House of Earth and Blood
Hunt lifted a brow. “And?”
Bryce winced. “And I couldn’t stop wondering what part of me he wanted more: blood or … you know. And then he suggested eating while eating, if you know what I mean?”
It took Hunt a second to sort it out. Then his dark eyes widened. “Oh fuck. Really?” She didn’t fail to note his glance to her legs—between them. The way his eyes seemed to darken further, something within them sharpening. “Wouldn’t that hurt?”
“I didn’t want to find out.”
Hunt shook his head, and she wondered if he was unsure whether to cringe or laugh. But the light had come back to his eyes. “No more vamps after that?”
“Definitely not. He claimed the finest pleasure was always edged in pain, but I showed him the door.”
Hunt grunted his approval. Bryce knew she probably shouldn’t, but asked carefully, “You still have a thing for Shahar?”
A muscle feathered in his jaw. He scanned the skies. “Until the day I die.”
No longing or sorrow graced the words, but she still wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the dropping sensation in her stomach.
Hunt’s eyes slid to hers at last. Bleak and lightless. “I don’t see how I can move on from loving her when she gave up everything for me. For the cause.” He shook his head. “Every time I hook up, I remember it.”
“Ah.” No arguing with that. Anything she said against it would sound selfish and whiny. And maybe she was dumb, for letting herself read into his leg touching hers or the way he’d looked at her at the shooting range or coaxed her through her panic or any of it.
He was staring at her. As if seeing all of that. His throat bobbed. “Quinlan, that isn’t to say that I’m not—”
His words were cut off by a cluster of people approaching from the other end of the street.
She glimpsed silvery blond hair and couldn’t breathe. Hunt swore. “Let’s get airborne—”
But Sabine had spotted them. Her narrow, pale face twisted in a snarl.
Bryce hated the shaking that overtook her hands. The trembling in her knees.
Hunt warned Sabine, “Keep moving, Fendyr.”
Sabine ignored him. Her stare was like being pelted with shards of ice. “I heard you’ve been showing your face again,” she seethed at Bryce. “Where the fuck is my sword, Quinlan?”
Bryce couldn’t think of anything to say, any retort or explanation. She just let Hunt lead her past Sabine, the angel a veritable wall of muscle between them.
Hunt’s hand rested on Bryce’s back as he nudged her along. “Let’s go.”
“Stupid slut,” Sabine hissed, spitting at Bryce’s feet as she passed.
Hunt stiffened, a growl slipping out, but Bryce gripped his arm in a silent plea to let it go.
His teeth gleamed as he bared them over a shoulder at Sabine, but Bryce whispered, “Please.”
He scanned her face, mouth opening to object. She made them keep walking, even as Sabine’s sneer branded itself into her back.
“Please,” Bryce whispered again.
His chest heaved, as if it took every bit of effort to reel in his rage, but he faced forward. Sabine’s low, smug laugh rippled toward them.
Hunt’s body locked up, and Bryce squeezed his arm tighter, misery coiling around her gut.
Maybe he scented it, maybe he read it on her face, but Hunt’s steps evened out. His hand again warmed her lower back, a steady presence as they walked, finally crossing the street.
They were halfway across Main when Hunt scooped her into his arms, not saying a word as he launched into the brisk skies.
She leaned her head against his chest. Let the wind drown out the roaring in her mind.
They landed on the roof of her building five minutes later, and she would have gone right down to the apartment had he not gripped her arm to stop her.
Hunt again scanned her face. Her eyes.
Us, he’d said earlier. A unit. A team. A two-person pack.
Hunt’s wings shifted slightly in the wind off the Istros. “We’re going to find whoever is behind all this, Bryce. I promise.”
And for some reason, she believed him.
She was brushing her teeth when her phone rang.
Declan Emmet.
She spat out her toothpaste before answering. “Hi.”
“You still have my number saved? I’m touched, B.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. What’s up?”
“I found something interesting in the footage. The taxpaying residents of this city should revolt at how their money’s being blown on second-rate analysts instead of people like me.”
Bryce padded into the hall, then into the great room—then to Hunt’s door. She knocked on it once, and said to Declan, “Are you going to tell me or just gloat about it?”
Hunt opened the door.
Burning. Fucking. Solas.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and from the look of it, had been in the middle of brushing his teeth, too. But she didn’t give a shit about his dental hygiene when he looked like that.
Muscles upon muscles upon muscles, all covered by golden-brown skin that glowed in the firstlights. It was outrageous. She’d seen him shirtless before, but she hadn’t noticed—not like this.
She’d seen more than her fair share of cut, beautiful male bodies, but Hunt Athalar’s blew them all away.
He was pining for a lost love, she reminded herself. Had made that very clear earlier tonight. Through an effort of will, she lifted her eyes and found a shit-eating smirk on his face.
But his smug-ass smile faded when she put Declan on speaker. Dec said, “I don’t know if I should tell you to sit down or not.”
Hunt stepped into the great room, frowning. “Just tell me,” Bryce said.
“Okay, so I’ll admit someone could easily have made a mistake. Thanks to the blackout, the footage is just darkness with some sounds. Ordinary city sounds of people reacting to the blackout. So I pulled apart each audio thread from the street outside the temple. Amped up the ones in the background that the government computers might not have had the tech to hear. You know what I heard? People giggling, goading each other to touch it.”
“Please tell me this isn’t going to end grossly,” Bryce said. Hunt snorted.
“It was people at the Rose Gate. I could hear people at the Rose Gate in FiRo daring each other to touch the disk on the dial pad in the blackout, to see if it still worked. It did, by the way. But I could also hear them oohing about the night-blooming flowers on the Gate itself.”
Hunt leaned in, his scent wrapping around her, dizzying her, as he said into the phone, “The Rose Gate is halfway across the city from Luna’s Temple.”
Declan chuckled. “Hey, Athalar. Enjoying playing houseguest with Bryce?”
“Just tell us,” Bryce said, grinding her teeth. Taking a big, careful step away from Hunt.
“Someone swapped the footage of the temple during the time of the Horn’s theft. It was clever fucking work—they patched it right in so that there isn’t so much as a flicker in the time stamp. They picked audio footage that was a near-match for what it would have sounded like at the temple, with the angle of the buildings and everything. Really smart shit. But not smart enough. The 33rd should have come to me. I’d have found an error like that.”