And then a short, dark video, shaking as someone roared with laughter while Bryce flipped off the camera, leaned over a line of white powder—lightseeker—and sniffed it right up her freckled nose. She was laughing, so bright and alive that the woman in the room before them looked like a gutted corpse, and she shrieked into the camera, “LIGHT IT UP, DANIKAAAAA!”
Danika’s written reply was precisely what Isaiah expected from the Prime Apparent of the wolves, whom he’d seen only from a distance at formal events and who had seemed poised to start trouble wherever she went: I FUCKING HATE YOU. STOP DOING LIGHTSEEKER WITHOUT ME. ASSHOLE.
Party Princess, indeed.
Bryce had written back twenty minutes later, I just hooked up with someone in the bathroom. Don’t tell Connor.
Hunt shook his head.
But Bryce sat there as Viktoria read the messages aloud, the wraith stone-faced.
Danika wrote back, Was it good?!!?
Only good enough to take the edge off.
“This isn’t relevant,” Hunt murmured. “Pull in Viktoria.”
“We have our orders.”
“Fuck the orders. That woman is about to break, and not in a good way.”
Then Bryce stopped responding to Danika.
But Danika kept messaging. One after another. Over the next two hours.
The show’s over. Where are you assholes?
Why aren’t you picking up your phone? I’m calling Fury.
Where the FUCK is Fury?
Juniper never brings her phone, so I’m not even gonna bother with her. Where are you?!!!
Should I come to the club? The pack’s leaving in ten. Stop fucking strangers in the bathroom, because Connor’s coming with me.
BRYYYYCE. When you look at your phone, I hope the 1,000 alerts piss you off.
Thorne is telling me to stop messaging you. I told him to mind his own fucking business.
Connor says to grow the Hel up and stop doing shady-ass drugs, because only losers do that shit. He wasn’t happy when I said I’m not sure I can let you date a holier-than-thou priss.
Okay, we’re leaving in five. See you soon, cocksucker. Light it up.
Bryce stared at the screen unblinkingly, her torn face sickly pale in the light of the monitor.
“The building’s cameras are mostly broken, but the one in the hall was still able to record some audio, though its video footage was down,” Viktoria said calmly. “Shall I play it?”
No response. So Viktoria played it.
Muffled snarling and screaming filled the speakers—quiet enough that it was clear the hall camera had picked up only the loudest noises coming from the apartment. And then someone was roaring—a feral wolf’s roar. “Please, please—”
The words were cut off. But the hall camera’s audio wasn’t.
Danika Fendyr screamed. Something tumbled and crashed in the background—as if she’d been thrown into furniture. And the hall camera kept recording.
The screaming went on, and on, and on. Interrupted only by the camera’s fritzed system. The muffled grunts and growls were wet and vicious, and Danika was begging, sobbing as she pleaded for mercy, wept and screamed for it to stop—
“Turn it off,” Hunt ordered, stalking from the room. “Turn it off now.” He was out so fast Isaiah couldn’t stop him, instantly crossing the space to the door beside theirs and flinging it open before Isaiah had cleared the room.
But there was Danika, audio crackling in and out, the sound of her voice still pleading for mercy coming from the speakers in the ceiling. Danika, being devoured and shredded.
The silence from the murderer was as chilling as Danika’s sobbing screams.
Viktoria twisted toward the door as Hunt barreled in, his face dark with fury, wings spreading. The Shadow of Death unleashed.
Isaiah tasted ether. Lightning writhed at Hunt’s fingertips.
Danika’s unending, half-muffled screams filled the room.
Isaiah stepped into the chamber in time to see Bryce explode.
He summoned a wall of wind around himself and Vik, Hunt no doubt doing the same, as Bryce shot out of her chair and flipped the table. It soared over Viktoria’s head and slammed into the observation window.
A feral growl filled the room as she grabbed the chair she’d been sitting on, hurling it against the wall, so hard its metal frame dented and crumpled.
She vomited all over the floor. If his power hadn’t been around Viktoria, it would have showered her absurdly expensive bespoke heels.
The audio finally cut off when the hall camera went on the fritz again—and stayed that way.
Bryce panted, staring at her mess. Then fell to her knees in it.
She puked again. And again. And then curled over her knees, her silky hair falling into the vomit as she rocked herself in the stunned silence.
She was half-Fae, assessed at a power level barely on the grid. What she’d just done to the table and chair … Pure, physical rage. Even the most aloof of the Fae couldn’t halt an eruption of primal wrath when it overtook them.
Unfazed, Hunt approached her, his gray wings high to avoid dragging through the vomit.
“Hey.” Hunt knelt at Bryce’s side. He reached for her shoulder, but lowered his hand. How many people ever saw the hands of the Umbra Mortis reach for them with no hint of violence?
Hunt nodded toward the destroyed table and chair. “Impressive.”
