House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City) (37 page)

Ruhn resisted the urge to ask whether that had played any part in his father’s slaying of the last Starborn heir. “Are you telling me to kill Bryce?”

His father sipped from the whiskey this time before replying, “If you had any backbone, you would have done it the moment you learned she was Starborn. Now what are you?” Another sip before he said mildly, “A second-rate prince who only possesses the sword because she allows you to have it.”

“Pitting us against each other won’t work.” But those words—
second-rate prince—
those gouged something deep in him. “Bryce and I are good.”

The Autumn King drained the glass. “Power attracts power. It is her fate to be tied to a powerful male to match her own strength. I would rather not learn what comes of her union with the Umbra Mortis.”

“So you betrothed her to Cormac to avoid that?”

“To consolidate that power for the Fae.”

Ruhn slowly picked up the Starsword. Refused to meet his father’s stare while he sheathed it down his back. “So this is what being king is all about? That old shit about keeping friends close and enemies closer?”

“It remains to be seen whether your sister is an enemy to the Fae.”

“I think the burden of that’s on you. Overstepping your authority doesn’t help.”

His father returned the crystal decanter to the cabinet. “I am a King of the Fae. My word is law. I cannot overstep my authority—it has no limits.”

“Maybe it should.” The words were out before Ruhn could think.

His father went still in a way that always promised pain. “And who will impose them?”

“The Governor.”

“That doe-eyed angel?” A mirthless laugh. “The Asteri knew what they were doing in appointing a lamb to rule a city of predators.”

“Maybe, but I bet the Asteri would agree that there are limits to your power.”

“Why don’t you ask them, then, Prince?” He smiled slowly, cruelly. “Maybe they’ll make you king instead.”

Ruhn knew his answer would mean his life or death. So he shrugged again, nonchalant as always, and aimed for the door. “Maybe they’ll find a way to make you live forever. I sure as fuck have no interest in the job.”

He didn’t dare to look back before he left.

26

Bryce leaned against the alley side of a brick building bordering the Black Dock, arms crossed and face stony. Hunt, gods bless him, stood at her side, mirroring her position. He’d come right over the moment she’d called him, sensing that her eerily calm voice meant something big had gone down.

She’d only managed to say something vague about Reapers before they’d found Cormac here, prowling for any hint of Emile.

Cormac lounged against the wall across the alley, focus on the quay beyond. Not even the vendors selling touristy crap came here. “Well?” the Avallen Prince asked, not taking his attention from the Black Dock.

“You can teleport,” Bryce said, voice low.
That
made Hunt’s eyes widen. He kept himself contained, though, solid and still as a statue, wings tucked in—but brimming with power. One blink, and Hunt would unleash lightning on the prince.

“What of it?” Cormac asked with no small hint of haughtiness.

“What did you do to the Reapers you teleported out?”

“Put them about half a mile up in the sky.” The Avallen Prince smiled darkly. “They weren’t happy.”

Hunt’s brows rose. But Bryce asked, “You can go that far? It’s that precise?”

“I need to know the spot. If it’s a trickier location—indoors, or a specific room—I need exact coordinates,” Cormac said. “My accuracy is within two feet.”

Well, that explained how he’d shown up at Ruhn’s house party. Dec’s tech had picked up Cormac teleporting around the house’s perimeter to calculate where he wanted to appear to make his grand entrance. Once he’d had them, he’d simply walked right out of a shadow in the doorway.

Hunt pointed to a dumpster halfway down the alley. “Teleport there.”

Cormac bowed mockingly. “Left side or right side?”

Hunt leveled a cool stare at him. “Left,” he challenged. Bryce suppressed a smile.

But Cormac bowed at the waist again—and vanished.

Within a blink, he reappeared where Hunt had indicated.

“Well, fuck,” Hunt muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. Then, Cormac reappeared before them, right where he’d been standing.

Bryce pushed off the wall. “How the Hel do you do that?”

Cormac slicked back his blond hair. “You have to picture where you want to go. Then simply allow yourself to take that step. As if you’re folding two points on a piece of paper so that the two points can meet.”

“Like a wormhole,” Hunt mused, wings rustling.

Cormac waved a dismissive hand. “Wormhole, teleportation, yes. Whatever you want to call it.”

