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

It was all she could remember. That stupid number.

“Miss—holy gods.” The line crackled. “They’re coming,” the responder breathed.

He tried to inquire about the injuries on the male, but she dropped the angel’s phone as the drugs pulled her back, yanked her down, and she swayed. The alley warped and rippled.

The angel’s gaze met hers, so full of agony she thought it was what her soul must look like.

His blood poured out between her fingers. It did not stop.





6

The half-Fae female looked like Hel.

No, not Hel, Isaiah Tiberian realized as he studied her through the one-way mirror in the legion’s holding center. She looked like death.

Looked like the soldiers he’d seen crawl off the blood-drenched battlefields of Pangera.

She sat at the metal table in the center of the interrogation room, staring at nothing. Just as she had done for hours now.

A far cry from the screaming, thrashing female Isaiah and his unit had found in the Old Square alley, her gray dress ripped, her left thigh gushing enough blood that he wondered if she’d faint. She’d been half-wild, either from the sheer terror of what had occurred, the grief sinking in, or the drugs that had been coursing through her system.

Likely a combination of all three. And considering that she was not only a source of information regarding the attack, but also currently a danger to herself, Isaiah had made the call to bring her into the sterile, subterranean processing center a few blocks from the Comitium. A witness, he’d made damn sure the records stated. Not a suspect.

He blew out a long breath, resisting the urge to rest his forehead against the observation window. Only the incessant hum of the firstlights overhead filled the space.

The first bit of quiet he’d had in hours. He had little doubt it would end soon.

As if the thought had tempted Urd herself, a rough male voice spoke from the door behind him. “She’s still not talking?”

It took all two centuries of Isaiah’s training on and off the battlefield to avoid flinching at that voice. To turn slowly toward the angel he knew would be leaning against the doorway, wearing his usual black battle-suit—an angel who reason and history reminded him was an ally, though every instinct roared the opposite.

Predator. Killer. Monster.

Hunt Athalar’s angular dark eyes, however, remained fixed on the window. On Bryce Quinlan. Not one gray feather on his wings rustled. Ever since their first days in the 17th Legion in southern Pangera, Isaiah had tried to ignore the fact that Hunt seemed to exist within a permanent ripple of stillness. It was the bated silence before a thunderclap, like the entire land held its breath when he was near.

Given what he’d seen Hunt do to his enemies and chosen targets, it came as no surprise.

Hunt’s stare slid toward him.

Right. He’d been asked a question. Isaiah shifted his white wings. “She hasn’t said a word since she was brought in.”

Hunt again regarded the female through the window. “Has the order come down yet to move her to another room?”

Isaiah knew exactly what sort of room Hunt referred to. Rooms designed to get people to talk. Even witnesses.

Isaiah straightened his black silk tie and offered up a half-hearted plea to the five gods that his charcoal business suit wouldn’t be stained with blood by sunrise. “Not yet.”

Hunt nodded once, his golden-brown face betraying nothing.

Isaiah scanned the angel, since Hunt sure as Hel wasn’t going to volunteer anything without being prompted. No sign of the skull-faced helmet that had earned Hunt a nickname whispered down every corridor and street in Crescent City: the Umbra Mortis.

The Shadow of Death.

Unable to decide whether to be relieved or worried at the absence of Hunt’s infamous helmet, Isaiah wordlessly handed Micah’s personal assassin a thin file.

He made sure his dark brown fingers didn’t touch Hunt’s gloved ones. Not when blood still coated the leather, its scent creeping through the room. He recognized the angelic scent in that blood, so the other scent had to be Bryce Quinlan’s.

Isaiah jerked his chin to the white-tiled interrogation room. “Bryce Quinlan, twenty-three years old, half-Fae, half-human. Blood test from ten years ago confirmed she’ll have an immortal life span. Power rating near-negligible. Hasn’t made the Drop yet. Listed as a full civitas. Found in the alley with one of our own, trying to keep his heart from falling out with her bare hands.”

The words sounded so damn clinical. But he knew Hunt was well versed in the details. They both were. They’d been in that alley, after all. And they knew that even here, in the secure observation room, they’d be fools to risk saying anything delicate aloud.

It had taken both of them to get Bryce to her feet, only for her to collapse against Isaiah—not from grief but from pain.

Hunt had realized it first: her thigh had been shredded open.

She’d still been nearly feral, had thrashed as they guided her back to the ground, Isaiah calling for a medwitch as the blood gushed out of her thigh. An artery had been hit. It was a gods-damn miracle she wasn’t dead before they arrived.

Hunt had cursed up a storm as he knelt before her, and she’d bucked, nearly kicking him in the balls. But then he’d pulled off his helmet. Looked her right in the eye.

And told her to calm the fuck down.