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“Well, I’m not going,” Bryce said quickly.
Hunt’s eyes darkened. “Because of what happened at your visit?”
“Right,” she said tightly.
Ruhn cut in and said to Hunt, “You go, then.”
Hunt snickered. “You have a bad experience, too, Danaan?”
Bryce found herself carefully watching her brother. Ruhn had never mentioned the Oracle to her. But he just shrugged and said, “Yeah.”
Hunt threw up his hands. “Fine, assholes. I’ll go. I’ve never been. It always seemed too gimmicky.”
It wasn’t. Bryce blocked out the image of the golden sphinx who’d sat before the hole in the floor of her dim, black chamber—how that human woman’s face had monitored her every breath.
“You’ll need an appointment,” she managed to say.
Silence fell. A buzzing interrupted it, and Hunt sighed as he pulled out his phone. “I gotta take this,” he said, and didn’t wait for them to reply before striding up the stairs out of the library. A moment later, the front door to the gallery shut.
With Lehabah still watching her show behind them, Ruhn quietly said to Bryce, “Your power levels never mattered to me, Bryce. You know that, right?”
She went back to looking through Danika’s data. “Yeah. I know.” She lifted an eyebrow. “What’s your deal with the Oracle?”
His face shuttered. “Nothing. She told me everything the Autumn King wanted to hear.”
“What—you’re upset that it wasn’t something as disastrous as mine?”
Ruhn rose from his seat, piercings glittering in the firstlights. “Look, I’ve got an Aux meeting this afternoon that I need to prep for, but I’ll see you later.”
“Sure.”
Ruhn paused, as if debating saying something else, but continued toward the stairs and out.
“Your cousin is dreamy,” Lehabah sighed from her couch.
“I thought Athalar was your one true love,” Bryce said.
“Can’t they both be?”
“Considering how terrible they are at sharing, I don’t think it’ll end well for any of you.”
Her email pinged on the laptop. Since her phone was in shards in the rubble of the Raven, Hunt had emailed, Saw your cousin leave. We’re heading to the Comitium in five minutes.
She wrote back, Don’t give me orders, Athalar.
Four minutes, sweetheart.
I told you: don’t call me sweetheart.
Three minutes.
Growling, she stood from the table, rubbing her leg. Her heels were already killing her, and knowing Athalar, he’d make her walk the entire Comitium complex. Her dress would look ridiculous with a different set of shoes, but fortunately, she kept a change of clothes in the bottom drawer of the library desk, mostly in case of a rainy day that threatened to ruin whatever she was wearing.
Lehabah said, “It’s nice—to have company down here.”
Something in Bryce’s chest wrenched, but she said, “I’ll be back later.”
30
