House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City)
Page 53
A hint of the warrior shone through as Randall’s eyes sharpened. “It’s dangerous?”
“No,” Bryce lied. “But we need to be a little stealthy.”
“And bringing along two humans,” Ember said testily, “is the opposite of that?”
Bryce sighed at the ceiling. “Bringing along my parents,” she countered, “would undermine my image as a cool antiquities dealer.”
“Assistant antiquities dealer,” her mother corrected.
“Ember,” Randall warned.
Bryce’s mouth tightened. Apparently, this was a conversation they’d had before. He wondered if Ember saw the flicker of hurt in her daughter’s eyes.
It was enough that Hunt found himself saying, “Bryce knows more people in this city than I do—she’s a pro at navigating all this. She’s a real asset to the 33rd.”
Ember considered him, her gaze frank. “Micah is your boss, isn’t he?”
A polite way of putting what Micah was to him.
“Yeah,” Hunt said. Randall was watching him now. “The best I’ve had.”
Ember’s stare fell on the tattoo across his brow. “That’s not saying much.”
“Mom, can we not?” Bryce sighed. “How’s the pottery business?”
Ember opened her mouth, but Randall nudged her knee again, a silent plea to let it drop. “Business,” Ember said tightly, “is going great.”
Bryce knew her mother was a brewing tempest.
Hunt was kind to them, friendly even, well aware that her mom was now on a mission to figure out why he was here, and what existed between them. But he asked Randall about his job as co-head of an organization to help humans traumatized by their military service and asked her mom about her roadside stand selling pottery of fat babies lolling in various beds of vegetables.
Her mom and Hunt were currently debating which sunball players were best this season, and Randall was still flipping through the newspaper and chiming in every now and then.
It had gutted her to hear what had happened to Hunt’s own mother. She kept the call going longer than usual because of it. Because he was right. Rubbing her aching leg beneath the table—she’d strained it again at some point during their cleaning—Bryce dug into her third croissant and said to Randall, “This still isn’t as good as yours.”
“Move back home,” her dad said, “and you could have them every day.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, eating another mouthful. She massaged her thigh. “I thought you were supposed to be the cool parent. You’ve become even worse than Mom with the nagging.”
“I was always worse than your mother,” he said mildly. “I was just better at hiding it.”
Bryce said to Hunt, “This is why my parents have to ambush me if they want to visit. I’d never let them through the door.”
Hunt just glanced at her lap—her thigh—before he asked Ember, “Have you tried to get her to a medwitch for that leg?”
Bryce froze at exactly the same heartbeat as her mother.
“What’s wrong with her leg?” Ember’s eyes dropped to the lower half of her screen as if she could somehow see Bryce’s leg beneath the camera’s range, Randall following suit.
“Nothing,” Bryce said, glaring at Hunt. “A busybody angel, that’s what.”
“It’s the wound she got two years ago,” Hunt answered. “It still hurts her.” He rustled his wings, as if unable to help the impatient gesture. “And she still insists on running.”
Ember’s eyes filled with alarm. “Why would you do that, Bryce?”
Bryce set down her croissant. “It’s none of anyone’s business.”
“Bryce,” Randall said. “If it bothers you, you should see a medwitch.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” Bryce said through her teeth.
“Then why have you been rubbing your leg under the counter?” Hunt drawled.
“Because I was trying to convince it not to kick you in the face, asshole,” Bryce hissed.
“Bryce,” her mother gasped. Randall’s eyes widened.
But Hunt laughed. He rose, picking up the empty pastry bag and squishing it into a ball before tossing it into the trash can with the skill of one of his beloved sunball players. “I think the wound still has venom lingering from the demon who attacked her. If she doesn’t get it checked out before the Drop, she’ll be in pain for centuries.”
