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Her purse was now in the ruin of the club.
“Does the doorman have a spare?”
She grunted her confirmation, eyeing the elevator as if it were a mountain to climb.
Marrin busted Hunt’s balls for a good minute, checking that Bryce was alive in the hallway, asking into the hall vidcom if she approved—to which he got a thumbs-up.
When Hunt returned, he found her sitting against her door, legs up and spread enough to show a pair of hot-pink underwear. Thankfully, the hall cameras couldn’t see at that angle, but he had no doubt the shifter monitored them as Hunt helped her to her feet and handed her the spare keys.
She slowly slid in the key, then put her palm to the bespelled finger pad beside the door.
“I was waiting,” she murmured as the locks clicked open and the dim apartment lights flickered on. “We were supposed to make the Drop together. We picked two years from now.”
He knew who she meant. The reason why she no longer drank, or danced, or really seemed to live her life. The reason why she must keep that scar on her pretty, sleek thigh. Ogenas and all her sacred Mysteries knew that Hunt had punished himself for a damn long while after the colossal failure that had been the Battle of Mount Hermon. Even while he’d been tortured in the Asteri’s dungeons, he’d punished himself, flaying his own soul in a way no imperial interrogator ever could.
So maybe it was a stupid question, but he asked as they entered the apartment, “Why bother waiting now?”
Hunt stepped inside and got a good look at the place Quinlan called home. The open-concept apartment had looked nice from outside the windows, but inside …
Either she or Danika had decorated it without sparing any expense: a white deep-cushioned couch lay in the right third of the great room, set before a reclaimed wood coffee table and the massive television atop a carved oak console. A fogged-glass dining table with white leather chairs took up the left third of the space, and the center third of it went to the kitchen—white cabinets, chrome appliances, and white marble counters. All of it impeccably clean, soft, and welcoming.
Hunt took it in, standing like a piece of baggage by the kitchen island while Bryce padded down a pale oak hallway to release Syrinx from where he yowled from his crate.
She was halfway down the hallway when she said without looking back, “Without Danika … We were supposed to make the Drop together,” she said again. “Connor and Thorne were going to Anchor us.”
The choice of Anchor during the Drop was pivotal—and a deeply personal choice. But Hunt shoved aside the thoughts of the sour-faced government employee he’d been appointed, since he sure as fuck hadn’t had any family or friends left to Anchor him. Not when his mother had died only days before.
Syrinx flung himself through the apartment, claws clicking on the light wood floors, yipping as he leapt upon Hunt, licking his hands. Each one of Bryce’s returning steps dragged on her way to the kitchen counter.
The silence pressed on him enough that he asked, “Were you and Danika lovers?”
He’d been told two years ago that they weren’t, but friends didn’t mourn each other the way Bryce seemed to have so thoroughly shut down every part of herself. The way he had for Shahar.
The patter of kibble hitting tin filled the apartment before Bryce plunked down the bowl, and Syrinx, abandoning Hunt, half threw himself inside it as he gobbled it down.
Hunt turned in place as Bryce padded around the other end of the kitchen island, flinging open the enormous metal fridge to examine its meager contents. “No,” she said, her voice flat and cold. “Danika and I weren’t like that.” Her grip on the fridge’s handle tightened, her knuckles going white. “Connor and I—Connor Holstrom, I mean. He and I …” She trailed off. “It was complicated. When Danika died, when they all died … a light went out in me.”
He remembered the details about her and the elder of the Holstrom brothers. Ithan hadn’t been there that night, either—and was now Second in Amelie Ravenscroft’s pack. A sorry replacement for what the Pack of Devils had once been. This city had also lost something that night.
Hunt opened his mouth to tell Quinlan he understood. Not just the complicated relationship thing, but the loss. To wake up one morning surrounded by friends and his lover—and then to end the day with all of them dead. He understood how it gnawed on bones and blood and the very soul of a person. How nothing could ever make it right.
How cutting out the alcohol and the drugs, how refusing to do the thing she loved most—the dancing—still couldn’t make it right. But the words stalled in his throat. He hadn’t felt like talking about it two hundred years ago, and sure as Hel didn’t feel like talking about it now.
A landline phone somewhere in the house began ringing, and a pleasant female voice trilled, Call from … Home.
Bryce closed her eyes, as if rallying herself, then padded down the darkened hallway that led to her bedroom. A moment later, she said with a cheerfulness that should have earned her an award for Best Fucking Actor in Midgard, “Hey, Mom.” A mattress groaned. “No, I wasn’t there. My phone fell in the toilet at work—yep, totally dead. I’ll get a new one tomorrow. Yeah, I’m fine. June wasn’t there, either. We’re all good.” A pause. “I know—it was just a long day at work.” Another pause. “Look, I’ve got company.” A rough laugh. “Not that kind. Don’t get your hopes up. I’m serious. Yes, I let him into my house willingly. Please don’t call the front desk. His name? I’m not telling you.” Just the slightest hesitation. “Mom. I will call you tomorrow. I’m not telling him hello. Bye—bye, Mom. Love you.”
Syrinx had finished his food and was staring expectantly at Hunt—silently pleading for more, that lion’s tail waggling. “No,” he hissed at the beast just as Bryce walked back into the main room.
“Oh,” she said, as if she’d forgotten he was there. “I’m going to take a shower. Guest room is yours. Use whatever you need.”
“I’ll swing by the Comitium tomorrow to get more clothes.” Bryce just nodded like her head weighed a thousand pounds. “Why’d you lie?” He’d let her decide which one she wanted to explain.
She paused, Syrinx trotting ahead down the hall to her bedroom. “My mom would only worry and come visit. I don’t want her around if things are getting bad. And I didn’t tell her who you were because that would lead to questions, too. It’s easier this way.”
Easier to not let herself enjoy life, easier to keep everyone at arm’s length.
The mark on her cheek from Juniper’s slap had barely faded. Easier to throw herself on top of a friend as a bomb exploded, rather than risk losing them.
