House of Earth and Blood

So Ruhn nodded. “Fine. I’ll ask him later.”

Bryce gave him that smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “Then come by the gallery tomorrow.”

Ruhn had to give himself a moment to master his shock at how easy it had been to get access. Then he said, “Be careful out there.”

If she and Athalar were right and it was some Keres rebels acting on Briggs’s request or in his honor … the political mess would be a nightmare. And if he hadn’t been wrong about that C actually being an image of the Horn, if this bombing and the acolyte’s murder were targeted warnings to them regarding their search for it … then the threat to all of them had just become a Hel of a lot deadlier.

Bryce said sweetly before continuing on, “Tell your daddy we say hello—and that he can go fuck himself.”

Ruhn gritted his teeth again, earning another grin from Athalar. Winged asshole.

The two of them strode through the door, and Ruhn’s phone rang a heartbeat after that.

“Yeah,” he said.

Ruhn could have sworn he could hear his father tense before the male drawled, “Is that how you speak to your king?”

Ruhn didn’t bother replying. His father said, “Since you couldn’t stop yourself from revealing my business, I wish to make one thing clear regarding the Horn.” Ruhn braced himself. “I don’t want the angels getting it.”

“Fine.” If Ruhn had anything to say about it, no one would get the Horn. It would go straight back to the temple, with a permanent Fae guard.

“Keep an eye on that girl.”

“Both eyes.”

“I mean it, boy.”

“So do I.” He let his father hear the growl of sincerity in his voice.

His father went on, “You, as Crown Prince, revealed the secrets of your king to the girl and Athalar. I have every right to punish you for this, you know.”

Go ahead, he wanted to say. Go ahead and do it. Do me a favor and take my title while you’re at it. The royal bloodline ends with me anyway.

Ruhn had puked after hearing it the first time when he was thirteen, sent to the Oracle for a glimpse of his future, like all Fae. The ritual had once been to foretell marriages and alliances. Today, it was more to get a feel for a child’s career and whether they’d amount to anything. For Ruhn—and for Bryce, years later—it had been a disaster.

Ruhn had begged the Oracle to tell him whether she meant he’d die before he could sire a child, or if she meant he was infertile. She only repeated her words. The royal bloodline shall end with you, Prince.

He’d been too much of a coward to tell his king what he’d learned. So he’d fed his father a lie, unable to bear the male’s disappointment and rage. The Oracle said I would be a fair and just king.

His father had been disappointed, but only that the fake prophecy hadn’t been mightier.

So, yeah. If his father wanted to strip him of his title, he’d be doing him a favor. Or even unwittingly fulfilling that prophecy at last.

Ruhn had truly worried about its meaning once—the day he’d learned he had a little sister. He’d thought it might foretell an untimely death for her. But his fears had been assuaged by the fact that she was not and would never be formally recognized as part of the royal bloodline. To his relief, she’d never questioned why, in those early years when they were still close, Ruhn hadn’t lobbied their father to publicly accept her.

The Autumn King continued, “Unfortunately, the punishment you deserve would render you unable to look for the Horn.”

Ruhn’s shadows drifted around him. “I’ll take a rain check, then.”

His father snarled, but Ruhn hung up.

27

The streets were packed with Vanir streaming from the still-chaotic White Raven, all looking for answers about what the Hel had happened. Various legionaries, Fae, and Aux pack members had erected a barricade around the site, a thrumming, opaque magic wall, but the crowds still converged.

Hunt glanced to where Bryce walked beside him, silent, glassy-eyed. Barefoot, he realized.

How long had she been barefoot? She must have lost her shoes in the explosion.

He debated offering to carry her again, or suggesting that he fly them to her apartment, but she held her arms so tightly around herself that he had a feeling one word would send her into a rage-spiral with no bottom.

The look she gave Ruhn before walking out … It made Hunt glad she wasn’t an acid-spitting viper. The male’s face would have melted.

Gods help them when the prince arrived at the gallery tomorrow.

Bryce’s doorman leapt out of his seat as they walked into the pristine lobby, asking if she was all right, if she’d been in the club. She mumbled that she was fine, and the ursine shifter surveyed Hunt with a predator’s focus. Noticing that look, she waved a hand at him, punching the elevator button, and introduced them. Hunt, this is Marrin; Marrin, this is Hunt; he’s staying with me for the foreseeable future, unfortunately. Then she was padding into the elevator, where she had to lean against the chrome rail along the back, as if she were about to collapse—

Hunt squeezed in as the doors were closing. The box was too small, too tight with his wings, and he kept them close as they shot up to the penthouse—

Bryce’s head sagged, her shoulders curving inward—

Hunt blurted, “Why won’t you make the Drop?”

The elevator doors opened and she slumped against them before she entered the elegant cream-and-cobalt hallway. But she halted at her apartment door. Then turned to him.

“My keys were in my purse.”

Her purse was now in the ruin of the club.

“Does the doorman have a spare?”

She grunted her confirmation, eyeing the elevator as if it were a mountain to climb.

Marrin busted Hunt’s balls for a good minute, checking that Bryce was alive in the hallway, asking into the hall vidcom if she approved—to which he got a thumbs-up.

When Hunt returned, he found her sitting against her door, legs up and spread enough to show a pair of hot-pink underwear. Thankfully, the hall cameras couldn’t see at that angle, but he had no doubt the shifter monitored them as Hunt helped her to her feet and handed her the spare keys.

She slowly slid in the key, then put her palm to the bespelled finger pad beside the door.

“I was waiting,” she murmured as the locks clicked open and the dim apartment lights flickered on. “We were supposed to make the Drop together. We picked two years from now.”

He knew who she meant. The reason why she no longer drank, or danced, or really seemed to live her life. The reason why she must keep that scar on her pretty, sleek thigh. Ogenas and all her sacred Mysteries knew that Hunt had punished himself for a damn long while after the colossal failure that had been the Battle of Mount Hermon. Even while he’d been tortured in the Asteri’s dungeons, he’d punished himself, flaying his own soul in a way no imperial interrogator ever could.

So maybe it was a stupid question, but he asked as they entered the apartment, “Why bother waiting now?”

Hunt stepped inside and got a good look at the place Quinlan called home. The open-concept apartment had looked nice from outside the windows, but inside …

Either she or Danika had decorated it without sparing any expense: a white deep-cushioned couch lay in the right third of the great room, set before a reclaimed wood coffee table and the massive television atop a carved oak console. A fogged-glass dining table with white leather chairs took up the left third of the space, and the center third of it went to the kitchen—white cabinets, chrome appliances, and white marble counters. All of it impeccably clean, soft, and welcoming.