House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,128

remind him where the fuck he stood in the pecking order, and then that would be that.

“Good,” Micah said. “The file’s waiting at your room in the barracks.” He paused, as if sensing the question now burning through Hunt. “The offer still stands, Athalar. Don’t make me reconsider.” The call ended.

Hunt clenched his jaw hard enough to hurt.

Quinlan’s forehead wrinkled with concern. “Everything okay?”

Hunt slid the phone into his pocket. “It’s fine.” He resumed walking. “Just legion business.” Not a lie. Not entirely.

The glass doors to her building opened. Hunt nodded toward the lobby. “You head up. I’ve got something to do. I’ll call if we get the date and time for Briggs.”

Her amber eyes narrowed. Yeah, she saw right through it. Or rather, heard everything he wasn’t saying. Knew what Micah had ordered him to do.

But she said, “All right.” She turned toward the lobby, but added over her shoulder, “Good luck.”

He didn’t bother answering before he shot into the skies, phone already to his ear as he called Justinian to ask him to play sentry for a few hours. Justinian whined about missing the sunball game, but Hunt pulled rank, earning a grumbled promise that the angel would be at the adjacent rooftop in ten minutes.

Justinian arrived in eight. Leaving his brother-in-arms to it, Hunt sucked in a breath of dusty, dry air, the Istros a teal ribbon to his left, and went to do what he did best.

“Please.”

It was always the same word. The only word people tended to say when the Umbra Mortis stood before them.

Through the blood splattered on his helmet, Hunt regarded the male cougar shifter cowering before him. His clawed hands shook as he left them upraised. “Please,” the man sobbed.

Every utterance dragged Hunt further away. Until the arm he outstretched was distant, until the gun he aimed at the male’s head was just a bit of metal.

A death for a death.

“Please.”

The male had done horrible things. Unspeakable things. He deserved this. Deserved worse.

“Pleasepleaseplease.”

Hunt was nothing but a shadow, a wisp of life, an instrument of death.

He was nothing and no one at all.

“Ple—”

Hunt’s finger curled on the trigger.

Hunt returned early. Well, early for him.

Thankfully, no one was in the barracks bathroom while he showered off the blood. Then sat under the scalding spray for so long that he lost track of time.

He would have stayed longer had he not known that Justinian was waiting.

So he patched himself up, pieced himself together. Half crawled out of the boiling-hot shower and into the person he was when he wasn’t forced to put a bullet between someone’s eyes.

He made a few stops before getting back to Bryce’s apartment. But he made it back, relieving Justinian from his duties, and walked through Bryce’s door at eleven.

She was in her bedroom, the door shut, but Syrinx let out a little yowl of welcome from within. Her scolding hush was proof that she’d heard Hunt return. Hunt prayed she wouldn’t come into the hall. Words were still beyond him.

Her doorknob turned. But Hunt was already at his room, and didn’t dare look across the expanse of the great room as she said tightly, “You’re back.”

“Yeah,” he choked out.

Even across the room, he could feel her questions. But she said softly, “I recorded the game for you. If you still want to watch it.”

Something tightened unbearably in his chest. But Hunt didn’t look back.

He slipped into his room with a mumbled “Night,” and shut the door behind him.

33

The Oracle’s black chamber reeked of sulfur and roasted meat—the former from the natural gases rising from the hole in the center of the space, the latter from the pile of bull bones currently smoldering atop the altar against the far wall, an offering to Ogenas, Keeper of Mysteries.

After last night, what he’d done, a sacred temple was the last place he wanted to be. The last place he deserved to be.

The twenty-foot doors shut behind Hunt as he strode across the silent chamber, aiming for the hole in the center and wall of smoke behind it. His eyes burned with the various acrid scents, and he summoned a wind to keep them out of his face.

Behind the smoke, a figure moved. “I wondered when the Shadow of Death would darken my chamber,” a lovely voice said. Young, full of light and amusement—and yet tinged with ancient cruelty.

Hunt halted at the edge of the hole, avoiding the urge to peer into the endless blackness. “I won’t take much of your time,” he