House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,99

of the dumpster. And beside that dumpster, as if someone had chucked them out of a bucket, sat clumps of red pulp. A torn robe lay beside the carnage.

The droning turned into a roar. Her body pulled farther away.

Danika howling with laughter, Connor winking at her, Bronson and Zach and Zelda and Nathalie and Thorne all in hysterics—

Then nothing but red pulp. All of them, all they had been, all she had been with them, became nothing more than piles of red pulp.

Gone, gone, gone—

A hand gripped her shoulder. But not Athalar’s. No, Hunt remained where he was, face now hard as stone.

She flinched as Ruhn said at her ear, “You don’t need to see this.”

This was another murder. Another body. Another year.

A medwitch even knelt before the body, a wand buzzing with firstlight in her hands, trying to piece the corpse—the girl—back together.

Ruhn tugged her away, toward the screen and open air beyond—

The movement shook her loose. Snapped the droning in her ears.

She yanked her body free from his grip, not caring if anyone else saw, not caring that he, as head of the Fae Aux units, had the right to be here. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Ruhn’s mouth tightened. But he looked over her shoulder to Hunt. “You’re an asshole.”

Hunt’s eyes glittered. “I warned her on the walk over what she’d see.” He added a touch ruefully, “I didn’t realize what a mess it’d be.” He had warned her, hadn’t he? She’d drifted so far away that she’d barely listened to Hunt on the walk. As dazed as if she’d snorted a heap of lightseeker. Hunt added, “She’s a grown woman. She doesn’t need you deciding what she can handle.” He nodded toward the alley exit. “Shouldn’t you be researching? We’ll call you if you’re needed, princeling.”

“Fuck you,” Ruhn shot back, shadows twining through his hair. Others were noticing now. “You don’t think it’s more than a coincidence that an acolyte was killed right after we went to the temple?”

Their words didn’t register. None of it registered.

Bryce turned from the alley, the swarming investigators. Ruhn said, “Bryce—”

“Leave me alone,” she said quietly, and kept walking. She shouldn’t have let Athalar bully her into coming, shouldn’t have seen this, shouldn’t have had to remember.

Once, she might have gone right to the dance studio. Would have danced and moved until the world made sense again. It had always been her haven, her way of puzzling out the world. She’d gone to the studio whenever she’d had a shit day.

It had been two years since she’d set foot in one. She’d thrown out all her dance clothes and shoes. Her bags. The one at the apartment had all been splattered with blood anyway—Danika’s, Connor’s, and Thorne’s on the clothes in the bedroom, and Zelda’s and Bronson’s on her secondary bag, which had been left hanging beside the door. Blood patterns just like—

A rain-kissed scent brushed her nose as Hunt fell into step beside her. And there he was. Another memory from that night.

“Hey,” Hunt said.

Hey, he’d said to her, so long ago. She’d been a wreck, a ghost, and then he’d been there, kneeling beside her, those dark eyes unreadable as he’d said, Hey.

She hadn’t told him—that she remembered that night in the interrogation room. She sure as Hel didn’t feel like telling him now.

If she had to talk to someone, she’d explode. If she had to do anything right now, she’d sink into one of those primal Fae wraths and—

The haze started to creep over her vision, her muscles seizing painfully, her fingertips curled as if imagining shredding into someone—

“Walk it off,” Hunt murmured.

“Leave me alone, Athalar.” She wouldn’t look at him. Couldn’t stand him or her brother or anyone. If the acolyte’s murder had been because of their presence at the temple, either as a warning or because the girl might have seen something related to the Horn, if they’d accidentally brought her death about … Her legs kept moving, swifter and swifter. Hunt didn’t falter for a beat.

She wouldn’t cry. Wouldn’t dissolve into a hyperventilating mess on the street corner. Wouldn’t scream or puke or—

After another block, Hunt said roughly, “I was there that night.”

She kept walking, her heels eating up the pavement.

Hunt asked, “How did you survive the kristallos?”

He’d no doubt been looking at the body just now and wondering this. How did she, a pathetic half-breed, survive when full-blooded Vanir hadn’t?

“I didn’t survive,” she mumbled, crossing a street and edging around a car idling in the intersection.