House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,89

does he?”

“According to her, he does,” Bryce muttered, scanning the table for—right, she’d put the list on Lehabah’s table. She aimed for it, heels sinking deep into the carpet.

“There must be thousands of books in here,” Hunt said, surveying the towering shelves.

“Oh yes,” Lehabah said. “But half of this is also Jesiba’s private collection. Some of the books date all the way back to—”

“Ahem,” Bryce said.

Lehabah stuck out her tongue and said in a conspiratorial whisper to Hunt, “BB is cranky because she hasn’t been able to make her list.”

“I’m cranky because I’m hungry and you’ve been a pain in my ass all morning.”

Lehabah floated off Hunt’s finger to rush to her table, where she plopped on her doll’s couch and said to the angel, who looked torn between wincing and laughing, “BB pretends to be mean, but she’s a softie. She bought Syrie because Jesiba was going to gift him to a warlord client in the Farkaan mountains—”

“Lehabah—”

“It’s true.”

Hunt examined the various tanks throughout the room and the assortment of reptiles within them, then the empty waters of the massive aquarium. “I thought he was some designer pet.”

“Oh, he is,” Lehabah said. “Syrinx was stolen from his mother as a cub, then traded for ten years around the world, then Jesiba bought him to be her pet, then Bryce bought him—his freedom, I mean. She even had proof of his freedom certified. No one can ever buy him again.” She pointed to the chimera. “You can’t see it with him lying down like that, but he’s got the freed brand on his front right paw. The official C and everything.”

Hunt twisted from the gloomy water to look Bryce over.

She crossed her arms. “What? You did the assuming.”

His eyes flickered. Whatever the fuck that meant.

She tried not to look at his own wrist, though—the SPQM stamped there. She wondered if he was resisting the same urge; if he was contemplating whether he’d ever get that C one day.

But then Lehabah said to Hunt, “How much do you cost to buy, Athie?”

Bryce cut in, “Lele, that’s rude. And don’t call him Athie.”

She sent up a puff of smoke. “He and I are of the same House, and are both slaves. My great-grandmother fought in his 18th Legion during their rebellion. I am allowed to ask.”

Hunt’s face wholly shuttered at the mention of the rebellion, but he approached the couch, let Syrinx sniff his fingers, then scratched the beast behind his velvety ears. Syrinx let out a low growl of pleasure, his lion’s tail going limp.

Bryce tried to block out the squeezing sensation in her chest at the sight of it.

Hunt’s wings rustled. “I was sold to Micah for eighty-five million gold marks.”

Bryce’s heel snagged on the carpet as she reached Lehabah’s little station and grabbed the tablet. Lehabah again floated over to the angel. “I cost ninety thousand gold marks,” Lehabah confided. “Syrie was two hundred thirty-three thousand gold marks.”

Hunt’s eyes snapped to Bryce. “You paid that?”

Bryce sat at the worktable and pointed to the empty chair beside hers. Hunt followed obediently, for once. “I got a fifteen percent employee discount. And we came to an arrangement.”

Let that be that.

Until Lehabah declared, “Jesiba takes some out of each paycheck.” Bryce growled, reining in the instinct to smother the sprite with a pillow. “BB will be paying it off until she’s three hundred. Unless she doesn’t make the Drop. Then she’ll die first.”

Hunt dropped into his seat, his wing brushing her arm. Softer than velvet, smoother than silk. He snapped it in tight at the touch, as if he couldn’t bear the contact. “Why?”

Bryce said, “Because that warlord wanted to hurt and break him until he was a fighting beast, and Syrinx is my friend, and I was sick of losing friends.”

“I thought you were loaded.”

“Nope.” She finished the word on a popping noise.

Hunt’s brow furrowed. “But your apartment—”

“The apartment is Danika’s.” Bryce couldn’t meet his gaze. “She bought it as an investment. Had its ownership written in our names. I didn’t even know it existed until after she died. And I would have just sold it, but it had top-notch security, and grade A enchantments—”

“I get it,” he said again, and she shrank from the kindness in his eyes. The pity.

Danika had died, and she was alone, and—Bryce couldn’t breathe.

She’d refused to go to therapy. Her mother had set up appointment after appointment for the first year, and Bryce had bailed on all of them. She’d bought herself an aromatherapy diffuser,