Bryce bowed farther over herself, her tan fingers near-white as they dug into her back hard enough to bruise. Her voice was a broken rasp. “I want to go home.”
Hunt’s dark eyes flickered. But he said nothing more.
Viktoria, frowning at the mess, slipped away to find someone to clean it.
Isaiah said, “You can’t go home, I’m afraid. It’s an active crime scene.” And it was so wrecked that even if they scrubbed it with bleach, no Vanir would be able to walk in and not scent the slaughter. “It’s not safe for you to return until we’ve found who did this. And why they did it.”
Then Bryce breathed, “Does S-Sabine—”
“Yes,” Isaiah said gently. “Everyone who was in Danika’s life has been notified.”
The entire world would know in a few hours.
Still kneeling beside her, Hunt said roughly, “We can move you to a room with a cot and a bathroom. Get you some clothes.”
Her dress was so torn that most of her skin was on display, a rip along the waist revealing the hint of a dark tattoo down her back. He’d seen whores in the Meat Market wearing more modest clothes.
The phone in Isaiah’s pocket buzzed. Naomi. The voice of the captain of the 33rd’s infantry was strained when Isaiah answered. “Let the girl go. Right now. Get her out of this building, and for all our sakes, do not put anyone on her tail. Especially Hunt.”
“Why? The Governor gave us the opposite order.”
“I got a phone call,” Naomi said. “From Ruhn fucking Danaan. He’s livid that we didn’t notify Sky and Breath about bringing in the girl. Says it falls under the Fae’s jurisdiction and whatever the fuck else. So screw what the Governor wants—he’ll thank us later for avoiding this enormous fucking headache. Let the girl go now. She can come back in with a Fae escort, if that’s what those assholes want.”
Hunt, having heard the entire conversation, studied Bryce Quinlan with a predator’s unflinching assessment. As one of the triarii, Naomi Boreas answered only to Micah and owed them no explanation, but to disregard his direct order in favor of the Fae … Naomi added, “Do it, Isaiah.” Then she hung up.
Despite Bryce’s pointed Fae ears, her glazed eyes registered no sign that she’d heard.
Isaiah pocketed his phone. “You’re free to go.”
She uncurled on surprisingly steady legs, despite the bandage on one of them. Yet blood and dirt caked her bare feet. Enough of the former that Hunt said, “We’ve got a medwitch on-site.”
But Bryce ignored him and limped out, through the open door and into the hall.
His eyes fixed on the doorway as the scuffle-hop of her steps faded.
For a long minute, neither of them spoke. Then Hunt blew out a breath and rose. “What room is Naomi putting Briggs in?”
Isaiah didn’t get the chance to answer before footsteps sounded down the hall, approaching fast. Definitely not Bryce’s.
Even in one of the most secure places in this city, Isaiah and Hunt positioned their hands within easy reach of their weapons, the former crossing his arms so that he might draw the gun hidden beneath his suit jacket, the latter letting his hand dangle at his thigh, inches from the black-hilted knife sheathed there. Lightning again writhed at Hunt’s fingers.
A dark-haired Fae male burst through the interrogation room door. Even with a silver hoop through his lower lip, even with one side of his long raven-black hair buzzed, even with the sleeves of tattoos beneath the leather jacket, there was no disguising the heritage the strikingly handsome face broadcasted.
Ruhn Danaan, Crown Prince of the Valbaran Fae. Son of the Autumn King and the current possessor of the Starsword, fabled dark blade of the ancient Starborn Fae. Proof of the prince’s Chosen One status among the Fae—whatever the Hel that meant.
That sword was currently strapped across Ruhn’s back, its black hilt devouring the glaring firstlights. Isaiah had once heard someone say the sword was made from iridium mined from a meteorite, forged in another world—before the Fae had come through the Northern Rift.
Danaan’s blue eyes simmered like the heart of a flame—though Ruhn himself bore no such magic. Fire magic was common among the Valbaran Fae, wielded by the Autumn King himself. But rumor claimed Ruhn’s magic was more like those of his kin who ruled the sacred Fae isle of Avallen across the sea: power to summon shadows or mist that could not only veil the physical world, but the mind as well. Perhaps even telepathy.
Ruhn glanced at the vomit, scenting the female who’d just left. “Where the fuck is she?”
Hunt went still at the cold command in the prince’s voice.
“Bryce Quinlan has been released,” Isaiah said. “We sent her upstairs a few minutes ago.”
Ruhn had to have taken a side entrance if he’d missed her, and they hadn’t been warned by the front desk of his arrival. Perhaps he’d used that magic of his to worm through the shadows.
The prince turned toward the doorway, but Hunt said, “What’s it to you?”
Ruhn bristled. “She’s my cousin, asshole. We take care of our own.”
A distant cousin, since the Autumn King had no siblings, but apparently the prince knew Bryce well enough to intervene.
Hunt threw Ruhn a grin. “Where were you tonight?”