Bryce shot to her feet, hiding her wince at the ripple of pain in her thigh. They’d never discussed it—that the kristallos’s venom might indeed still be in her leg. “I don’t need you deciding what is best for me, you—”
“Alphahole?” Hunt supplied, going to the sink and turning on the water. “We’re partners. Partners look out for each other. If you won’t listen to me about your gods-damned leg, then maybe you’ll listen to your parents.”
“How bad is it?” Randall asked quietly.
Bryce whirled back to the computer. “It’s fine.”
Randall pointed to the floor behind her. “Balance on that leg and tell me that again.”
Bryce refused to move. Filling a glass of water, Hunt smiled, pure male satisfaction.
Ember reached for her phone, which she’d discarded on the cushions beside her. “I’ll find the nearest medwitch and see if she can squeeze you in tomorrow—”
“I am not going to a medwitch,” Bryce snarled, and grabbed the rim of the laptop. “It was great chatting with you. I’m tired. Good night.”
Randall began to object, eyes shooting daggers at Ember, but Bryce slammed the laptop shut.
At the sink, Hunt was the portrait of smug, angelic arrogance. She aimed for her bedroom.
Ember, at least, waited two minutes before video-calling Bryce on her phone.
“Is your father behind this case?” Ember asked, venom coating each word. Even through the camera, her rage was palpable.
“Randall is not behind this,” Bryce said dryly, flopping onto her bed.
“Your other father,” Ember snapped. “This sort of arrangement reeks of him.”
Bryce kept her face neutral. “No. Jesiba and Micah are working together. Hunt and I are mere pawns.”
“Micah Domitus is a monster,” Ember breathed.
“All the Archangels are. He’s an arrogant ass, but not that bad.”
Ember’s eyes simmered. “Are you being careful?”
“I’m still taking birth control, yes.”
“Bryce Adelaide Quinlan, you know what I mean.”
“Hunt has my back.” Even if he’d thrown her under the bus by mentioning her leg to them.
Her mom was having none of it. “I have no doubt that sorceress would push you into harm’s way if it made her more money. Micah’s no better. Hunt might have your back, but don’t forget that these Vanir only look out for themselves. He’s Micah’s personal assassin, for fuck’s sake. And one of the Fallen. The Asteri hate him. He’s a slave because of it.”
“He’s a slave because we live in a fucked-up world.” Hazy wrath fogged her vision, but she blinked it away.
Her dad called out from the kitchen, asking where the microwave popcorn was. Ember hollered back that it was in the same exact place it always was, her eyes never leaving the phone’s camera. “I know you’ll bite my head off for it, but let me just say this.”
“Gods, Mom—”
“Hunt might be a good roommate, and he might be nice to look at, but remember that he’s a Vanir male. A very, very powerful Vanir male, even with those tattoos keeping him in line. He and every male like him is lethal.”
“Yeah, and you never let me forget it.” It was an effort not to look at the tiny scar on her mom’s cheekbone.
Old shadows banked the light in her mom’s eyes, and Bryce winced. “Seeing you with an older Vanir male—”
“I’m not with him, Mom—”
“It brings me back to that place, Bryce.” She ran a hand through her dark hair. “I’m sorry.”
Her mom might as well have punched her in the heart.
Then Ember said, “I’ll make some calls and get that medwitch appointment for your leg.”
Bryce scowled. “No, thanks.”
“You’re going to that appointment, Bryce.”
Bryce turned the phone and stretched out her leg over the covers so her mother could see. She rotated her foot. “See? No problems.”
Her mother’s face hardened to steel that matched the wedding band on her finger. “Just because Danika died doesn’t mean you need to suffer, too.”
Bryce stared at her mother, who was always so good at cutting to the heart of everything, at rendering her into rubble with a few words. “It doesn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Bullshit, Bryce.” Her mom’s eyes glazed with tears. “You think Danika would want you limping in pain for the rest of your existence? You think she would’ve wanted you to stop dancing?”
“I don’t want to talk about Danika.” Her voice trembled.
