House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3)

“We shouldn’t have brought her with us,” Flynn murmured as they hurried through the stalls of the Meat Market, aiming for an alternate exit on the quieter side of the warehouse. “I fucking told you, Holstrom—”

“I ordered him to bring me,” Sigrid cut in, keeping pace beside Ithan, the sprites dimmed to a pale yellow as they hunched on her shoulders. Something in Ithan twinged at that—an Alpha, defending him. Taking the responsibility, even if it implied that he could be ordered. The Alphas he’d lived under for the past few years had used their power and dominance for themselves. Danika had used her position to support those under her, in her own brash way, but Danika was gone. He’d thought he’d never encounter another like her, but maybe—

“Sabine would have found us anyway,” Ithan said, “whether we were here or at the house. It was only a matter of time.”

They entered a long service corridor with a dented metal door at its other end, a half-assed EXIT painted on it in white lettering. Definitely not up to code. Though he doubted a city health and safety inspector had ever set foot in this warren of misery.

“Do we split up?” Dec asked. “Try to shake them that way?”

“No,” Marc said, claws glinting at his fingertips. “Their sense of smell’s too good. They’ll be able to tell which of us she’s with.”

As if in answer, howls rent the warehouse proper. Ithan’s entire body locked up. He knew the tenor of those howls. Prey on the run. He gritted his teeth to keep from answering, to clamp his responding howl inside his body.

Beside him, Sigrid was a live wire. Like the howls had triggered a response in her, too.

“So we make a run for it,” Flynn said. “Where do we rendezvous if we get separated?”

The question hung in the air. Where the fuck was safe in this city, on this planet? Considering their connections to imprisoned traitors, the list of options was short as fuck. Where would Bryce have gone? She would have found someone bigger and badder … or smarter, at least. She would have gone to the gallery, maybe, to its protective wards, but Jesiba Roga’s sanctum was gone. Griffin Antiquities had never been repaired or reopened. Which left—

“We make it to the Comitium,” Ithan said. “Isaiah Tiberian will shelter us.”

Dec lifted a brow. “You know Tiberian?”

“No, but Athalar’s his friend. And I’ve heard he’s a good male.”

“For an angel,” Flynn muttered.

Sigrid demanded, “We’re going to the angels?” Disdain and distrust spiked each word.

The howls in the warehouse closed in: We stalk the darkness together.

“I don’t see another option,” Dec admitted. “It’s a gamble, though. Tiberian might go right to Celestina.”

“The Governor’s cool,” Flynn said.

“I don’t trust any Archangel,” Marc said. “They’re bred and raised into unchecked power. They go to those secretive academies, ripped away from any family. It’s not conducive to raising well-balanced people. Good people.”

At the exit, they paused, listening carefully to the sounds beyond. They couldn’t smell anything through the metal door, but the howls behind them drew closer. Whoever was in the warehouse would reach this hall in a matter of moments.

Another howl—this one familiar. “Amelie,” Ithan breathed. If they turned back, they’d face a fight with the second-most powerful wolf pack in Lunathion. Yet to go through that door into the unforgiving city, no certain allies to shelter them—

Sigrid did them all a favor and shoved the door open.

And there, standing in the alley beyond, stood Sabine Fendyr.

Sabine let out a joyless laugh. Her eyes met Ithan’s, filled with nothing but hate, and then she faced Sigrid, Ithan’s dismissal clear. He was nothing and no one to her. Not even a wolf to acknowledge.

Ithan bared his teeth. Flynn, Dec, and Marc clicked off the safeties on their guns.

But Sabine just said to Sigrid through a mouth full of fangs, “You look exactly like him.”





4


Pain and dark and quiet. That was the entirety of Hunt Athalar’s world.

No, that wasn’t true.

Those things were the entirety of the world beyond his tortured body, his sawed-off wings, the aching hunger writhing in his stomach and thirst burning his throat, the slave brand stamped on his wrist. The halo inked anew upon his brow by Rigelus himself, its oppressive power somehow heavier and oilier than the first. All that he had achieved, regained … wiped away. His very existence belonged to the Asteri once more.

But inside him, beyond that sea of pain and despair, Bryce was the entirety of his world.

His mate. His wife. His princess.

Prince Hunt Athalar Danaan. He would have hated the last name were it not for the fact that it was a marker of her ownership over his soul, his heart.

There was Bryce, and nothing else. Not even Pollux’s barbed-wire whips could rip her face from his mind. Not even that blunt-toothed saw had severed it from him, even as it had hewn through his wings.

Bryce, who had gotten away. Gone to Hel to seek aid. He’d stay here, let Pollux rip him to shreds, cut through his wings again and again, if it meant that the Asteri’s attention stayed away from her. If it bought her time to rally the force needed to take on these fuckers.

He’d die before he told them where she was. His only consolation was that Ruhn would do the same.

Baxian, bloody and swaying on the other side of Ruhn, didn’t know where Bryce had gone, but he knew plenty about what Bryce had been up to lately. Yet the Helhound hadn’t given Pollux an inch. Hunt would have expected nothing less of a male Urd had chosen to be Danika Fendyr’s mate.

It was quiet now—the only sound the clank of their chains. Blood and piss and shit coated the floor beneath them, the smell almost as unbearable as the pain.

Pollux was creative, Hunt would give him that. Where others might have gone for stabbing in the gut and twisting, the Hammer had learned the exact points on the feet to whip and burn to cause maximum agony while keeping his victims conscious.

Or maybe it was the Hind who’d learned those tricks. She stood behind her lover and watched with dead eyes as the Hammer slowly—so slowly—took them apart.

That was the other secret he and Danaan would keep. The Hind—what and who she was.

Oblivion beckoned, a sweet release Hunt had come to crave as much as Bryce’s body entwined with his. He pretended, sometimes, that when he fell into the blackness, he was falling into her arms, into her sweet, tight heat.

Bryce. Bryce. Bryce.

Her name was a prayer, an order.

He had little hope of leaving this place alive. His only job was to make sure he held out long enough for Bryce to do what she had to do. After his series of colossal fuckups over the centuries … it was the least he could offer up.

He should have seen it coming—part of him had seen it coming a few weeks ago, when he’d tried to convince Bryce not to go down this road. He should have fought harder. Should have told her this outcome was inevitable, especially if he was involved.

He’d known not to trust Celestina with her whole new Governor, new rules bullshit. He’d let her win him over, and the Archangel had fucking betrayed them. All that talk about being a friend of Shahar’s—he’d eaten it up. Let the memory of his long-dead lover cloud his instincts, as Celestina had surely gambled it would.

What was this but another Fallen rebellion? On a smaller scale, yes, but the stakes had been so much higher this time. Then, he’d lost an army, lost his lover—had known she was dying as time had stretched and slowed around him. Had known she was dead when time had resumed its normal speed once more, and the whole world had changed.

Yet the ties that now bound him to others—not only Bryce, but to the two males in this dungeon with him—had become unbearable. Their pain was his pain. Perhaps worse than what he endured before.

Shahar had been given the easy end. To die at Sandriel’s hand, to die on the battlefield, swift and final … It had been easier.

A few feet away, Baxian groaned softly.