House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2) by Sarah J. Maas

“Why the fuck do you keep popping up?” Bryce seethed, not taking her attention off the Helhound. Hunt didn’t so much as move at her side. “Hunt says you’re not spying for the Hind or the Asteri, but I don’t fucking believe it. Not for one second.” She clicked off the safety. “So tell me the gods-damned truth before I put this bullet through your head.”

Baxian walked to one of the curved walls full of skulls. Didn’t seem to care that he was a foot away from the barrel of her gun. He ran a finger down the brown skull of what seemed to be some fanged Vanir, and said, “Through love, all is possible.”

The rifle nearly tumbled from her fingers. “What?”

Baxian peeled back the collar of his battle-suit, revealing brown, muscled flesh. And a tattoo scrawled over the angel’s heart in familiar handwriting.

Through love, all is possible.

She knew that handwriting. “Why,” she asked carefully, voice shaking, “do you have Danika’s handwriting tattooed on you?”

Baxian’s dark eyes became pained. Empty. “Because Danika was my mate.”





65

Bryce aimed the rifle at Baxian again. “You are a fucking liar.”

Baxian left his collar open, Danika’s handwriting inked there for all to see. “I loved her. More than anything.”

Hunt said harshly, words echoing in the dry catacombs around them, “This isn’t fucking funny, asshole.”

Baxian turned pleading eyes to him. Bryce wanted to claw the male’s face off. “She was my mate. Ask Sabine. Ask her why she ran the night she burst into your apartment. She’s always hated and feared me—because I saw how she treated her daughter and wouldn’t put up with it. Because I’ve promised to turn her into carrion one day for what Danika endured. That’s why Sabine left the party last night so fast. To avoid me.”

Bryce didn’t lower the gun. “You’re full of shit.”

Baxian splayed his arms, wings rustling. “Why the fuck would I lie about this?”

“To win our trust,” Hunt said.

Bryce couldn’t get a breath down. It had nothing to do with the teleporting. “I would have known. If Danika had a mate, I would have known—”

“Oh? You think she would have told you that her mate was someone in Sandriel’s triarii? The Helhound? You think she’d have run home to dish about it?”

“Fuck you,” Bryce spat, focusing the scope right between his eyes. “And fuck your lies.”

Baxian walked up to the gun. To the barrel. Pushed it down and against his heart, right up against the tattoo in Danika’s handwriting. “I met her two years before she died,” he said quietly.

“She and Thorne—”

Baxian let out a laugh so bitter it cracked her soul. “Thorne was delusional to think she’d ever be with him.”

“She fucked around,” Bryce seethed. “You were no one to her.”

“I had two years with her,” Baxian said. “She didn’t fuck anyone else during that time.”

Bryce stilled, doing the mental tally. Right before her death, hadn’t she teased Danika about …

“Two years,” she whispered. “She hadn’t gone on a date in two years.” Hunt gaped at her now. “But she …” She racked her memory. Danika had hooked up constantly throughout college, but a few months into their senior year and the year after … She’d partied, but stopped the casual sex. Bryce choked out, “It’s not possible.”

Baxian’s face was bleak, even in the dimness of the catacombs. “Believe me, I didn’t want it, either. But we saw each other and knew.”

Hunt murmured, “That’s why your behavior changed. You met Danika right after I left.”

“It changed everything for me,” Baxian said.

“How did you even meet each other?” Bryce demanded.

“There was a gathering of wolves—Pangeran and Valbaran. The Prime sent Danika as his emissary.”

Bryce remembered that. How pissed Sabine had been that Danika had been tapped to go, and not her. Two weeks later, Danika had come back, and she’d seemed subdued for a few days. She’d said it was exhaustion but …

“You’re not a wolf. Why were you even there?” Danika couldn’t have been with Baxian, couldn’t have had a mate and not told her about it, not smelled like it—

She was a bloodhound. With that preternatural sense of smell, she’d know better than anyone how to hide a scent—how to detect if any trace of it had remained on her.

“I wasn’t at the gathering. She sought me out while she was there.”

“Why?”

“Because she was researching shifter ancestry. Mine is … unique.”

“You shift into a dog,” Bryce raged. “What’s unique about that?” Even Hunt gave her a disapproving frown. She didn’t care. She was sick of these surprises about Danika, about all the things she’d never known—

“She wanted to know about my shifter ancestry. Really old shifter ancestry that manifested in me after years of lying dormant. She was examining the most ancient bloodlines in our world and saw a name on an early ancestor’s family tree that could be traced all the way to the last living descendant: me.”