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The words cracked through Hunt. All of them looked at him now. “I’m sorry.” He had no other words in his head.
“Oh, Athie,” Lehabah said, zooming over to him and turning rose pink. “I didn’t mean to …” She cupped her cheeks in her hands. “I do not blame you.”
“I led everyone into battle. I don’t see how there’s anyone else to blame for what happened to your people because of it.” His words sounded as hollow as they felt.
“But Shahar led you,” Danaan said, his blue eyes missing nothing.
Hunt bristled at the sound of her name on the prince’s lips. But he found himself looking to Quinlan, to torture himself with the damning agreement he’d find on her face.
Only sorrow lay there. And something like understanding. Like she saw him, as he’d seen her in that shooting gallery, marked every broken shard and didn’t mind the jagged bits. Under the table, the toe of her high heel brushed against his boot. A little confirmation that yes—she saw his guilt, the pain, and she wouldn’t shy from it. His chest tightened.
Lehabah cleared her throat and asked Ruhn, “Have you ever visited the Fae Archives on Avallen? I heard they’re grander than what was brought over here.” She twirled her curl of flame around a finger.
“No,” Ruhn said. “But the Fae on that misty island are even less welcoming than the ones here.”
“They do like to hoard all their wealth, don’t they,” Lehabah said, eyeing Bryce. “Just like you, BB. Only spending on yourself, and never anything nice for me.”
Bryce removed her foot. “Do I not buy you strawberry shisha every other week?”
Lehabah crossed her arms. “That’s barely a gift.”
“Says the sprite who hotboxes herself in that little glass dome and burns it all night and tells me not to bother her until she’s done.” She leaned back in her chair, smug as a cat, and Hunt nearly grinned again at the spark in her eyes.
Bryce grabbed his phone from the table and snapped a photo of him before he could object. Then one of Lehabah. And another of Syrinx.
If Ruhn noticed she didn’t bother with a photo of him, he said nothing. Though Hunt could have sworn the shadows in the room deepened.
“All I want, BB,” Lehabah said, “is a little appreciation.”
“Gods spare me,” Bryce muttered. Even Ruhn smiled at that.
The prince’s phone rang, and he picked up before Hunt could see who it was. “Flynn.”
Hunt heard Flynn’s voice faintly. “You’re needed at the barracks. Some bullshit fight broke out about somebody’s girlfriend sleeping with someone else and I honestly don’t give two fucks about it, but they bloodied each other up pretty damn good.”
Ruhn sighed. “I’ll be there in fifteen,” he said, and hung up.
Hunt asked, “You really have to moderate petty fights like that?”
Ruhn ran a hand down the hilt of the Starsword. “Why not?”
“You’re a prince.”
“I don’t understand why you make that sound like an insult,” Ruhn growled.
Hunt said, “Why not do … bigger shit?”
Bryce answered for him. “Because his daddy is scared of him.”
Ruhn shot her a warning look. “He outranks me power-wise and title-wise.”
“And yet he made sure to get you under his thumb as early as possible—as if you were some sort of animal to be tamed.” She said the words mildly, but Ruhn tensed.
“It was going well,” Ruhn said tightly, “until you came along.”
Hunt braced himself for the brewing storm.
Bryce said, “He was alive the last time a Starborn Prince appeared, you know. You ever ask what happened to him? Why he died before he made the Drop?”
