House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,228

off a moment later, not giving herself time to reconsider what she’d written to Ithan. Her first message to him in two years. His frantic messages from that horrible night, then his cold order to stay away, were still the last things in a thread that went back five years before that.

You tell your Alpha that Connor never bothered to notice her because he always knew what a piece of shit she was. And tell Sabine that if I see her again, I will kill her.

Bryce lay down next to Hunt, not daring to touch his ravaged back.

Her phone buzzed. Ithan had written, I had no part in what went down today.

Bryce wrote back, You disgust me. All of you.

Ithan didn’t reply, and she put her phone on silent before she let out a long breath and leaned her brow against Hunt’s shoulder.

She’d find a way to make this right. Somehow. Someday.

Hunt’s eyes cracked open, pain a steady throb through him. Its sharpness was dulled—likely by some sort of potion or concoction of drugs.

The steady counterweight that should have been on his back was gone. The emptiness hit him like a semitruck. But soft, feminine breathing filled the darkness. A scent like paradise filled his nose, settled him. Soothed the pain.

His eyes adjusted to the dark enough to know that he was in Bryce’s bedroom. That she was lying beside him. Medical supplies and vials lay next to the bed. All for him, many looking used. The clock read four in the morning. How many hours had she sat up, tending to him?

Her hands were tucked in at her chest, as if she had fallen asleep beseeching the gods.

He mouthed her name, his tongue as dry as sandpaper.

Pain rippled through his body, but he managed to stretch out an arm. Managed to slide it over her waist and tuck her into him. She made a soft sound and nuzzled her head into his neck.

Something deep in him shifted and settled. What she’d said and done today, what she’d revealed to the world in her pleading for him … It was dangerous. For both of them. So, so dangerous.

If he were wise, he’d find somehow to pull away. Before this thing between them met its inevitable, horrible end. As all things in the Republic met a horrible end.

And yet Hunt couldn’t bring himself to remove his arm. To avoid the instinct to breathe in her scent and listen to her soft breathing.

He didn’t regret it, what he’d done. Not one bit of it.

But there might come a day when that wouldn’t be true. A day that might dawn very soon.

So Hunt savored the feel of Bryce. Her scent and breathing.

Savored every second of it.

63

“Is Athie okay, BB?”

Bryce rubbed her eyes as she studied the computer screen in the gallery library. “He’s sleeping it off.”

Lehabah had cried this morning when Bryce had trudged in to tell her what had occurred. She’d barely noticed that her leg had no pain—not a whisper. She’d wanted to stay home, to care for Hunt, but when she’d called Jesiba, the answer had been clear: No.

She’d spent the first half of the morning filling out job applications.

And had sent each and every one of them in.

She didn’t know where the Hel she would end up, but getting out of this place was the first step. Of many.

She’d taken a few more today.

Ruhn had picked up on the first ring, and come right over to the apartment.

Hunt had still been asleep when she’d left him in her brother’s care. She didn’t want anyone from that fucking legion in her house. Didn’t want to see Isaiah or Viktoria or any of the triarii anytime soon.

Ruhn had taken one glance at Hunt’s mutilated back and gagged. But he’d promised to stay on the pills-and-wound-care schedule she laid out for him.

“Micah went easy on him,” Ruhn said when she stopped by at lunch, toying with one of his earrings. “Really fucking easy. Sabine had the right to call for his death.” As a slave, Hunt had no rights whatsoever. None.

“I will never forget it as long as I live,” Bryce answered, her voice dull. The flash of Micah’s sword. Hunt’s scream, as if his soul was being shredded. Sabine’s smile.

“I should have been the one to shut Amelie up.” Shadows flickered in the room.

“Well, you weren’t.” She measured the potion for Ruhn to give Hunt at the top of the hour.

Ruhn stretched an arm over the back of the sofa. “I’d