House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) (16 page)

Even if it
was
partially true. Mostly true.

Totally and definitely true, if that demon was being summoned again.

But—make a list of suspects, indeed. And the other task he’d given her, to make a list of Danika’s last locations … Her body tightened at the thought.

She might accept Athalar’s protection, but she didn’t need to make it easy for the swaggering asshole.

Jesiba’s phone rang. The female glanced at the screen. “It’s Tertian’s father.” She threw Bryce a warning glare. “If I start losing money because you’re off playing detective with the Umbra Mortis, I’ll turn you into a turtle.” She lifted the phone to her ear and the feed ended.

Bryce blew out a long breath before she hit the button to close the screen into the wall.

The silence of the gallery twined around her, gnawing at her bones.

Lehabah for once, seemed to not be eavesdropping. No tapping on the iron door filled the thrumming silence. Not a whisper of the tiny, incurably nosy fire sprite.

Bryce braced her arm on the cool surface of the desk, cupping her forehead in her hand.

Danika had never mentioned knowing Tertian. They’d never even spoken of him—not once. And that was all she had to go on?

Without Briggs as the summoner-killer, the murder didn’t make
sense. Why had the demon chosen their apartment, when it was three stories up and located in a supposedly monitored building? It had to be intentional. Danika and the others, Tertian included, must have been targeted, with Bryce’s connection to the latter a sick coincidence.

Bryce toyed with the amulet on the end of her golden chain, zipping it back and forth.

Later. She’d think it over tonight, because—she glanced at the clock. Shit.

She had another client coming in forty-five minutes, which meant she should get through the tsunami of paperwork for the Svadgard wood carving purchased yesterday.

Or maybe she should work on that job application she’d kept in a secret, deceptively named file on her computer:
Paper Vendor Spreadsheets
.

Jesiba, who left her in charge of everything from restocking toilet paper to ordering printer paper, would never open the file. She’d never see that among the actual documents Bryce had thrown in there, there was one folder—
March Office Supply Invoices
—that didn’t contain a spreadsheet. It held a cover letter, a résumé, and half-completed applications for positions at about ten different places.

Some were long shots.
Crescent City Art Museum Associate Curator
. As if she’d ever get that job, when she had neither an art nor a history degree. And when most museums believed places like Griffin Antiquities should be illegal.

Other positions—
Personal Assistant to Miss Fancypants Lawyer
—would be more of the same. Different setting and boss, but same old bullshit.

But they were a way out. Yeah, she’d have to find some kind of arrangement with Jesiba regarding her debts, and avoid finding out if just mentioning she wanted to leave would get her turned into some slithering animal, but dicking around with the applications, endlessly tweaking her résumé—it made her feel better, at least. Some days.

But if Danika’s murderer had resurfaced, if being in this dead-end job could help … Those résumés were a waste of time.

Her phone’s dark screen barely reflected the lights high, high above.

Sighing again, Bryce punched in her security code, and opened the message thread.

You won’t regret this. I’ve had a long while to figure out all the ways I’m going to spoil you. All the fun we’re going to have.

She could have recited Connor’s messages from memory, but it hurt more to see them. Hurt enough to feel through every part of her body, the dark remnants of her soul. So she always looked.

Go enjoy yourself. I’ll see you in a few days.

The white screen burned her eyes.
Message me when you’re home safe
.

She shut that window. And didn’t dare open up her audiomail. She usually had to be in one of her monthly emotional death-spirals to do that. To hear Danika’s laughing voice again.

Bryce loosed a long breath, then another, then another.

She’d find the person behind this. For Danika, for the Pack of Devils, she’d do it. Do anything.

She opened up her phone again and began typing out a group message to Juniper and Fury. Not that Fury ever replied—no, the thread was a two-way conversation between Bryce and June. She’d written out half of her message:
Philip Briggs didn’t kill Danika. The murders are starting again and I’m—
when she deleted it. Micah had given an order to keep this quiet, and if her phone was hacked … She wouldn’t jeopardize being taken off the case.

