House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,68

I should be doing with my time?”

She could have sworn she tasted ether as he growled, “I’m going to be straight with you.”

“Goody.”

His nostrils flared. “I will do whatever the Hel it takes to solve this case. Even if it means tying you to a fucking chair until you write those lists.”

She smirked. “Bondage. Nice.”

Hunt’s eyes darkened. “Do. Not. Fuck. With. Me.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re the Umbra Mortis.”

His teeth flashed. “I don’t care what you call me, Quinlan, so long as you do what you’re told.”

Fucking alphahole.

“Immortality is a long time to have a giant stick up your ass.” Bryce put her hands on her hips. Never mind that she was completely undermined by Syrinx dancing at her feet, prancing in place.

Dragging his stare away from her, the angel surveyed her pet with raised brows. Syrinx’s tail waved and bobbed. Hunt snorted, as if despite himself. “You’re a smart beastie, aren’t you?” He threw a scornful glance to Bryce. “Smarter than your owner, it seems.”

Make that the King of Alphaholes.

But Syrinx preened. And Bryce had the stupid, overwhelming urge to hide Syrinx from Hunt, from anyone, from anything. He was hers, and no one else’s, and she didn’t particularly like the thought of anyone coming into their little bubble—

Hunt’s stare lifted to her own again. “Do you own any weapons?” The purely male gleam in his eye told her that he assumed she didn’t.

“Bother me again,” she said sweetly, just before she shut the window in his face, “and you’ll find out.”

Hunt wondered how much trouble he’d get in if he chucked Bryce Quinlan into the Istros.

After the morning he’d had, any punishment from Micah or being turned into a pig by Jesiba Roga was starting to seem well worth it.

Leaning against a lamppost, his face coated with the misting rain that drifted through the city, Hunt clenched his jaw hard enough to hurt. At this hour, commuters packed the narrow streets of the Old Square—some heading to jobs in the countless shops and galleries, others aiming for the spires of the CBD, half a mile westward. All of them, however, noted his wings, his face, and gave him a wide berth.

Hunt ignored them and glanced at the clock on his phone. Eight fifteen.

He’d waited long enough to make the call. He dialed the number and held the phone to his ear, listening to it ring once, twice—

“Please tell me Bryce is alive,” said Isaiah, his voice breathless in a way that told Hunt he was either at the barracks gym or enjoying his boyfriend’s company.

“For the moment.”

A machine beeped, like Isaiah was dialing down the speed of a treadmill. “Do I want to know why I’m getting a call this soon?” A pause. “Why are you on Samson Street?”

Though Isaiah probably tracked his location through the beacon on Hunt’s phone, Hunt still scowled toward the nearest visible camera. There were likely ones hidden in the cypresses and palm trees flanking the sidewalks, too, or disguised as sprinkler heads popping from the soggy grass of the flower beds, or built into the iron lampposts like the one he leaned against.

Someone was always watching. In this entire fucking city, territory, and world, someone was always watching, the cameras so bespelled and warded that they were bombproof. Even if this city turned to rubble under the lethal magic of the Asterian Guard’s brimstone missiles, the cameras would keep recording.

“Are you aware,” Hunt said, his voice a low rasp as a bevy of quails snaked across the street—some tiny shifter family, no doubt—“that chimeras are able to pick locks, open doors, and jump between two places as if they were walking from one room to another?”

“No …?” Isaiah said, panting.

Apparently, Quinlan wasn’t, either, if she bothered to have a crate for her beast. Though maybe the damn thing was more to give the chimera a designated comfort space, like people did with their dogs. Since there was no way he would stay contained without a whole host of enchantments.

The Lowers, the class of Vanir to which the chimera belonged, had all sorts of interesting, small powers like that. It was part of why they demanded such high prices on the market. And why, even millennia later, the Senate and Asteri had shot down any attempts to change the laws that branded them as property to be traded. The Lowers were too dangerous, they’d claimed—unable to understand the laws, with powers that could be disruptive if left unchecked by the various spells and magic-infused tattoos