Look toward where it hurts the most.

Fuck the Viper Queen. Fuck everything.

Bryce launched into a run—a steady, swift run, despite the flimsy flats she’d switched into at the gallery. A run not toward anything or from anything, but just … movement. The pounding of her feet on pavement, the heaving of her breath.

Bryce ran and ran, until sounds returned and the haze receded and she could escape the screaming labyrinth of her mind. It wasn’t dancing, but it would do.

Bryce ran until her body screamed to stop. Ran until her phone buzzed and she wondered if Urd herself had extended a golden hand. The phone call was swift, breathless.

Minutes later, Bryce slowed to a walk as she approached the White Raven. And then stopped entirely before the alcove tucked into the wall just beside its service doors. Sweat ran down her neck, into her dress, soaking the green fabric as she again pulled out her phone.

But she didn’t call Hunt. He hadn’t interrupted her, but she knew he was overhead.

A few drops of rain splattered the pavement. She hoped it poured on Athalar all night.

Her fingers hesitated on the screen, and she sighed, knowing she shouldn’t.

But she did. Standing there in that same alcove where she’d exchanged some of her final messages with Danika, she pulled up the thread. It burned her eyes.

She scrolled upward, past all those final, happy words and teasing. To the photo Danika had sent that afternoon of herself and the pack at the sunball game, decked out in CCU gear. In the background, Bryce could make out the players on the field—Ithan’s powerful form among them.

But her gaze drifted to Danika’s face. That broad smile she’d known as well as her own.

I love you, Bryce. The worn memory of that mid-May day during their senior year tugged at her, sucked her in.

The hot road bit into Bryce’s knees through her torn jeans, her scraped hands trembling as she kept them interlocked behind her head, where she’d been ordered to hold them. The pain in her arm sliced like a knife. Broken. The males had made her put her hands up anyway.

The stolen motorcycle was no more than scrap metal on the dusty highway, the unmarked semitruck pulled over twenty feet away left idle. The rifle had been thrown into the olive grove beyond the mountain road, wrenched from Bryce’s hands in the accident that had led them here. The accident Danika had shielded her from, wrapping her body around Bryce’s. Danika had taken the shredding of the asphalt for them both.

Ten feet away, hands also behind her head, Danika bled from so many places her clothes were soaked with it. How had it come to this? How had things gone so terribly wrong?

“Where are those fucking bullets?” the male from the truck shrieked to his cronies, his empty gun—that blessedly, unexpectedly empty gun—clenched in his hand.

Danika’s caramel eyes were wide, searching, as they remained on Bryce’s face. Sorrow and pain and fear and regret—all of it was written there.

“I love you, Bryce.” Tears rolled down Danika’s face. “And I’m sorry.”

She had never said those words before. Ever. Bryce had teased her for the past three years about it, but Danika had refused to say them.

Motion caught Bryce’s attention to their left. Bullets had been found in the truck’s cab. But her gaze remained on Danika. On that beautiful, fierce face.

She let go, like a key turning in a lock. The first rays of the sun over the horizon.

And Bryce whispered, as those bullets came closer to that awaiting gun and the monstrous male who wielded it, “Close your eyes, Danika.”

Bryce blinked, the shimmering memory replaced by the photo still glaring from her screen. Of Danika and the Pack of Devils years later—so happy and young and alive.

Mere hours from their true end.

The skies opened, and wings rustled above, reminding her of Athalar’s hovering presence. But she didn’t bother to look as she strode into the club.

 

 

25

Hunt knew he’d fucked up. And he was in deep shit with Micah—if Micah found out that he’d revealed the truth about that night.

He doubted Quinlan had made that call—either to the sorceress or to Micah’s office—and he’d make sure she didn’t. Maybe he’d bribe her with a new pair of shoes or some purse or whatever the fuck might be enticing enough to keep her mouth shut. One fuckup, one misstep, and he had few illusions about how Micah would react.

He let Quinlan run through the city, trailing her from the Old Square into the dark wasteland of Asphodel Meadows, then into the CBD, and back to the Old Square again.

Hunt flew above her, listening to the symphony of honking cars, thumping bass, and the brisk April wind whispering through the palms and cypresses. Witches on brooms soared down the streets, some close enough to touch the roofs of the cars they passed. So different from the angels, Hunt included, who always kept above the buildings when flying. As if the witches wanted to be a part of the bustle the angels defined themselves by avoiding.

While he’d trailed Quinlan, Justinian had called with the information on the kristallos, which amounted to a whole lot of nothing. A few myths that matched with what they already knew. Vik had called five minutes after that: the Viper Queen’s alibis checked out.

Then Isaiah had called, confirming that the victim in the alley was indeed a missing acolyte. He knew Danaan’s suspicions were right: it couldn’t be coincidence that they’d been at the temple yesterday, talking about the Horn and the demon that had slaughtered Danika and the Pack of Devils, and now one of its acolytes had died at the kristallos’s claws.

A Fae girl. Barely more than a child. Acid burned through his stomach at the thought.

He shouldn’t have brought Quinlan to the murder scene. Shouldn’t have pushed her into going, so blinded by his damn need to get this investigation solved quickly that he hadn’t thought twice about her hesitation.

He hadn’t realized until he’d seen her look at the pulped body, until her face had gone white as death, that her quiet wasn’t calm at all. It was shock. Trauma. Horror. And he’d shoved her into it.

He’d fucked up, and Ruhn had been right to call him on that, but—shit.

He’d taken one look at Quinlan’s ashen face and known she hadn’t been behind these murders, or even remotely involved. And he was a giant fucking asshole for even entertaining the idea. For even telling her she’d been on his list.

He rubbed his face. He wished Shahar were here, soaring beside him. She’d always let him talk out various strategies or issues during the five years he’d been with her 18th, always listened, and asked questions. Challenged him in a way no one else had.

By the time an hour had passed and the rain had begun, Hunt had planned a whole speech. He doubted Quinlan wanted to hear it, or would admit what she’d felt today, but he owed her an apology. He’d lost so many essential parts of himself over these centuries of enslavement and war, but he liked to think he hadn’t lost his basic decency. At least not yet.

After completing those two thousand–plus kills he still had to make if he failed to solve this case, however, he couldn’t imagine he’d have even that left. Whether the person he’d be at that point would deserve freedom, he didn’t know. Didn’t want to think about it.

But then Bryce got a phone call—got one, didn’t make one, thank fuck—and didn’t break her stride to answer it. Too high up to hear, he could only watch as she’d shifted directions again and aimed—he realized ten minutes later—for Archer Street.