Fury had to know about it already. That her so-called
friend
hadn’t contacted her … Bryce shoved the thought away. She’d tell Juniper face-to-face. If Micah was right and there was somehow a connection between Bryce and how the victims were chosen, she couldn’t risk leaving Juniper unaware. Wouldn’t lose anyone else.

Bryce glanced at the sealed iron door. Rubbed the deep ache in her leg once before standing.

Silence walked beside her during the entire trip downstairs.

14

R
uhn Danaan stood before the towering oak doors to his father’s study and took a bracing, cooling breath.

It had nothing to do with the thirty-block run he’d made from his unofficial office above a dive bar in the Old Square over to his father’s sprawling marble villa in the heart of FiRo. Ruhn let out a breath and knocked.

He knew better than to barge in.

“Enter.” The cold male voice leached through the doors, through Ruhn. But he shoved aside any indication of his thundering heart and slid into the room, shutting the door behind him.

The Autumn King’s personal study was larger than most single-family houses. Bookshelves rose two stories on every wall, crammed with tomes and artifacts both old and new, magic and ordinary. A golden balcony bisected the rectangular space, accessible by either of the spiral staircases at the front and back, and heavy black velvet curtains currently blocked the morning light from the tall windows overlooking the interior courtyard of the villa.

The orrery in the far back of the space drew Ruhn’s eye: a working model of their seven planets, moons, and sun. Made from solid gold. Ruhn had been mesmerized by it as a boy, back when he’d been stupid enough to believe his father actually gave a shit about
him, spending hours in here watching the male make whatever observations and calculations he jotted down in his black leather notebooks. He’d asked only once about what his father was looking for, exactly.

Patterns
was all his father said.

The Autumn King sat at one of the four massive worktables, each littered with books and an array of glass and metal devices. Experiments for whatever the fuck his father did with those
patterns
. Ruhn passed one of the tables, where iridescent liquid bubbled within a glass orb set over a burner—the flame likely of his father’s making—puffs of violet smoke curling from it.

“Should I be wearing a hazmat suit?” Ruhn asked, aiming for the worktable where his father peered through a foot-long prism ensconced in some delicate silver contraption.

“State your business, Prince,” his father said shortly, an amber eye fixed to the viewing apparatus atop the prism.

Ruhn refrained from commenting about how the taxpaying people of this city would feel if they knew how one of their seven Heads spent his days. The six lower Heads were all appointed by Micah, not elected by any democratic process. There were councils within councils, designed to give people the illusion of control, but the main order of things was simple: The Governor ruled, and the City Heads led their own districts under him. Beyond that, the 33rd Legion answered only to the Governor, while the Aux obeyed the City Heads, divided into units based upon districts and species. It grew murkier from there. The wolves claimed the shifter packs were the commanders of the Aux—but the Fae insisted that this distinction belonged to them, instead. It made dividing—
claiming
—responsibilities difficult.

Ruhn had been heading up the Fae division of the Aux for fifteen years now. His father had given the command, and he had obeyed. He had little choice. Good thing he’d trained his entire life to be a lethal, efficient killer.

Not that it brought him any particular joy.

“Some major shit is going down,” Ruhn said, halting on the other
side of the table. “I just got a visit from Isaiah Tiberian. Maximus Tertian was murdered last night—in exactly the same way that Danika and her pack were killed.”

His father adjusted some dial on the prism device. “I received the report earlier this morning. It appears Philip Briggs wasn’t the murderer.”

Ruhn stiffened. “You were going to tell me when?”

His father glanced up from the prism device. “Am I beholden to you, Prince?”

The bastard certainly wasn’t, his title aside. Though they were close in depth of power, the fact remained that Ruhn, despite his Starborn status and possession of the Starsword, would always have just a little less than his father. He’d never decided, after he’d gone through his Ordeal and made the Drop fifty years ago, whether it was a relief or a curse to have come up short on the power ranking. On the one hand, had he surpassed his father, the playing field would have tipped in his favor. On the other, it would have established him firmly as a rival.

Having seen what his father did to rivals, it was better to not be on that list.

“This information is vital. I already put out a call to Flynn and Declan to amp up patrols in FiRo. We’ll have every street watched.”

“Then it does not appear that I needed to tell you, does it?”

