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“Aidas,” she blurted, stepping right to the edge of their circle. Hunt fought the urge to tuck her to his side. Especially as darkness frayed the edges of Aidas’s body. “Thank you. For that day.”
The Prince of the Chasm paused, as if clinging to this world. “Make the Drop, Bryce Quinlan.” He flickered. “And find me when you are done.”
Aidas had nearly vanished into nothing when he added, the words a ghost slithering through the room, “The Oracle did not see. But I did.”
Silence pulsed in his wake as the room thawed, frost vanishing.
Hunt whirled on Bryce. “First of all,” he seethed, “fuck you for that surprise.”
She rubbed her hands together, working warmth back into them. “You never would have let me summon Aidas if I’d told you first.”
“Because we should be fucking dead right now!” He gaped at her. “Are you insane?”
“I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Or anyone with me.”
“You want to tell me how you met Aidas when you were thirteen?”
“I … I told you how badly things ended between me and my biological father after my Oracle visit.” His anger banked at the lingering pain in her face. “So afterward, when I was crying my little heart out on one of the park benches outside the temple, this white cat appeared next to me. It had the most unnatural blue eyes. I knew, even before it spoke, that it wasn’t a cat—and wasn’t a shifter.”
“Who summoned him that time?”
“I don’t know. Jesiba told me that the princes can sneak through cracks in either Rift, taking the form of common animals. But then they’re confined to those forms—with none of their own power, save the ability to speak. And they can only stay for a few hours at a time.”
A shudder worked its way down his gray wings. “What did Aidas say?”
“He asked me: What blinds an Oracle? And I replied: What sort of cat visits an Oracle? He’d heard the screaming on his way in. I suppose it intrigued him. He told me to stop crying. Said it would only satisfy those who had wronged me. That I shouldn’t give them the gift of my sorrow.”
“Why was the Prince of the Chasm at the Oracle?”
“He never told me. But he sat with me until I worked up the nerve to walk back to my father’s house. By the time I remembered to thank him, he was gone.”
“Strange.” And—fine, he could understand why she hadn’t balked from summoning him, if he’d been kind to her in the past.
“Perhaps some of the feline body wore off on him and he was merely curious about me.”
“Apparently, he’s missed you.” A leading question.
“Apparently,” she hedged. “Though he barely gave us anything to go on.”
Her gaze turned distant as she looked at the empty circle before them, then took her phone out of her pocket. Hunt caught a glimpse of who she dialed—Declan Emmet.
“Hi, B.” In the background, music thumped and male laughter roared.
Bryce didn’t bother with niceties. “We’ve been tipped off that we should run various tests again—I’m assuming that means the ones on the victims and crime scenes a few years ago. Can you think of anything that should be reexamined?”
In the background, Ruhn asked, Is that Bryce? But Declan said, “I’d definitely run a scent diagnostic. You’ll need clothes.”
Bryce said, “They must have done a scent diagnostic two years ago.”
Declan said, “Was it the common one, or the Mimir?”
Hunt’s stomach tightened. Especially as Bryce said, “What’s the difference?”
“The Mimir is better. It’s relatively new.”
Bryce looked at Hunt, and he shook his head slowly. She said quietly into the phone, “No one did a Mimir test.”
Declan hesitated. “Well … it’s Fae tech mostly. We loan it out to the legion for their major cases.” A pause. “Someone should have said something.”
