
“It’s true.”
Hunt examined the various tanks throughout the room and the assortment of reptiles within them, then the empty waters of the massive aquarium. “I thought he was some designer pet.”
“Oh, he is,” Lehabah said. “Syrinx was stolen from his mother as a cub, then traded for ten years around the world, then Jesiba bought him to be her pet, then Bryce bought him—his freedom, I mean. She even had proof of his freedom certified. No one can ever buy him again.” She pointed to the chimera. “You can’t see it with him lying down like that, but he’s got the freed brand on his front right paw. The official C and everything.”
Hunt twisted from the gloomy water to look Bryce over.
She crossed her arms. “What? You did the assuming.”
His eyes flickered. Whatever the fuck that meant.
She tried not to look at his own wrist, though—the SPQM stamped there. She wondered if he was resisting the same urge; if he was contemplating whether he’d ever get that C one day.
But then Lehabah said to Hunt, “How much do you cost to buy, Athie?”
Bryce cut in, “Lele, that’s rude. And don’t call him Athie.”
She sent up a puff of smoke. “He and I are of the same House, and are both slaves. My great-grandmother fought in his 18th Legion during their rebellion. I am allowed to ask.”