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

Bryce lay down next to Hunt, not daring to touch his ravaged back.

Her phone buzzed. Ithan had written, I had no part in what went down today.

Bryce wrote back, You disgust me. All of you.

Ithan didn’t reply, and she put her phone on silent before she let out a long breath and leaned her brow against Hunt’s shoulder.

She’d find a way to make this right. Somehow. Someday.

Hunt’s eyes cracked open, pain a steady throb through him. Its sharpness was dulled—likely by some sort of potion or concoction of drugs.

The steady counterweight that should have been on his back was gone. The emptiness hit him like a semitruck. But soft, feminine breathing filled the darkness. A scent like paradise filled his nose, settled him. Soothed the pain.

His eyes adjusted to the dark enough to know that he was in Bryce’s bedroom. That she was lying beside him. Medical supplies and vials lay next to the bed. All for him, many looking used. The clock read four in the morning. How many hours had she sat up, tending to him?

Her hands were tucked in at her chest, as if she had fallen asleep beseeching the gods.

He mouthed her name, his tongue as dry as sandpaper.

Pain rippled through his body, but he managed to stretch out an arm. Managed to slide it over her waist and tuck her into him. She made a soft sound and nuzzled her head into his neck.

Something deep in him shifted and settled. What she’d said and done today, what she’d revealed to the world in her pleading for him … It was dangerous. For both of them. So, so dangerous.

If he were wise, he’d find somehow to pull away. Before this thing between them met its inevitable, horrible end. As all things in the Republic met a horrible end.

And yet Hunt couldn’t bring himself to remove his arm. To avoid the instinct to breathe in her scent and listen to her soft breathing.

He didn’t regret it, what he’d done. Not one bit of it.

But there might come a day when that wouldn’t be true. A day that might dawn very soon.

So Hunt savored the feel of Bryce. Her scent and breathing.

Savored every second of it.





63

“Is Athie okay, BB?”

Bryce rubbed her eyes as she studied the computer screen in the gallery library. “He’s sleeping it off.”

Lehabah had cried this morning when Bryce had trudged in to tell her what had occurred. She’d barely noticed that her leg had no pain—not a whisper. She’d wanted to stay home, to care for Hunt, but when she’d called Jesiba, the answer had been clear: No.

She’d spent the first half of the morning filling out job applications.

And had sent each and every one of them in.

She didn’t know where the Hel she would end up, but getting out of this place was the first step. Of many.

She’d taken a few more today.

Ruhn had picked up on the first ring, and come right over to the apartment.

Hunt had still been asleep when she’d left him in her brother’s care. She didn’t want anyone from that fucking legion in her house. Didn’t want to see Isaiah or Viktoria or any of the triarii anytime soon.

Ruhn had taken one glance at Hunt’s mutilated back and gagged. But he’d promised to stay on the pills-and-wound-care schedule she laid out for him.

“Micah went easy on him,” Ruhn said when she stopped by at lunch, toying with one of his earrings. “Really fucking easy. Sabine had the right to call for his death.” As a slave, Hunt had no rights whatsoever. None.

“I will never forget it as long as I live,” Bryce answered, her voice dull. The flash of Micah’s sword. Hunt’s scream, as if his soul was being shredded. Sabine’s smile.

“I should have been the one to shut Amelie up.” Shadows flickered in the room.

“Well, you weren’t.” She measured the potion for Ruhn to give Hunt at the top of the hour.

Ruhn stretched an arm over the back of the sofa. “I’d like to be, Bryce.”

She met her brother’s gaze. “Why?”

“Because you’re my sister.”

She didn’t have a response—not yet.

She could have sworn hurt flashed in his eyes at her silence. She was out of her apartment in another minute, and barely reached the gallery before Jesiba had called, raging about how Bryce wasn’t ready for the two o’clock meeting with the owl shifter who was ready to buy a marble statuette worth three million gold marks.

Bryce executed the meeting, and the sale, and didn’t hear half of what was said.

Sign, stamp, goodbye.

She returned to the library by three. Lehabah warmed her shoulder as she opened her laptop. “Why are you on Redner Industries’ site?”

Bryce just stared at the two small fields:

Username. Password.

She typed in dfendyr. The cursor hovered over the password.

Someone might be tipped off that she was trying to get in. And if she did get access, someone might very well receive an alert. But … It was a risk worth taking. She was out of options.

Lehabah read the username. “Does this somehow tie in to the Horn?”

“Danika knew something—something big,” Bryce mused.

Password. What would Danika’s password be?

Redner Industries would have told her to write something random and full of symbols.

Danika would have hated being told what to do, and would have done the opposite.