Bryce blew out an impressed breath. But it didn’t explain— “How’d you know where to find me and Ruhn?”

“I was on my way to meet you, remember?” Cormac rolled his eyes, as if she should have figured it out by now. Asshole. “I saw you run into the sewer, and I did some mental calculations for the jump. Thankfully, they were right.”

Hunt let out an approving grunt, but said nothing.

So Bryce said, “You’re going to teach me how to do that. Teleport.”

Hunt whipped his head to her. But Cormac simply nodded. “If it’s within your wheelhouse, I will.”

Hunt blurted, “I’m sorry, but Fae can just
do
this shit?”

“
I
can do this shit,” Cormac countered. “If Bryce has as much Starborn ability as she seems to, she might also be able to do this shit.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m the Super Powerful and Special Magic Starborn Princess,” Bryce answered, waggling her eyebrows.

Cormac said, “You should treat your title and gifts with the reverence they are due.”

“You sound like a Reaper,” she said, and leaned against Hunt. He tucked her into his side. Her clothes were still soaked. And smelled atrocious.

But Hunt didn’t so much as sniff as he asked Cormac, “Where did you inherit the ability from?”

Cormac squared his shoulders, every inch the proud prince as he said, “It was once a gift of the Starborn. It was the reason I became so … focused on attaining the Starsword. I thought my ability to teleport meant that the bloodline had resurfaced in me, as I’ve never met anyone else who can do it.” His eyes guttered as he added, “As you know, I was wrong. Some Starborn blood, apparently, but not enough to be worthy of the blade.”

Bryce wasn’t going to touch that one. So she retied her wet hair into a tight bun atop her head. “What are the odds that I have the gift, too?”

Cormac gave her a slashing smile. “Only one way to find out.”

Bryce’s eyes glowed with the challenge. “It would be handy.”

Hunt murmured, his voice awed, “It would make you unstoppable.”

Bryce winked at Hunt. “Hel yeah, it would. Especially if those Reapers weren’t full of shit about the Prince of the Pit sending them to challenge me to some epic battlefield duel. Worthy opponent, my ass.”

“You don’t believe the Prince of the Pit sent them?” Cormac asked.

“I don’t know what I believe,” Bryce admitted. “But we need to confirm where those Reapers came from—who sent them—before we make any moves.”

“Fair enough,” Hunt said.

Bryce went on, “Beyond that, this is twice now that we’ve gotten warnings about Hel’s armies being ready. Apollion’s a little heavy-handed for my tastes, but I guess he
really
wants to get the point across. And wants me leveled up by the time all Hel breaks loose. Literally, I guess.”

Bryce knew there was no fucking way she’d ever stand against the Star-Eater and live, not if she didn’t expand her understanding of her power. Apollion had killed a fucking Asteri, for gods’ sakes. He’d obliterate her.

She said to Cormac, “Tomorrow night. You. Me. Training center. We’ll try out this teleporting thing.”

“Fine,” the prince said.

Bryce picked lingering dirt from beneath her nails and sighed. “I could have lived without Hel getting mixed up in this. Without Apollion apparently wanting in on Sofie’s and Emile’s powers.”

“Their powers,” Cormac said, face thunderous, “are a gift and a curse. I’m not surprised at all that so many people want them.”

Hunt frowned. “And you really think you’re going to find Emile just hanging around here?”

The prince glowered at the angel. “I don’t see you combing the docks for him.”

“No need,” Hunt drawled. “We’re going to search for him without lifting a finger.”

Cormac sneered, “Using your lightning to survey the city?”

Hunt didn’t fall for the taunt. “No. Using Declan Emmett.”

Leaving the males to their posturing, Bryce pulled out her phone and dialed. Jesiba answered on the second ring. “What?”

Bryce smiled. Hunt half turned toward her at the sound of the sorceress’s voice. “Got any Death Marks lying around?”

Hunt hissed, “You can’t be serious.”

Bryce ignored him as Jesiba answered, “I might. Plan on taking a trip, Quinlan?”

“I hear the Bone Quarter’s gorgeous this time of year.”

Jesiba chuckled, a rolling, sultry sound. “You do amuse me every now and then.” Pause. “You have to pay for this one, you know.”

“Send the bill to my brother.” Ruhn would have a conniption, but he could deal.

Another soft chuckle. “I only have two. And it’ll take until tomorrow morning for them to reach you.”

