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

Bryce looked at Isaiah, whose face was grim, for an explanation. The commander said to her, to the confused Amelie, “The Living Death is when an angel’s wings are cut off.”

Bryce shook her head. “No, please—”

But Hunt met Micah’s rock-solid stare, read the fairness in it. He lowered himself to his knees and removed his jacket, then his shirt.

“I don’t need to press charges,” Amelie insisted. “Sabine, I don’t want this. Let it go.”

Micah stalked toward Hunt, a shining double-edged sword appearing in his hand.

Bryce flung herself in the Archangel’s path. “Please—please—” The scent of her tears filled the office.

Viktoria instantly appeared at her side. Holding her back. The wraith’s whisper was so quiet Hunt barely heard it. “They will grow back. In several weeks, his wings will grow back.”

But it would hurt like Hel. Hurt so badly that Hunt now took steadying, bracing breaths. Plunged down into himself, into that place where he rode out everything that had ever been done to him, every task he’d been assigned, every life he’d been ordered to take.

“Sabine, no,” Amelie insisted. “It’s gone far enough.”

Sabine said nothing. Just stood there.

Hunt spread his wings and lifted them, holding them high over his back so the slice might be clean.

Bryce began shouting something, but Hunt only looked at Micah. “Do it.”

Micah didn’t so much as nod before his sword moved.

Pain, such as Hunt had not experienced in two hundred years, raced through him, short-circuiting every—

Hunt jolted into consciousness to Bryce screaming.

It was enough of a summons that he forced his head to clear, even around the agony down his back, his soul.

He must have blacked out only for a moment, because his wings were still spurting blood from where they lay like two fallen branches on the floor of Micah’s office.

Amelie looked like she was going to be sick; Sabine was smirking, and Bryce was now at his side, his blood soaking her pants, her hands, as she sobbed, “Oh gods, oh gods—”

“We’re settled,” Sabine said to Micah, who punched a button on his phone to call for a medwitch.

He’d paid for his actions, and it was over, and he could go home with Bryce—

“You are a disgrace, Sabine.” Bryce’s words speared through the room as she bared her teeth at the Prime Apparent. “You are a disgrace to every wolf who has ever walked this planet.”

Sabine said, “I don’t care what a half-breed thinks of me.”

“You didn’t deserve Danika,” Bryce growled, shaking. “You didn’t deserve her for one second.”

Sabine halted. “I didn’t deserve a selfish, spineless brat for a daughter, but that’s not how it turned out, is it?”

Dimly, from far away, Bryce’s snarl cut through Hunt’s pain. He couldn’t reach her in time, though, as she surged to her feet, wincing in agony at her still-healing leg.

Micah stepped in front of her. Bryce panted, sobbing through her teeth. But Micah stood there, immovable as a mountain. “Take Athalar out of here,” the Archangel said calmly, the dismissal clear. “To your home, the barracks, I don’t care.”

But Sabine, it seemed, had decided to stay. To give Bryce a piece of her vicious mind.

Sabine said to her, low and venomous, “I sought out the Under-King last winter, did you know that? To get answers from my daughter, with whatever speck of her energy lives on in the Sleeping City.”

Bryce stilled. The pure stillness of the Fae. Dread filled her eyes.

“Do you know what he told me?” Sabine’s face was inhuman. “He said that Danika would not come. She would not obey my summons. My pathetic daughter would not even deign to meet me in her afterlife. For the shame of what she did. How she died, helpless and screaming, begging like one of you.” Sabine seemed to hum with rage. “And do you know what the Under-King told me when I demanded again that he summon her?”

No one else dared speak.

“He told me that you, you piece of trash, had made a bargain with him. For her. That you had gone to him after her death and traded your spot in the Bone Quarter in exchange for Danika’s passage. That you worried she would be denied access because of her cowardly death and begged him to take her in your stead.”

Even Hunt’s pain paused at that.

“That wasn’t why I went!” Bryce snapped. “Danika wasn’t a coward for one fucking moment of her life!” Her voice broke as she shouted the last words.

“You had no right,” Sabine exploded. “She was a coward, and died like one, and deserved to be dumped into the river!” The Alpha was screaming. “And now she is left with eons of shame because of you! Because she should not be there, you stupid whore. And now she must suffer for it!”

“That’s enough,” Micah said, his words conveying his order. Get out.

Sabine just let out a dead, cold laugh and turned on her heel.

Bryce was still sobbing when Sabine strutted out, a stunned Amelie on her heels. The latter murmured as she shut the door, “I’m sorry.”

Bryce spat at her.

It was the last thing Hunt saw before darkness swept in again.

She would never forgive them. Any of them.