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But then Lehabah said to Hunt, “How much do you cost to buy, Athie?”
Bryce cut in, “Lele, that’s rude. And don’t call him Athie.”
She sent up a puff of smoke. “He and I are of the same House, and are both slaves. My great-grandmother fought in his 18th Legion during their rebellion. I am allowed to ask.”
Hunt’s face wholly shuttered at the mention of the rebellion, but he approached the couch, let Syrinx sniff his fingers, then scratched the beast behind his velvety ears. Syrinx let out a low growl of pleasure, his lion’s tail going limp.
Bryce tried to block out the squeezing sensation in her chest at the sight of it.
Hunt’s wings rustled. “I was sold to Micah for eighty-five million gold marks.”
Bryce’s heel snagged on the carpet as she reached Lehabah’s little station and grabbed the tablet. Lehabah again floated over to the angel. “I cost ninety thousand gold marks,” Lehabah confided. “Syrie was two hundred thirty-three thousand gold marks.”
Hunt’s eyes snapped to Bryce. “You paid that?”
Bryce sat at the worktable and pointed to the empty chair beside hers. Hunt followed obediently, for once. “I got a fifteen percent employee discount. And we came to an arrangement.”
Let that be that.
Until Lehabah declared, “Jesiba takes some out of each paycheck.” Bryce growled, reining in the instinct to smother the sprite with a pillow. “BB will be paying it off until she’s three hundred. Unless she doesn’t make the Drop. Then she’ll die first.”
Hunt dropped into his seat, his wing brushing her arm. Softer than velvet, smoother than silk. He snapped it in tight at the touch, as if he couldn’t bear the contact. “Why?”
Bryce said, “Because that warlord wanted to hurt and break him until he was a fighting beast, and Syrinx is my friend, and I was sick of losing friends.”
“I thought you were loaded.”
“Nope.” She finished the word on a popping noise.
Hunt’s brow furrowed. “But your apartment—”
“The apartment is Danika’s.” Bryce couldn’t meet his gaze. “She bought it as an investment. Had its ownership written in our names. I didn’t even know it existed until after she died. And I would have just sold it, but it had top-notch security, and grade A enchantments—”
“I get it,” he said again, and she shrank from the kindness in his eyes. The pity.
Danika had died, and she was alone, and—Bryce couldn’t breathe.
She’d refused to go to therapy. Her mother had set up appointment after appointment for the first year, and Bryce had bailed on all of them. She’d bought herself an aromatherapy diffuser, had read up on breathing techniques, and that had been that.
She knew she should have gone. Therapy helped so many people—saved so many lives. Juniper had been seeing a therapist since she was a teenager and would tell anyone who would listen about how vital and brilliant it was.
But Bryce hadn’t shown up—not because she didn’t believe it would work. No, she knew it would work, and help, and probably make her feel better. Or at least give her the tools to try to do so.
That was precisely why she hadn’t gone.
From the way Hunt was staring at her, she wondered if he knew it—realized why she blew out a long breath.
Look toward where it hurts the most.
Fucker. The Viper Queen could go to Hel with her pro tips.
She turned on Lehabah’s electronic tablet. The screen revealed a vampyr and wolf tangled in each other, groaning, naked—
Bryce laughed. “You stopped watching in the middle of this to come bother me, Lele?”
The air in the room lightened, as if Bryce’s sorrow had cracked at the sight of the wolf pounding into the moaning vampyr female.
Lehabah burned ruby. “I wanted to meet Athie,” she muttered, slinking back to her couch.