“Fine. Thanks.”

The sorceress said a shade gently, “You won’t find any traces of Danika left in the Bone Quarter, you know.”

Bryce tensed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I thought you were finally going to start asking questions about her.”

Bryce clenched the phone hard enough for the plastic to groan. “What sort of questions?” What the fuck did Jesiba know?

A low laugh. “Why don’t you start by wondering why she was always poking around the gallery?”

“To see me,” Bryce said through her teeth.

“Sure,” Jesiba said, and hung up.

Bryce swallowed hard and pocketed her phone.

Hunt was slowly shaking his head. “We’re not going to the Bone Quarter.”

“I agree,” Cormac grumbled.

“You’re not going at all,” she said sweetly to Cormac. “We’ll only have two fares, and Athalar is my plus-one.” The prince bristled, but Bryce turned to Hunt. “When the coins arrive tomorrow, I want to be ready—have as much information as possible about where those Reapers came from.”

Hunt folded his wings behind him, feathers rustling. “Why?”

“So the Under-King and I can have an informed heart-to-heart.”

“What was that shit Jesiba said about Danika?” Hunt asked warily.

Bryce’s mouth hardened into a thin line. Jesiba did and said nothing without reason. And while she knew she’d never get answers out of her old boss, at least this nudge was something to go on. “Turns out we’re going to have to ask Declan for an additional favor.”

That night, still reeling from the events of the day, Ruhn flipped through the channels on the TV until he found the sunball game, then set down the remote and swigged from his beer.

On the other end of the sectional couch in Bryce’s apartment, Ithan Holstrom sat hunched over a laptop, Declan beside him with a laptop of his own. Bryce and Hunt stood behind the two, staring over their shoulders, the latter’s face stormy.

Ruhn had told none of them, especially Bryce, about the conversation with his father.

Ithan typed away, then said, “I’m super rusty at this.”

Dec said without breaking his attention from the computer, “If you took Kirfner’s Intro to Systems and Matrices, you’ll be fine.”

Ruhn often forgot that Dec was friendly with people other than him and Flynn. While none of them had attended college, Dec had struck up a years-long friendship with the ornery CCU computer science professor, often consulting the satyr on some of his hacking ventures.

“He gave me a B minus in that class,” Ithan muttered.

“From what he tells me, that’s practically an A plus,” Declan said.

“Okay, okay,” Bryce said, “any idea how long this is going to take?”

Declan threw her an exasperated look. “You’re asking us to do two things at once, and neither is easy, so … a while?”

She scowled. “How many cameras are even at the Black Dock?”

“A lot,” Declan said, going back to his computer. He glanced to Holstrom’s laptop. “Click that.” He pointed to a mark on the screen that Ruhn couldn’t see. “Now type this code in to identify the footage featuring Reapers.”

How Dec managed to direct Ithan to comb through the footage around the Black Dock from earlier today while
also
creating a program to search through years of video footage of Danika at the gallery was beyond Ruhn.

“It’s insane that you made this,” Ithan said with no small bit of admiration.

“All in a day’s work,” Dec replied, typing away. Pulling any footage from the gallery featuring Danika could take days, he’d said.
But at least the footage from the Black Dock would only take minutes.

Ruhn carefully asked Bryce, “You sure you trust Jesiba enough to follow this lead? Or at all?”

“Jesiba literally has a collection of books that could get her killed,” Bryce said tartly. “I trust that she knows how to stay out of … dangerous entanglements. And wouldn’t shove me into one, either.”

“Why not tell you to look at the footage during the investigation this spring?” Hunt asked.

“I don’t know. But Jesiba must have had a good reason.”

“She scares me,” Ithan said, gaze fixed on the computer.

“She’ll be happy to hear that,” Bryce said, but her face was tight.

What’s up?
Ruhn asked her mind-to-mind.

Bryce frowned.
You want the honest answer?

Yeah.

She tucked a strand of hair behind an ear.
I don’t know how much more of this “Surprise! Danika had a big secret!” stuff I can take. It feels like … I don’t even know. It feels like I never really knew her.

She loved you, Bryce. That’s not in doubt.

Yeah, I know. But did Danika know about the Parthos books—or the other contraband tomes—in the gallery
?
Jesiba made it sound like she did. Like she took a special interest in them.