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“Where was this mercy when it came to the Autumn King? You didn’t stop Ruhn then.”
“The Autumn King had done nothing in his long, miserable life except inflict pain. He didn’t merit my notice, let alone my mercy. She does.”
“Why?” He looked to his mate, his rage slipping a notch. “Why?”
“Because she made a mistake,” Naomi said, stepping forward, expression pained. “And has been trying to make it right ever since. Isaiah and I didn’t come up here with her because she ordered us to. We wanted to help her.”
Hunt pointed to the Rift mere feet from Bryce. “She’s going to stop you from opening it.”
“I will not,” Celestina promised, keeping her head bowed. “I yield.”
“Let her go, Hunt,” Bryce said.
“Morven yielded, and you killed him,” Hunt snapped at her.
“I know,” Bryce said. “And I’ll live with that. I wouldn’t wish the same burden on you. Hunt … We have enough enemies. Let her go.”
“I swear upon Solas himself,” Celestina said, the highest oath an angel could invoke, “that I will help you, if it is within my power.”
“I’m not going to take the word of an Archangel.”
“Well, we’re going to need this Archangel,” Bryce said, and Hunt’s rage slipped further as he looked to her again.
“What?”
Bryce glanced at the Harpy’s body, half-melted from Hunt’s lightning clashing with Celestina’s power. The rock around it had been warped—his lightning had altered the stone itself. Bryce closed the distance between her and Hunt, reaching out to take his hand.
His lightning crawled over her skin, but he didn’t let it hurt. He could never hurt her.
“You said you’re with me—all of you,” Bryce murmured, staring at him and only him. “Put the past behind you. Focus on what’s ahead. We have a world to save, and I need my mate at my side to do it. No one else—not a son of Hel, not the Umbra Mortis, not even Hunt fucking Athalar. I need my mate. Just Hunt.”
He saw it all in her eyes—that no matter what had happened, who he’d been and what he’d done … it really didn’t matter to her. Being made in Hel didn’t matter to her. But she’d captured who he was, deep down, in those photos last spring. The person she’d brought into the world. The person she loved.
Just Hunt.
So he let go. Let go of the lightning, of the death singing in his veins. Let go of Apollion’s and Thanatos’s smirking faces. Let go of his rage at the Archangel before him, and the Archangels who’d existed before her.
Just Hunt. He liked that.
His lightning faded, fizzling away entirely. And he said to Bryce, as if she were the only person on Midgard, in any galaxy, “I love you, Just Bryce.”
She snickered, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Now, if you don’t plan on killing Celestina anymore …” Bryce pulled the Mask from her jacket again. “We’re going to raise an army.”
“What army?” Isaiah whispered.
“We’re going to raise the Fallen,” Bryce said, tossing the Mask in the air and catching it like it was a fucking sunball.
Hunt’s knees buckled. “You said we were going to use the Mask to fight the Asteri.”
“And we are,” Bryce said, pitching the Mask up and catching it once more. “It’s your fault you didn’t ask for specifics on how we’d use it against them.”
No, he’d assumed she’d put it on and it would give her some edge to kill them.
Hunt shook his head. “You’re out of your mind.”
Bryce halted her tossing at that, voice gentling. “We need a distraction for the Asteri. Hel won’t be enough. But an army of the dead, an army of the Fallen, will work nicely. An army that won’t have to die again. And Isaiah and Naomi are going to lead them.”
“That’s why you sent Ruhn and Lidia to get them,” Hunt said quietly, fighting through his shock.