Ember shook her head in disgust. “I’ll message the medwitch’s address and number when I get the appointment for you. Good night.”
She hung up without another word.
57
Thirty minutes later, Bryce had changed into her sleep shorts and was brooding on her bed when a knock thumped on the door. “You’re a fucking traitor, Athalar,” she called.
Hunt opened the door and leaned against its frame. “No wonder you moved here, if you and your mom fight so much.”
The instinct to strangle him was overwhelming, but she said, “I’ve never seen my mom back down from a fight. It rubbed off, I guess.” She scowled at him. “What do you want?”
Hunt pushed off the door and approached. The room became too small with each step closer. Too airless. He stopped at the foot of her mattress. “I’ll go to the medwitch appointment with you.”
“I’m not going.”
“Why?”
She sucked in a breath. And then it all burst out. “Because once that wound is gone, once it stops hurting, then Danika is gone. The Pack of Devils is gone.” She shoved back the blankets, revealing her bare legs, and hitched up her silk sleep shorts so the full, twisting scar was visible. “It will all be some memory, some dream that happened for a flash and then was gone. But this scar and the pain …” Her eyes stung. “I can’t let it be erased. I can’t let them be erased.”
Hunt slowly sat beside her on the bed, as if giving her time to object. His hair skimmed his brow, the tattoo, as he studied the scar. And ran a calloused finger over it.
The touch left her skin prickling in its wake.
“You’re not going to erase Danika and the pack if you help yourself.”
Bryce shook her head, looking toward the window, but his fingers closed around her chin. He gently turned her face back to his. His dark, depthless eyes were soft. Understanding.
How many people ever saw those eyes this way? Ever saw him this way?
“Your mother loves you. She cannot—literally, on a biological level, Bryce—bear the thought of you in pain.” He let go of her chin, but his eyes remained on hers. “Neither can I.”
“You barely know me.”
“You’re my friend.” The words hung between them. His head dipped again, as if he could hide the expression on his face as he amended, “If you would like me to be.”
For a moment, she stared at him. The offer thrown out there. The quiet vulnerability. It erased any annoyance still in her veins.
“Didn’t you know, Athalar?” The tentative hope in his face nearly destroyed her. “We’ve been friends from the moment you thought Jelly Jubilee was a dildo.”
He tipped back his head and laughed, and Bryce scooted back on the bed. Propped up the pillows and turned on the TV. She patted the space beside her.
Grinning, eyes full of light in a way she’d never seen before, he sat beside her. Then he pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of her.
Bryce blew out a breath, her smile fading as she surveyed him. “My mom went through a lot. I know she’s not easy to deal with, but thanks for being so cool with her.”
“I like your mom,” Hunt said, and she believed him. “How’d she and your dad meet?”
Bryce knew he meant Randall. “My mom ran from my biological father before he found out she was pregnant. She wound up at a temple to Cthona in Korinth, and knew the priestesses there would take her in—shield her—since she was a holy pregnant vessel or whatever.” Bryce snorted. “She gave birth to me there, and I spent the first three years of my life cloistered behind the temple walls. My mom did their laundry to earn our keep. Long story short, my biological father heard a rumor that she had a child and sent goons to hunt her down.” She ground her teeth. “He told them that if there was a child that was undoubtedly his, they were to bring me to him. At any cost.”
Hunt’s mouth thinned. “Shit.”
“They had eyes at every depot, but the priestesses got us out of the city—with the hope of getting us all the way to the House of Earth and Blood headquarters in Hilene, where my mom could beg for asylum. Even my father wouldn’t dare infringe on their territory. But it’s a three days’ drive, and none of the Korinth priestesses had the ability to defend us against Fae warriors. So we drove the five hours to Solas’s Temple in Oia, partially to rest, but also to pick up our holy guard.”
“Randall.” Hunt smiled. But he arched a brow. “Wait—Randall was a sun-priest?”
