House of Earth and Blood

Hunt merely looked her over. Saw all of that. But he said roughly, “I want to head to the Comitium in twenty. I’ll wait for you outside.”

Bryce trailed Hunt out, making sure he didn’t touch any of the books and that they didn’t grab for him, then shut the door before he’d fully walked onto the street beyond.

She sank against the iron until she sat on the carpet, and braced her forearms on her knees.

They were gone—all of them. Thanks to that demon depicted on an ancient vase. They were gone, and there would be no more wolves in her life. No more hanging out in the apartment. No more drunken, stupid dancing on street corners, or blasting music at three in the morning until their neighbors threatened to call the 33rd.

No friends who would say I love you and mean it. Syrinx and Lele came creeping in, the chimera curling up beneath her bent legs, the sprite lying belly-down on Bryce’s forearm.

“Don’t blame Athie. I think he wants to be our friend.”

“I don’t give a shit what Hunt Athalar wants.”

“June is busy with ballet, and Fury is as good as gone. Maybe it’s time for more friends, BB. You seem sad again. Like you were two winters ago. Fine one minute, then not fine the next. You don’t dance, you don’t hang out with anyone, you don’t—”

“Leave it, Lehabah.”

“Hunt is nice. And Prince Ruhn is nice. But Danika was never nice to me. Always biting and snarling. Or she ignored me.”

“Watch it.”

The sprite crawled off her arm and floated in front of her, arms wrapping across her round belly. “You can be cold as a Reaper, Bryce.” Then she was gone, whizzing off to stop a thick leather-bound tome from crawling its way up the stairs.

Bryce blew out a long breath, trying to piece the hole in her chest together.

Twenty minutes, Hunt had said. She had twenty minutes before going to question Briggs. Twenty minutes to get her shit together. Or at least pretend she had.

35

The fluorescent wands of firstlight hummed through the white-paneled, pristine corridor far beneath the Comitium. Hunt was a storm of black and gray against the shining white tiles, his steps unfaltering as he aimed for one of the sealed metal doors at the end of the long hall.

A step behind him, Bryce simply watched Hunt move—the way he cut through the world, the way the guards in the entry room hadn’t so much as checked his ID before waving them through.

She hadn’t realized that this place existed beneath the five shining towers of the Comitium. That they had cells. Interrogation rooms.

The one she’d been in the night Danika had died had been five blocks from here. A facility governed by protocols. But this place … She tried not to think about what this place was for. What laws stopped applying once one crossed over the threshold.

The lack of any scent except bleach suggested it was scrubbed down often. The drains she noted every few feet suggested—

She didn’t want to know what the drains suggested.

They reached a room without windows, and Hunt laid a palm against the circular metal lock to its left. A hum and hiss, and he shouldered open the door, peering inside before nodding to her.

The firstlights above droned like hornets. What would her own firstlight go toward, small mote that it would be? With Hunt, the explosion of energy-filled light that had probably erupted from him when he’d made the Drop had likely gone toward fueling an entire city.

She sometimes wondered about it: whose firstlight was powering her phone, or the stereo, or her coffee machine.

And now was not the time to think about random shit, she chided herself as she followed Hunt into the cell and beheld the pale-skinned man sitting there.

Two seats had been set before the metal table in the center of the room—where Briggs’s shackles were currently chained. His white jumpsuit was pristine, but—

Bryce beheld the state of his gaunt, hollow face and willed herself not to flinch. His dark hair was buzzed close to his scalp, and though not a bruise or scratch marred his skin, his deep blue eyes … empty and hopeless.

Briggs said nothing as she and Hunt claimed the seats across the table. Cameras blinked red lights in every corner, and she had no doubt someone was listening in a control room a few doors down.

“We won’t take much of your time,” Hunt said, as if noting those haunted eyes as well.

“Time is all I have now, angel. And being here is better than being … there.”

There, where they kept him in Adrestia Prison. Where they did the things to him that resulted in those broken, awful eyes.

Bryce could feel Hunt silently urging her to ask the first of their questions, and she took a breath, bracing herself to fill this humming, too-small room with her voice.

But Briggs asked, “What month is it? What’s today’s date?”

Horror coiled in her gut. This man had wanted to kill people, she reminded herself. Even if it seemed he hadn’t killed Danika, he had planned to kill plenty of others, to ignite a larger-scale war between the human and Vanir. To overthrow the Asteri. It was why he remained behind bars.

“It’s the twelfth of April,” Hunt said, his voice low, “in the year 15035.”

“It’s only been two years?”

Bryce swallowed against the dryness in her mouth. “We came to ask you about some things related to two years ago. As well as some recent events.”

Briggs looked at her then. Really looked. “Why?”

Hunt leaned back, a silent indication that this was now her show to run. “The White Raven nightclub was bombed a few days ago. Considering that it was one of your prime targets a few years ago, evidence points toward Keres being active again.”

“And you think I’m behind it?” A bitter smile curved the angular, harsh face. Hunt tensed. “I don’t know what year it is, girl. And you think I’m somehow able to make outside contact?”

“What about your followers?” Hunt said carefully. “Would they have done it in your name?”

“Why bother?” Briggs reclined in his chair. “I failed them. I failed our people.” He nodded toward Bryce. “And failed people like you—the undesirables.”

“You never represented me,” Bryce said quietly. “I abhor what you tried to do.”

Briggs laughed, a broken rasp. “When the Vanir tell you you’re not good enough for any job because of your human blood, when males like this asshole next to you just see you as a piece of ass to be fucked and then discarded, when you see your mother—it is a human mother for you, isn’t it? It always is—being treated like trash … You’ll find those self-righteous feelings fading real fast.”

She refused to reply. To think about the times she’d seen her mother ignored or sneered at—

Hunt said, “So you’re saying you’re not behind this bombing.”

“Again,” Briggs said, tugging on his shackles, “the only people I see on a daily basis are the ones who take me apart like a cadaver, and then stitch me up again before nightfall, their medwitches smoothing everything away.”

Her stomach churned. Even Hunt’s throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“Your followers wouldn’t have considered bombing the nightclub in revenge?”