His father was nearing five hundred years old, had worn the golden crown of the Autumn King for most of that time, and had been an asshole for all of it. And he still showed no signs of aging—not as the Fae did, with their gradual fading into death, like a shirt washed too many times.

So it’d be another few centuries of this. Playing prince. Having to knock on a door and wait for permission to enter. Having to kneel and obey.

Ruhn was one of about a dozen Fae Princes across the whole planet Midgard—and had met most of the others over the decades. But he stood apart as the only Starborn among them. Among all the Fae.

Like Ruhn, the other princes served under preening, vain kings stationed in the various territories as Heads of city districts or swaths of wilderness. Some of them had been waiting for their thrones for centuries, counting down each decade as if it were mere months.

It disgusted him. Always had. Along with the fact that everything he had was bankrolled by the bastard before him: the office above the dive bar, the villa in FiRo adorned with priceless antiques that his father had gifted him upon winning the Starsword during his Ordeal. Ruhn never stayed at the villa, instead choosing to live in a house he shared with his two best friends near the Old Square.

Also purchased with his father’s money.

Officially, the money came from the “salary” Ruhn received for heading up the Fae Auxiliary patrols. But his father’s signature authorized that weekly check.

The Autumn King lifted the prism device. “Did the Commander of the 33rd say anything of note?”

The meeting had been one step short of a disaster.

First, Tiberian had grilled him about Bryce’s whereabouts last night, until Ruhn was about one breath away from beating the shit out of the angel, Commander of the 33rd or no. Then Tiberian had the balls to ask about
Ruhn’s
whereabouts.

Ruhn had refrained from informing the commander that pummeling Maximus Tertian for grabbing Bryce’s hand had been tempting.

She’d have bitten his head off for it. And she’d been able to handle herself, sparing Ruhn the political nightmare of setting off a blood feud between their two Houses. Not just between Sky and Breath and Flame and Shadow, but between the Danaans and the Tertians. And thus every Fae and vampyr living in Valbara and Pangera. The Fae didn’t fuck around with their blood feuds. Neither did the vamps.

“No,” Ruhn said. “Though Maximus Tertian died a few hours after having a business meeting with Bryce.”

His father set down the prism, his lip curling. “I told you to warn that girl to stay
quiet
.”

That girl
. Bryce was always
that girl
, or
the girl
, to their father.
Ruhn hadn’t heard the male speak her name in twelve years. Not since her first and last visit to this villa.

Everything had changed after that visit. Bryce had come here for the first time, a coltish thirteen-year-old ready to finally meet her father and his people. To meet Ruhn, who had been intrigued at the prospect of finding he had a half sister after more than sixty years of being an only child.

The Autumn King had insisted that the visit be discreet—not saying the obvious:
until the Oracle whispers of your future
. What had gone down had been an unmitigated disaster not only for Bryce, but for Ruhn as well. His chest still ached when he remembered her leaving the villa in tears of rage, refusing to look back over her shoulder even once. His father’s treatment of Bryce had opened Ruhn’s eyes to the Autumn King’s true nature … and the cold Fae male before him had never forgotten this fact.

Ruhn had visited Bryce frequently at her parents’ place over the next three years. She’d been a bright spot—the brightest spot, if he felt like being honest. Until that stupid, shameful fight between them that had left things in such shambles that Bryce still hated his guts. He didn’t blame her—not with the words he’d said, that he’d immediately regretted as soon as they’d burst from him.

Now Ruhn said, “
Bryce’s
meeting with Maximus preceded my warning to behave. I arrived right as she was wrapping up.” When he’d gotten that call from Riso Sergatto, the butterfly shifter’s laughing voice unusually grave, he’d sprinted over to the White Raven, not giving himself time to second-guess the wisdom of it. “I’m her alibi, according to Tiberian—I told him that I walked her home, and stayed there until well after Tertian’s time of death.”

His father’s face revealed nothing. “And yet it still does not seem very flattering that the girl was at the club on both nights, and interacted with the victims hours before.”

Ruhn said tightly, “Bryce had nothing to do with the murders. Despite the alibi shit, the Governor must believe it, too, because Tiberian swore Bryce is being guarded by the 33rd.”

