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

Bryce typed in SabineSucks.

No luck. Though she’d done it the other day, she again typed in Danika’s birthday. Her own birthday. The holy numbers. Nothing.

Her phone buzzed, and a message from Ruhn lit up her screen.

He woke up, took his potions like a good boy, and demanded to know where you were.

Ruhn added, He’s not a bad male.

She wrote back, No, he’s not.

Ruhn replied, He’s sleeping again, but seemed in good enough spirits, all things considered.

A pause, and then her brother wrote, He told me to tell you thanks. For everything.

Bryce read the messages three times before she looked at the interface again. And typed in the only other password she could think of. The words written on the back of a leather jacket she’d worn constantly for the last two years. The words inked on her own back in an ancient alphabet. Danika’s favorite phrase, whispered to her by the Oracle on her sixteenth birthday.

The Old Language of the Fae didn’t work. Neither did the formal tongue of the Asteri.

So she wrote it in the common language.

Through love, all is possible.

The login screen vanished. And a list of files appeared.

Most were reports on Redner’s latest projects: improving tracking quality on phones; comparing the speed at which shifters could change forms; analyzing the healing rates of witch magic versus Redner medicines. Boring everyday science.

She’d almost given up when she noticed a subfolder: Party Invites.

Danika had never been organized enough to keep such things, let alone put them in a folder. She either deleted them right away or let them rot in her inbox, unanswered.

It was enough of an anomaly that Bryce clicked on it and found a list of folders within. Including one titled Bryce.

A file with her name on it. Hidden in another file. Exactly as Bryce had hidden her own job applications on this computer.

“What is that?” Lehabah whispered at her shoulder.

Bryce opened the file. “I don’t know. I never sent invites to her work address.”

The folder contained a single photo.

“Why does she have a picture of her old jacket?” Lehabah asked. “Was she going to sell it?”

Bryce stared and stared at the image. Then she moved, logging out of the account before running up the stairs to the showroom, where she grabbed the leather jacket from her chair.

“It was a clue,” she said breathlessly to Lehabah as she flew back down the stairs, fingers running and pawing over every seam of the jacket. “The photo is a fucking clue—”

Something hard snagged her fingers. A lump. Right along the vertical line of the L in love.

“Through love, all is possible,” Bryce whispered, and grabbed a pair of scissors from the cup on the table. Danika had even tattooed the hint on Bryce’s fucking back, for fuck’s sake. Lehabah peered over her shoulder as Bryce cut into the leather.

A small, thin metal rectangle fell onto the table. A flash drive.

“Why would she hide that in her coat?” Lehabah asked, but Bryce was already moving again, hands shaking as she fitted the drive into the slot on her laptop.

Three unmarked videos lay within.

She opened the first video. She and Lehabah watched in silence.

Lehabah’s whisper filled the library, even over the scratching of the nøkk.

“Gods spare us.”





64

Hunt had managed to get out of bed and prove himself alive enough that Ruhn Danaan had finally left. He had no doubt the Fae Prince had called his cousin to inform her, but it didn’t matter: Bryce was home in fifteen minutes.

Her face was white as death, so ashen that her freckles stood out like splattered blood. No sign of anything else amiss, not one thread on her black dress out of place.

“What.” He was instantly at the door, wincing as he surged from where he’d been on the couch watching the evening news coverage of Rigelus, Bright Hand of the Asteri, giving a pretty speech about the rebel conflict in Pangera. It’d be another day or two before he could walk without pain. Another several weeks until his wings grew back. A few days after that until he could test out flying. Tomorrow, probably, the insufferable itching would begin.

He remembered every miserable second from the first time he’d had his wings cut off. All the surviving Fallen had endured it. Along with the insult of having their wings displayed in the crystal palace of the Asteri as trophies and warnings.

But she first asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” Lie. Syrinx pranced at his feet, showering his hand with kisses. “What’s wrong?”

Bryce wordlessly closed the door. Shut the curtains. Yanked out her phone from her jacket pocket, pulled up an email—from herself to herself—and clicked on an attached file. “Danika had a flash drive hidden in the lining of her jacket,” Bryce said, voice shaking, and led him back to the couch, helping him to sit as the video loaded. Syrinx leapt onto the cushions, curling up beside him. Bryce sat on his other side, so close their thighs pressed together. She didn’t seem to notice. After a heartbeat, Hunt didn’t, either.

It was grainy, soundless footage of a padded cell.

At the bottom of the video, a ticker read: Artificial Amplification for Power Dysfunction, Test Subject 7.

A too-thin human female sat in the room in a med-gown. “What the fuck is this?” Hunt asked. But he already knew.