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Hunt asked, “Think it’s got to do with last night?”
Bryce didn’t answer as she typed back, Why?
Ruhn replied. Because it’s one of the few places in this city without cameras.
“Interesting,” she murmured. “You think I should give him a heads-up that you’re coming?”
Hunt’s grin was pure wickedness. “Hel no.”
Bryce couldn’t keep herself from grinning back.
21
Ruhn Danaan leaned against one of the marble pillars of the inner sanctum of Luna’s Temple and waited for his sister to arrive. Tourists drifted past, snapping photos, none marking his presence, thanks to the shadow veil he’d pulled around himself.
The chamber was long, its ceiling lofty. It had to be, to accommodate the statue enthroned at the back.
Thirty feet high, Luna sat in a carved golden throne, the goddess lovingly rendered in shimmering moonstone. A silver tiara of a full moon held by two crescent ones graced her upswept curling hair. At her sandaled feet lay twin wolves, their baleful eyes daring any pilgrim to come closer. Across the back of her throne, a bow of solid gold had been slung, its quiver full of silver arrows. The pleats of her thigh-length robe draped across her lap, veiling the slim fingers resting there.
Both wolves and Fae claimed Luna as their patron goddess—had gone to war over whom she favored in millennia long past. And while the wolves’ connection to her had been carved into the statue with stunning detail, the nod to the Fae had been missing for two years. Maybe the Autumn King had a point about restoring the Fae to glory. Not in the haughty, sneering way his father intended, but … the lack of Fae heritage on the statue raked down Ruhn’s nerves.
Footsteps scuffed in the courtyard beyond the sanctum doors, followed by excited whispers and the click of cameras.
“The courtyard itself is modeled after the one in the Eternal City,” a female voice was saying as a new flock of tourists entered the temple, trailing their guide like ducklings.
And at the rear of the group—a wine-red head of hair.
And a too-recognizable pair of gray wings.
Ruhn gritted his teeth, keeping hidden in the shadows. At least she’d shown up.
The tour group stopped in the center of the inner sanctum, the guide speaking loudly as everyone spread out, cameras flashing like Athalar’s lightning in the gloom. “And here it is, folks: the statue of Luna herself. Lunathion’s patron goddess was crafted from a single block of marble hewn from the famed Caliprian Quarries by the Melanthos River up north. This temple was the first thing built upon the city’s founding five hundred years ago; the location of this city was selected precisely because of the way the Istros River bends through the land. Can anyone tell me what shape the river makes?”
“A crescent!” someone called out, the words echoing off the marble pillars, wending through the curling smoke from the bowl of incense laid between the wolves at the goddess’s feet.
Ruhn saw Bryce and Hunt scan the sanctum for him, and he let the shadows peel back long enough for them to spy his location. Bryce’s face revealed nothing. Athalar just grinned.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
With all the tourists focused on their guide, no one noticed the unusual pair crossing the space. Ruhn kept the shadows at bay until Bryce and Hunt reached him—and then willed them to encompass them as well.
Hunt just said, “Fancy trick.”
Bryce said nothing. Ruhn tried not to remember how delighted she’d once been whenever he’d demonstrated how his shadows and starlight worked—both halves of his power working as one.
Ruhn said to her, “I asked you to come. Not him.”
Bryce linked her arm through Athalar’s, the portrait they painted laughable: Bryce in her fancy work dress and heels, the angel in his black battle-suit. “We’re joined at the hip now, unfortunately for you. Best, best friends.”
“The best,” Hunt echoed, his grin unfading.
Luna shoot him dead. This would not end well.
Bryce nodded to the tour group still trailing their leader through the temple. “This place might not have any cameras, but they do.”
“They’re focused on their guide,” Ruhn said. “And the noise they’re making will mask any conversation we have.” The shadows could only hide him from sight, not sound.
Through thin ripples in the shadows, they could make out a young couple edging around the statue, so busy snapping photos they didn’t note the denser bit of darkness in the far corner. But Ruhn fell silent, and Bryce and Athalar followed suit.
