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The third was of her still smiling—and Hunt still looking at her. Like she was the only person on the planet. In the galaxy.
His heart thundered. In the next few, her face had turned toward him. Their eyes had met. Her smile had faltered.
As if realizing how he was looking at her.
In the next, she was smiling at the ground, his eyes still on her. A secret, soft smile. Like she knew, and didn’t mind one bit.
And then in the last, she had leaned her head against his chest, and wrapped her arms around his middle. He’d put his arm and wing around her. And they had both smiled.
True, broad smiles. Belonging to the people they might have been without the tattoo on his brow and the grief in her heart and this whole stupid fucking world around them.
A life. These were the photos of someone with a life, and a good one at that. A reminder of what it had felt like to have a home, and someone who cared whether he lived or died. Someone who made him smile just by entering a room.
He’d never had that before. With anyone.
The screen went dark, and then the photos began again.
And he could see it, this time. How her eyes—they had been so cold at the start. How even with her ridiculous pictures and poses, that smile hadn’t reached her eyes. But with each photo, more light had crept into them. Brightened them. Brightened his eyes, too. Until those last photos. When Bryce was near-glowing with joy.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Sandriel was smirking like a cat. “Is this really what you wanted in the end, Hunt?” She gestured to the photos. To Bryce’s smiling face. “To be freed one day, to marry the girl, to live out some ordinary, basic life?” She chuckled. “Whatever would Shahar say?”
Her name didn’t clang. And the guilt he thought would sear him didn’t so much as sizzle.
Sandriel’s full lips curved upward, a mockery of her twin’s smile. “Such simple, sweet wishes, Hunt. But that’s not how these things work out. Not for people like you.”
His stomach twisted. The photos were torture, he realized. To remind him of the life he might have had. What he’d tasted on the couch with Bryce the other night. What he’d pissed away.
“You know,” Sandriel said, “if you had played the obedient dog, Micah would have eventually petitioned for your freedom.” The words pelted him. “But you couldn’t be patient. Couldn’t be smart. Couldn’t choose this”—she gestured to their photos—“over your own petty revenge.” Another snake’s smile. “So here we are. Here you are.” She studied a photo Hunt had taken of Bryce with Syrinx, the chimera’s pointed little teeth bared in something terrifyingly close to a grin. “The girl will probably cry her little heart out for a while. But then she’ll forget you, and she’ll find someone else. Maybe there will be some Fae male who can stomach an inferior pairing.”
Hunt’s senses pricked, his temper stirring.
Sandriel shrugged. “Or she’ll wind up in a dumpster with the other half-breeds.”
His fingers curled into fists. There was no threat in Sandriel’s words. Just the terrible practicality of how their world treated people like Bryce.
“The point is,” Sandriel continued, “she will go on. And you and I will go on, Hunt.”
At last, at last, he dragged his eyes from Bryce and the photos of the life, the home, they’d made. The life he still so desperately, stupidly wanted. His wings resumed their itching. “What.”
Sandriel’s smile sharpened. “Didn’t they tell you?”
Dread curled as he looked at his phone in her hands. As he realized why he’d been left alive, and why Sandriel had been allowed to take his belongings.
They were her belongings now.
Bryce entered the near-empty bar just after eleven. The lack of a brooding male presence guarding her back was like a phantom limb, but she ignored it, made herself forget about it as she spotted Ruhn sitting at the counter, sipping his whiskey.
Only Flynn had joined him, the male too busy seducing the female currently playing billiards with him to give Bryce more than a wary, pitying nod. She ignored it and slid onto the stool beside Ruhn, her dress squeaking against the leather. “Hi.”
Ruhn glanced sidelong at her. “Hey.”
The bartender strode over, brows raised in silent question. Bryce shook her head. She didn’t plan to be here long enough for a drink, water or otherwise. She wanted this over with as quickly as possible so she could go back home, take off her bra, and put on her sweats.
Bryce said, “I wanted to come by to say thanks.” Ruhn only stared at her. She watched the sunball game on the TV above the bar. “For the other day. Night. For looking out for me.”
Ruhn squinted at the tiled ceiling.
