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“And we can’t have that,” Bryce crooned. “All that precious breeding stock—gone.”
“I will remind you that royal you might be, but you are still female. And Fae females speak only when spoken to.”
Bryce smiled slowly.
“Now you’ve done it,” Hunt grumbled, and decided it was a good time to step up to his mate’s side. He said to the king, “Telling her to shut up doesn’t end well for anyone. Trust me.”
“I will not be addressed by a slave,” Morven seethed, nodding toward Hunt’s wrist, the mark barely visible past his black sleeve. Then he nodded to Hunt’s haloed brow. “Least of all a Fallen angel, disgraced by the world.”
“Oh boy,” Bryce said, sighing at the ceiling. She whirled to their group. “Okay, let’s do a head count. If you’re disowned, disgraced, or both, raise your hand.”
Tharion, Baxian, Lidia, Hunt, and Ruhn raised their hands. Bryce surveyed Flynn and Dec, both still in their usual black jeans and T-shirts, and sighed again. She gestured expansively, giving them the floor.
Flynn smirked, sauntering to Bryce’s side. “Far as I know, I’m still my father’s heir. Good to see you again, Morven.”
Hunt could have sworn Morven’s shadows hissed. “It would be in your best interests, Tristan Flynn, to speak to me with the utmost respect.”
“Oh?” Flynn crossed his arms, brimming with entitled arrogance.
Morven motioned to someone behind them, the delicate silver embroidery along the wrists and collar of his immaculately cut black jacket gleaming in the firelight, and Hunt whirled as two hulking guards prowled from the shadows. He hadn’t sensed them, hadn’t heard them—
From Tharion’s and Baxian’s shocked faces, he knew they were equally surprised.
But Ruhn, Flynn, and Declan glowered. Like they recognized the approaching males, both towering and armed to the teeth. They were clearly twins.
The Murder Twins Ruhn had mentioned, capable of prying into minds as they saw fit.
But that wasn’t Hunt’s top concern—not yet.
Because between them, in black leggings and a white sweater, light brown hair down around her face … Hunt had no idea who the Fae female was. She was fuming, though, outright seething at the guards, the king, and—
“What the fuck?” Flynn exploded.
“Sathia?” Declan said, gaping.
“It seems,” Morven drawled as the Murder Twins dragged the Fae female forward, their grips white-knuckled on her arms, hard enough to bruise, “that your sister has landed in a heap of trouble, Tristan Flynn.”
48
Bryce didn’t know who to focus on: Sathia Flynn bristling with fury in Morven’s throne room, or Tristan’s shocked face as he processed the scene before them. Bryce opted for the latter, especially as Flynn snapped at the King of Avallen, “What do you mean, trouble?”
Morven drawled, “Many of the Valbaran Fae sense … unrest on the horizon, and have been seeking shelter within my lands.” Those serpentine shadows writhed around his neck, over his shoulders, with unnerving menace. The king’s shadows, the Murder Twins’ … they felt different from Ruhn’s: wilder, meaner. Ruhn’s shadows were gentle, stealthy night; theirs were the dark of lightless caves.
“If you pitched this place as a luxury vacation, you’re about to get a bunch of one-star reviews,” Bryce muttered, earning a chuckle from Tharion. She didn’t smile at the mer, though. He’d added another nearly all-powerful ruler to their list of enemies—she didn’t want to talk to him right now. From the way Tharion’s chuckle quickly died off, he knew she wasn’t happy.
So Bryce watched as Flynn, dead serious perhaps for the first time in his life, said to the Stag King, voice dripping with disdain, “Let me guess, my parents came running right over.” He glanced around the throne room. “Where’s my oh-so-brave father? And everyone else, for that matter?”
Morven’s face might as well have been carved from stone. “A select few have been allowed in. Most have been sent back to Lunathion. But for those who remain here, there is a price to be paid, of course.”
Flynn slowly turned toward his sister. “What did you promise him?” Pure rage and a hint of fear laced his question. But Flynn didn’t go for the female or the twins holding her.
Bryce sized them up, and found both males already smiling at her. And then, deep in her mind, twin dark shadows snarled, readying to strike—
She incinerated them with a mental wall of starlight.
The twins hissed, one of them blinking as if that light had physically blinded him. Bryce bared her teeth, and kept that shining wall in her mind. A second later, there was a polite tap against it and Ruhn said, Keep this up. No matter what.
Tell Hunt and the others to put up a wall as well, Bryce replied, glaring daggers at the twins.
