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

But Bryce had been that way for hours now. Blood still stained the white bandage around her bare thigh. Viktoria sniffed delicately, her pale green eyes narrowing beneath the halo’s dark tattoo on her brow. The wraith had been one of the few non-malakim who had rebelled with them two centuries ago. She’d been given to Micah soon afterward, and her punishment had gone beyond the brow tattoo and slave markings. Not nearly as brutal as what Isaiah and Hunt had endured in the Asteri’s dungeons, and then in various Archangels’ dungeons for years afterward, but its own form of torment that lasted even when their own had stopped.

Viktoria said, “Miss Quinlan.”

She didn’t respond.

The wraith dragged over a steel chair from the wall and set it on the other side of the table. Pulling a file from her jacket, Viktoria crossed her long legs as she perched on the seat.

“Can you tell me who is responsible for the bloodshed tonight?”

Not even a hitch of breath. Sabine growled softly.

The wraith folded her alabaster hands in her lap, the unnatural elegance the only sign of the ancient power that rippled beneath the calm surface.

Vik had no body of her own. Though she’d fought in the 18th, Isaiah had learned her history only when he’d arrived here ten years ago. How Viktoria had acquired this particular body, who it had once belonged to, he didn’t ask. She hadn’t told him. Wraiths wore bodies the way some people owned cars. Vainer wraiths switched them often, usually at the first sign of aging, but Viktoria had held on to this one for longer than usual, liking its build and movement, she’d said.

Now she held on to it because she had no choice. It had been Micah’s punishment for her rebellion: to trap her within this body. Forever. No more changing, no more trading up for something newer and sleeker. For two hundred years, Vik had been contained, forced to weather the slow erosion of the body, now plainly visible: the thin lines starting to carve themselves around her eyes, the crease now etched in her forehead above the tattoo’s twining band of thorns.

“Quinlan’s gone into shock,” Hunt observed, monitoring Bryce’s every breath. “She’s not going to talk.”

Isaiah was inclined to agree, until Viktoria opened the file, scanned a piece of paper, and said, “I, for one, believe that you are not in full control of your body or actions right now.”

And then she read a shopping list of a cocktail of drugs and alcohol that would stop a human’s heart dead. Stop a lesser Vanir’s heart, too, for that matter.

Hunt swore again. “Is there anything she didn’t snort or smoke tonight?”

Sabine bristled. “Half-breed trash—”

Isaiah threw Hunt a look. All that was needed to convey the request.

Never an order—he’d never dared to order Hunt around. Not when the male possessed a hair-trigger temper that had left entire imperial fighting units in smoldering cinders. Even with the spells of the halo binding that lightning to a tenth of its full strength, Hunt’s skills as a warrior made up for it.

But Hunt’s chin dipped, his only sign that he’d agreed to Isaiah’s request. “You’ll need to complete some paperwork upstairs, Sabine.” Hunt blew out a breath, as if reminding himself that Sabine was a mother who had lost her only child tonight, and added, “If you want time to yourself, you can take it, but you need to sign—”

“Fuck signing things and fuck time to myself. Crucify the bitch if you have to, but get her to give a statement.” Sabine spat on the tiles at Hunt’s booted feet.

Ether coated Isaiah’s tongue as Hunt gave her the cool stare that served as his only warning to opponents on a battlefield. None had ever survived what happened next.

Sabine seemed to remember that, and wisely stormed into the hall. She flexed her hand as she did, four razor-sharp claws appearing, and slashed them through the metal door.

Hunt smiled at her disappearing figure. A target marked. Not today, not even tomorrow, but at one point in the future …

And people claimed the shifters got along better with the angels than the Fae.

Viktoria was saying gently to Bryce, “We have video footage from the White Raven, confirming your whereabouts. We have footage of you walking home.”

Cameras covered all of Lunathion, with unparalleled visual and audio coverage, but Bryce’s apartment building was old, and the mandatory monitors in the hallways hadn’t been repaired in decades. The landlord would be getting a visit tonight for the code violations that had fucked this entire investigation. One tiny sliver of audio was all the building cameras had managed to catch—just the audio. It held nothing beyond what they already knew. The phones of the Pack of Devils had all been destroyed in the attack. Not one message had gone out.

“What we don’t have footage of, Bryce,” Viktoria went on, “is what happened in that apartment. Can you tell me?”

Slowly, as if she drifted back into her battered body, Bryce turned her amber eyes to Viktoria.

“Where’s her family?” Hunt asked roughly.

“Human mother lives with the stepfather in one of the mountain towns up north—both peregrini,” Isaiah said. “The sire wasn’t registered or refused to acknowledge paternity. Fae, obviously. And likely one with some standing, since he bothered to get her civitas status.”

Most of the offspring born to human mothers took their peregrini rank. And though Bryce had something of the Fae’s elegant beauty, her face marked her as human—the gold-dusted skin, the smattering of freckles over her nose and high cheekbones, the full mouth. Even if the silken flow of red hair and arched ears were pure Fae.