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He’d paid for his actions, and it was over, and he could go home with Bryce—
“You are a disgrace, Sabine.” Bryce’s words speared through the room as she bared her teeth at the Prime Apparent. “You are a disgrace to every wolf who has ever walked this planet.”
Sabine said, “I don’t care what a half-breed thinks of me.”
“You didn’t deserve Danika,” Bryce growled, shaking. “You didn’t deserve her for one second.”
Sabine halted. “I didn’t deserve a selfish, spineless brat for a daughter, but that’s not how it turned out, is it?”
Dimly, from far away, Bryce’s snarl cut through Hunt’s pain. He couldn’t reach her in time, though, as she surged to her feet, wincing in agony at her still-healing leg.
Micah stepped in front of her. Bryce panted, sobbing through her teeth. But Micah stood there, immovable as a mountain. “Take Athalar out of here,” the Archangel said calmly, the dismissal clear. “To your home, the barracks, I don’t care.”
But Sabine, it seemed, had decided to stay. To give Bryce a piece of her vicious mind.
Sabine said to her, low and venomous, “I sought out the Under-King last winter, did you know that? To get answers from my daughter, with whatever speck of her energy lives on in the Sleeping City.”
Bryce stilled. The pure stillness of the Fae. Dread filled her eyes.
“Do you know what he told me?” Sabine’s face was inhuman. “He said that Danika would not come. She would not obey my summons. My pathetic daughter would not even deign to meet me in her afterlife. For the shame of what she did. How she died, helpless and screaming, begging like one of you.” Sabine seemed to hum with rage. “And do you know what the Under-King told me when I demanded again that he summon her?”
No one else dared speak.
“He told me that you, you piece of trash, had made a bargain with him. For her. That you had gone to him after her death and traded your spot in the Bone Quarter in exchange for Danika’s passage. That you worried she would be denied access because of her cowardly death and begged him to take her in your stead.”
Even Hunt’s pain paused at that.
“That wasn’t why I went!” Bryce snapped. “Danika wasn’t a coward for one fucking moment of her life!” Her voice broke as she shouted the last words.
“You had no right,” Sabine exploded. “She was a coward, and died like one, and deserved to be dumped into the river!” The Alpha was screaming. “And now she is left with eons of shame because of you! Because she should not be there, you stupid whore. And now she must suffer for it!”
“That’s enough,” Micah said, his words conveying his order. Get out.
Sabine just let out a dead, cold laugh and turned on her heel.
Bryce was still sobbing when Sabine strutted out, a stunned Amelie on her heels. The latter murmured as she shut the door, “I’m sorry.”
Bryce spat at her.
It was the last thing Hunt saw before darkness swept in again.
She would never forgive them. Any of them.
Hunt remained unconscious while the medwitches worked on him in Micah’s office, stitching him up so that the stumps where his wings had been stopped spurting blood onto the floor, then dressing the wounds in bandages that would promote quick growth. No firstlight—apparently, its aid in healing wasn’t allowed for the Living Death. It would delegitimize the punishment.
Bryce knelt with Hunt the entire time, his head in her lap. She didn’t hear Micah telling her how the alternative was Hunt being dead—officially and irrevocably dead.
She stroked Hunt’s hair as they lay in her bed an hour later, his breathing still deep and even. Give him the healing potion every six hours, the medwitch ordered her. It will stave off the pain, too.
Isaiah and Naomi had carried them home, and she’d barely let them lay Hunt facedown on her mattress before she’d ordered them to get out.
She hadn’t expected Sabine to understand why she’d given up her place in the Bone Quarter for Danika. Sabine never listened when Danika spoke about how she’d one day be buried there, in full honor, with all the other great heroes of her House. Living on, as that small speck of energy, for eternity. Still a part of the city she loved so much.
Bryce had seen people’s boats tip. Would never forget Danika’s half-muffled pleading on the audio of the apartment building’s hall camera.
Bryce hadn’t been willing to make the gamble that the boat might not reach the far shore. Not for Danika.
She’d tossed a Death Mark into the Istros, payment to the Under-King—a coin of pure iron from an ancient, long-gone kingdom across the sea. Passage for a mortal on a boat.
