Hunt had no words. She hadn’t only found a place for this lost kid. She’d found him a new family. Her family. His throat tightened to the point of pain, his eyes stinging. But Bryce kissed Emile’s cheek, shut the door, and thumped the car roof. Fury sped off down the cobblestone street, hooked a sharp left, and was gone.
Slowly, Bryce turned back to him.
“You’re sending him to your parents,” he said quietly.
Her eyes iced over. “Did I miss the memo where I needed your approval to do so?”
“For Urd’s sake, that’s not why I was mad.”
“I don’t care if you’re mad,” she said, flickering with light. “Just because we’re fucking doesn’t mean I answer to you.”
“Pretty sure it’s a little bit more than fucking.”
She bristled, and his anger bristled with it. But he remembered where they were—right in front of the Viper Queen’s headquarters. Where anyone might see. Or try to start shit.
“I have to go to work,” Bryce said, practically biting out each word.
“Fine. So do I.”
“Fine.” She didn’t wait for him before striding off.
Hunt rubbed his eyes and shot skyward. He knew Bryce was well aware that he trailed her from above as she wove through the tangle of streets that made up the Meat Market, banking northward toward the CBD only when she’d crossed Crone Street into the safety of the Old Square.
But she didn’t look up. Not once.
“I only have ten minutes before I need to go to the archives,” Bryce said to her brother as he ushered her into his house an hour later. “I’m already behind as Hel at work.”
Steaming at Hunt, she’d used the long walk to process all that had happened with Emile and the Viper Queen. To pray that Fury didn’t scare the living daylights out of the kid before he reached her parents’ house in Nidaros. And contemplate whether she’d maybe overreacted a smidgen to Hunt’s anger at her not telling him.
Bryce had been just turning down the block to the archives when Ruhn called with his vague request to come over immediately. She’d thumbed in a quick message to her boss about a doctor’s appointment running late, and raced right over here.
She dumped her purse beside the front door. “Please start explaining why this was so urgent that you needed me to— Oh.”
She’d assumed it had something to do with Ithan, or that maybe Declan had found something. Which was why she’d sprinted from FiRo, in her stupid heels, in the stupid heat, and was now a sweaty mess.
She hadn’t expected a beautiful female clad in nothing but a blanket, standing against the foyer wall like some trapped animal. Her crimson eyes narrowed with warning.
Bryce offered a smile to the female against the wall. “Uh, hey. Everything … all right?” She hissed to Ruhn over her shoulder, “Where are her clothes?”
“She wouldn’t wear them,” Ruhn hissed back. “Believe me, Dec tried.” He pointed to an untouched pile of male clothes by the stairs.
But the female was scanning Bryce from her heels to her head. “You came to see the mystics. You blazed with starlight.”
Bryce peered back. It wasn’t the female mystic, but … she turned to see Ithan, looking guilty, on the couch. With three fire sprites floating around his head.
Her blood turned to acid. A plump sprite sprawled on his knee, beaming at Bryce. The memory of Lehabah burned bright and searing.
“So, Ithan might have gotten pissed when he went back to the Astronomer and found out that the female mystic is a wolf,” Ruhn was saying, “and he might have done something rash and taken something he shouldn’t have, and then these morons freed them from the rings …”
Bryce whirled to the female against the wall. “You were in one of the rings?”
The red eyes flared again. “Yes.”
Bryce asked Ithan, “Why did you go back there?”
“I wanted to be sure about Connor,” he said. She didn’t miss the tone of accusation—that she hadn’t been as concerned as he was. Neither did Ruhn, who tensed at her side.
Bryce swallowed hard. “Is he … okay?”
Ithan dragged a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I need to find out.”
Bryce nodded gravely, then managed to face the three sprites in the living room. Managed to lift her chin and ask, voice shaking only slightly, “Do you know a sprite named Lehabah?”
“No,” said Malana, the full-bodied sprite so similar to Lele that Bryce could barely stand to face her. “What clan is she?”
Bryce inhaled a shuddering breath. The males had hushed. “Lehabah claimed she was a descendant of Queen Ranthia Drahl, Queen of Embers.”
One of the slender sprites—Rithi, maybe?—puffed with red flame. “An heir of Ranthia?”
A chill went down Bryce’s arms. “She said so.”
“Fire sprites do not lie about their lineage,” said the third sprite, Sasa. “How do you know her?”
“I knew her,” Bryce said. “She died three months ago. She gave her life to save mine.”
The three sprites floated toward Bryce. “The Drahl line has long been scattered to the winds,” Sasa said sadly. “We don’t know how many remain. To lose even one …” She bowed her head, flame dimming to a soft yellow.
The dragon in the hall said to Bryce, “You were a friend to this sprite.”
Bryce twisted to the female. “Yes.” Damn her tight throat. To the three sprites, she said, “I freed Lehabah before she died. It was her …” She could barely get the words out. “It was her first and final act of freedom to choose to save me. She was the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
Malana drifted to Bryce, pressing a warm, burning hand to her cheek. “In her honor, we shall call you an ally of our people.”
Bryce didn’t miss the slave tattoo on Malana’s wrist. The other two sprites bore the same marking. She slowly turned to Ithan. “I’m glad you stole them from that creep.”
“It didn’t feel right to leave them.”
Something in her chest melted, and she suppressed the urge to hug her old friend, to cry at the glimmer of the male she’d once known. Bryce asked Ruhn instead, “Can’t we find some way out of this, Mr. Fancy Prince?”
“Marc’s on it,” Declan said, holding up his phone. “He thinks you two might be able to use your royal sway to either commandeer them on behalf of the royal household or get the Astronomer to accept payment for them rather than press charges.”
“Payment?” Bryce blurted.
“Relax,” Flynn said, smirking. “We got the money, Princess.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen your daddy’s fancy house,” Bryce quipped, earning a scowl from Flynn and an oooooh from the sprites.
Bryce suppressed her smile and lifted a brow at Ruhn. She’d fucked up one friendship thanks to pulling princess rank, but this … For Lehabah, she’d do it. “You in, Chosen One?”
Ruhn’s mouth quirked to the side. “Hel yeah, Starborn.”
Bryce waved him off and turned fully to the dragon in the hallway. “I’m guessing you cost … a lot.”