House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas

It wanted to hunt. Wanted something big, juicy, and frightened.

Bryce glanced toward the dim tank, illuminated by three built-in spotlights. “Jesiba will get bored with him soon and gift him to a client,” she lied to Lehabah.

“Why does she collect us at all?” the sprite whispered. “Am I not a person, too?” She pointed to the tattoo on her wrist. “Why do they insist on this?”

“Because we live in a republic that has decided that threats to its order have to be punished—and punished so thoroughly that it makes others hesitate to rebel, too.” Her words were flat. Cold.

“Have you ever thought of what it might be like—without the Asteri?”

Bryce shot her a look. “Be quiet, Lehabah.”

“But BB—”

“Be quiet, Lehabah.” There were cameras everywhere in this library, all with audio. They were exclusive to Jesiba, yes, but to speak of it here …

Lehabah drifted to her little couch. “Athie would talk to me about it.”

“Athie is a slave with little left to lose.”

“Don’t say such things, BB,” Lehabah hissed. “There is always something left to lose.”

Bryce was in a foul spirit. Maybe there was something going on with Ruhn or Juniper. Hunt had seen her checking her phone frequently this morning, as if waiting for a call or message. None had come. At least, as far as he could tell on the walk to the gallery. And, judging by the distant, sharp look still on her face as she left just before sunset, none had come in during the day, either.

But she didn’t head home. She went to a bakery.

Hunt kept to the rooftops nearby, watching while she walked into the aqua-painted interior and walked out three minutes later with a white box in her hands.

Then she turned her steps toward the river, dodging workers and tourists and shoppers all enjoying the end of the day. If she was aware that he followed, she didn’t seem to care. Didn’t even look up once as she aimed for a wooden bench along the river walkway.

The setting sun gilded the mists veiling the Bone Quarter. A few feet down the paved walkway, the dark arches of the Black Dock loomed. No mourning families stood beneath them today, waiting for the onyx boat to take their coffin.

Bryce sat on the bench overlooking the river and the Sleeping City, the white bakery box beside her, and checked her phone again.

Sick of waiting until she deigned to talk to him about whatever was eating her up, Hunt landed quietly before sliding onto the bench’s wooden planks, the box between them. “What’s up?”

Bryce stared out at the river. She looked drained. Like that first night he’d seen her, in the legion’s holding center.

She still wasn’t looking at him when she said, “Danika would have been twenty-five today.”

Hunt went still. “It’s … Today’s Danika’s birthday.”

She glanced to her phone, discarded at her side. “No one remembered. Not Juniper or Fury—not even my mom. Last year, they remembered, but … I guess it was a onetime thing.”

“You could have asked them.”

“I know they’re busy. And …” She ran a hand through her hair. “Honestly, I thought they’d remember. I wanted them to remember. Even just a message saying something bullshitty, like I miss her or whatever.”

“What’s in the box?”

“Chocolate croissants,” she said hoarsely. “Danika always wanted them on her birthday. They were her favorite.”

Hunt looked from the box to her, then to the looming Bone Quarter across the river. How many croissants had he seen her eating these weeks? Perhaps in part because they connected her to Danika the same way that scar on her thigh did. When he looked back at her, her mouth was a tight, trembling line.

“It sucks,” she said, her voice thick. “It sucks that everyone just … moves on, and forgets. They expect me to forget. But I can’t.” She rubbed at her chest. “I can’t forget. And maybe it’s fucking weird that I bought my dead friend a bunch of birthday croissants. But the world moved on. Like she never existed.”

He watched her for a long moment. Then he said, “Shahar was that for me. I’d never met anyone like her. I think I loved her from the moment I laid eyes on her in her palace, even though she was so high above me that she might as well have been the moon. But she saw me too. And somehow, she picked me. Out of all of them, she picked me.” He shook his head, the words creaking from him as they crept from that box he’d locked them in all this while. “I would have done anything for her. I did anything for her. Anything she asked. And when it all went to Hel, when they told me it was over, I refused to believe it. How could she be gone? It was like saying the sun was gone. It just … there was nothing left if she wasn’t there.” He ran a hand through his hair. “This won’t be a consolation, but it took me about fifty years before I really believed it. That it was over. Yet even now …”

“You still love her that much?”

He held her gaze, unflinching. “After my mother died, I basically fell into my grief. But Shahar—she brought me out of that. Made me feel alive for the first time. Aware of myself, of my potential. I’ll always love her, if only for that.”

She looked to the river. “I never realized it,” she murmured. “That you and I are mirrors.”