“Not quite. He’d gotten back from the front a year before, but the stuff he did and saw while he was serving … It messed with him. Really badly. He didn’t want to go home, couldn’t face his family. So he’d offered himself as an acolyte to Solas, hoping that it’d somehow atone for his past. He was two weeks away from swearing his vows when the High Priest asked him to escort us to Hilene. Many of the priests are trained warriors, but Randall was the only human, and the High Priest guessed my mother wouldn’t trust a Vanir male. Right before we reached Hilene, my father’s people caught up with us. They expected to find a helpless, hysterical female.” Bryce smiled again. “What they found was a legendary sharpshooter and a mother who would move the earth itself to keep her daughter.”
Hunt straightened. “What happened?”
“What you might expect. My parents dealt with the mess afterward.” She glanced at him. “Please don’t tell that to anyone. It … There were never any questions about the Fae that didn’t return to Crescent City. I don’t want any to come up now.”
“I won’t say a word.”
Bryce smiled grimly. “After that, the House of Earth and Blood literally deemed my mother a vessel for Cthona and Randall a vessel for Solas, and blah blah religious crap, but it basically amounted to an official order of protection that my father didn’t dare fuck with. And Randall finally went home, bringing us with him, and obviously didn’t swear his vows to Solas.” Her smile warmed. “He proposed by the end of the year. They’ve been disgustingly in love ever since.”
Hunt smiled back. “It’s nice to hear that sometimes things work out for good people.”
“Yeah. Sometimes.” A taut silence stretched between them. In her bed—they were in her bed, and just this morning, she’d fantasized about him going down on her atop the kitchen counter—
Bryce swallowed hard. “Fangs and Bangs is on in five minutes. You want to watch?”
Hunt smiled slowly, as if he knew precisely why she’d swallowed, but lay back on the pillows, his wings sprawled beneath him. A predator content to wait for his prey to come to him.
Fucking Hel. But Hunt winked at her, tucking an arm behind his head. The motion made the muscles down his biceps ripple. His eyes glittered, as if he was well aware of that, too. “Hel yes.”
Hunt hadn’t realized how badly he needed to ask it. How badly he’d needed her answer.
Friends. It didn’t remotely cover whatever was between them, but it was true.
He leaned against the towering headboard, the two of them watching the raunchy show. But by the time they reached the halfway point of the episode, she’d begun to make comments about the inane plot. And he’d begun to join her.
Another show came on, a reality competition with different Vanir performing feats of strength and agility, and it felt only natural to watch that, too. All of it felt only natural. He let himself settle into the feeling.
And wasn’t that the most dangerous thing he’d ever done.
58
Her mother messaged while she was dressing for work the next morning, with the time and location of a medwitch appointment. Eleven today. It’s five blocks from the gallery. Please go.
Bryce didn’t write back. She certainly wouldn’t be going to the appointment.
Not when she had another one scheduled with the Meat Market.
Hunt had wanted to wait until night, but Bryce knew that the vendors would be much more likely to chat during the quieter daytime hours, when they wouldn’t be trying to entice the usual evening buyers.
“You’re quiet again today,” Bryce murmured as they wove through the cramped pathways of the warehouse. This was the third they’d visited so far—the other two had quickly proven fruitless.
No, the vendors didn’t know anything about drugs. No, that was a stereotype of the Meat Market that they did not appreciate. No, they did not know anyone who might help them. No, they were not interested in marks for information, because they really did not know anything useful at all.
Hunt had stayed a few stalls away during every discussion, because no one would talk with a legionary and Fallen slave.
Hunt held his wings tucked in tight. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that we’re missing that medwitch appointment right now.”
She never should have mentioned it.
“I don’t remember giving you permission to shove your nose into my business.”
“We’re back to that?” He huffed a laugh. “I’d think cuddling in front of the TV allowed me to at least be able to voice my opinions without getting my head bitten off.”
She rolled her eyes. “We didn’t cuddle.”