It might have been admirable that they bothered to do so, had all the angels not been arrogant assholes. Luckily, the most arrogant
of those assholes hadn’t been the one to pay Ruhn this particular visit.

“That girl has always possessed a spectacular talent for being where she shouldn’t.”

Ruhn controlled the anger thrumming through him, his shadow magic seeking to veil him, shield him from sight. Another reason his father resented him: beyond his Starborn gifts, the bulk of his magic skewed toward his mother’s kin—the Fae who ruled Avallen, the mist-shrouded isle in the north. The sacred heart of Faedom. His father would have burned Avallen into ashes if he could. That Ruhn did not possess his father’s flames, the flames of most of the Valbaran Fae, that he instead possessed Avallen abilities—more than Ruhn ever let on—to summon and walk through shadows, had been an unforgivable insult.

Silence rippled between father and son, interrupted only by the ticking metal of the orrery at the other end of the room as the planets inched around their orbit.

His father picked up the prism, holding it up to the firstlights twinkling in one of the three crystal chandeliers.

Ruhn said tightly, “Tiberian said the Governor wants these murders kept quiet, but I’d like your permission to warn my mother.” Every word grated.
I’d like your permission
.

His father waved a hand. “Permission granted. She’ll heed the warning.”

Just as Ruhn’s mother had obeyed everyone her entire life.

She’d listen and lie low, and no doubt gladly accept the extra guards sent to her villa, down the block from his own, until this shit was sorted out. Maybe he’d even stay with her tonight.

She wasn’t queen—wasn’t even a consort or mate. No, his sweet, kind mother had been selected for one purpose: breeding. The Autumn King had decided, after a few centuries of ruling, that he wanted an heir. As the daughter of a prominent noble house that had defected from Avallen’s court, she’d done her duty gladly, grateful for the eternal privilege it offered. In all of Ruhn’s seventy-five years of life, he’d never heard her speak one ill word about his father. About the life she’d been conscripted to.

Even when Ember and his father had their secret, disastrous relationship, his mother had not been jealous. There had been so many other females before her, and after her. Yet none had been formally chosen, not as she was, to continue the royal bloodline. And when Bryce had come along, the few times his mother had met her, she’d been kind. Doting, even.

Ruhn couldn’t tell if he admired his mother for never questioning the gilded cage she lived in. If something was wrong with
him
for resenting it.

He might never understand his mother, yet it didn’t stop his fierce pride that he took after her bloodline, that his shadow-walking set him apart from the asshole in front of him, a constant, welcome reminder that he didn’t
have
to turn into a domineering prick. Even if most of his mother’s kin in Avallen were little better. His cousins especially.

“Perhaps you should call her,” Ruhn said, “give the warning yourself. She’d appreciate your concern.”

“I’m otherwise engaged,” his father said calmly. It had always astonished Ruhn: how cold his father was, when those flames burned in his veins. “You may inform her yourself. And you will refrain from telling me how to manage my relationship with your mother.”

“You don’t have a relationship. You bred her like a mare and sent her out to pasture.”

Cinders sparked through the room. “You benefited quite well from that
breeding
, Starborn.”

Ruhn didn’t dare voice the words that tried to spring from his mouth.
Even as my stupid fucking
title
brought you further influence in the empire and among your fellow kings, it still chafed, didn’t it? That your son, not you, retrieved the Starsword from the Cave of Princes in Avallen’s dark heart. That your son, not you, stood among the long-dead Starborn Princes asleep in their sarcophagi and was deemed worthy to pull the sword from its sheath. How many times did you try to draw the sword when you were young? How much research did you do in this very study to find ways to wield it without being chosen?

His father curled a finger toward him. “I have need of your
gift
.”

“Why?” His Starborn abilities were little more than a sparkle of starlight in his palm. His shadow talents were the more interesting gift. Even the temperature monitors on the high-tech cameras in this city couldn’t detect him when he shadow-walked.

His father held up the prism. “Direct a beam of your starlight through this.” Not waiting for an answer, his father again put an eye to the metal viewing contraption atop the prism.