Her fingers dug into his cheeks, and her heart pounded so wildly he could hear it. “It’s got to be a trap.”
“No one knows except people I trust. And now you.”
She shot to her feet, again wholly veiled in flame. “If you’re caught, I cannot help you. I won’t be able to risk saving you. Or your sister. You’re on your own.”
His temper began simmering. “So you won’t tell me anything useful about the layout.”
“Ruhn, I—”
Again, that awful hiss of surprise and pain. That glance behind her.
To him. The male.
Ruhn grabbed her hand, like she could stay with him. But she began panting, wild and frantic. Terrified. “Ruhn, they know. I—” Her voice cut out for a moment. “The dungeons—”
She vanished.
Like she’d been snatched away.
68
“We leave for the crystal palace tomorrow,” Ruhn snarled at Hunt in the great room of Bryce’s apartment. “At dawn.”
“Let me get this straight,” the angel said with maddening calm. “You’ve been meeting mind-to-mind with Agent Daybright—and dating her?”
Bryce sat at the dining table as she nursed a cup of coffee—which she needed desperately, since Ruhn had burst in at four in the morning. “Banging her, apparently.”
Ruhn growled at his sister. “Does it matter?”
“It does,” Hunt said, “because you’re suggesting that we break into the crystal palace not only to get into the archives, but to save your lady love. That adds a shit-ton of risk.”
“I’ll get her myself,” Ruhn shot back. “I just need to get in with you two first.”
“Absolutely not,” Bryce countered. “I get that you want to play rescuing hero, but what you’re talking about is suicide.”
“Would you hesitate to go in after Athalar?” He pointed to the angel. “Or you to go after Bryce?”
“You’ve known her for a month,” Bryce protested.
“You knew Athalar for barely more than that before you offered to sell yourself into slavery for him.” Ruhn snapped before they could speak, “I don’t need to justify my feelings or my plans to you. I came here to tell you that I’m going with you. Once we’re inside the palace, we’ll go our separate ways.”
“See, that’s the part that bugs me,” Bryce said, draining her coffee. “This whole ‘separate ways’ thing. We all go in, we all go out.”
Ruhn blinked, but Bryce said to the angel, “Honestly, you should stay here.”
“Excuse me?” Hunt demanded.
Ruhn kept silent as Bryce said, “The more of us go in, the better the chance of getting noticed. Ruhn and I can manage.”
“One, no. Two, fuck no. Three …” Hunt grinned wickedly. “Who’s going to level you up, sweetheart?” She scowled, but Hunt plowed on, “I’m going with you.”
She crossed her arms. “It’d be safer with two people.”
“It’d be safer not to go at all, but here we are, going,” Hunt said. Ruhn wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself as the angel crossed the room and knelt before Bryce, grabbing her hands. “I want a future with you. That’s why I’m going. I’m going to fight for that future.” His sister’s eyes softened. Hunt kissed her hands. “And to do so, we can’t play by other people’s rules.”
Bryce nodded, and faced Ruhn. “We’re done playing by Ophion’s rules, or the Asteri’s rules, or anyone else’s. We’ll fight our own way.”
Ruhn smirked. “Team Fuck-You.” Bryce grinned.
Hunt said, “All right, Team Fuck-You.” He stood and patted a hand-drawn map of the crystal palace on the dining table. “Fury dropped this off earlier, and now we’re all wide awake, so time to get studying. We need to create a distraction to make the Asteri look elsewhere, and we need to know where we’re going once we’re in there.”
Ruhn tried not to marvel at the commander mode Athalar had slipped into. “It has to be something big,” he said, “if it’ll buy us enough time to get into the archives and find Day.”
“She’s probably in the dungeons,” Hunt said. He added, as if reading Ruhn’s worry, “She’s alive, I’m sure of it. The Hind will be dispatched to work on her—they’re not going to kill her right away. Not when she’s got so much valuable information.”
Ruhn’s stomach churned. He couldn’t get the sound of Day’s panicked voice out of his mind. His very blood roared to go to her, find her.
Bryce said a shade gently, “We’ll get her out, Ruhn.”
“That doesn’t give us much time to plan something big, though,” Hunt said, sliding into the seat beside Bryce.
Ruhn scratched his jaw. They didn’t have time to wait weeks. Even hours might be lethal. Minutes. “Day said that Pippa is lying low—but she has to have something planned. Ophion has taken enough hits to its numbers and bases lately that they’ll likely let her do whatever she wants, either as some final-stand effort or to rally old and new recruits. Maybe we can prompt Pippa to do whatever she’s planning a little earlier.”
Bryce drummed her fingers on the table. “Call Cormac.”
Bryce was fully awake when Cormac arrived thirty minutes later, Tharion in tow. She’d called him, too. He’d started them on this bullshit—he could damn well help finish it.
Yet Tharion … something was off about his scent. His eyes. He said nothing when Bryce asked, so she dropped it. But he seemed different. She couldn’t place it, but he was different.
Cormac said when Ruhn had filled them in, “I have it on good authority as of last night that Pippa is planning a raid in a few weeks on the Pangeran lab where the Asteri’s engineers and scientists work—where they made that new mech prototype. She wants their plans for it, and the scientists themselves.”
“To build the new mech-suits?” Tharion asked.
Cormac nodded.
“And you were going to tell us this when?” Ruhn challenged.
Cormac’s eyes blazed. “I heard at midnight. I figured it could wait until morning. Besides, you lot haven’t bothered to loop me in on anything since the ball, have you?” He directed this last bit at Bryce.
She smiled sweetly. “I thought you were licking your wounds.”
Cormac seethed, “I’ve been dealing with my father, finding a way to convince him to let me remain here after the humiliation of my engagement being called off.”
Tharion let out a whistle at that. Bryce asked, “And did you?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t,” Cormac hurled back. “He thinks I’m currently trying to woo you from Athalar.”
Hunt snorted at this, earning a glare from Cormac. Bryce cut in before it could escalate to blows, “So how do we convince Pippa to make her move now? We’re not exactly on good terms with her.”
Tharion said, “What if she’s not the one initiating the raid?”
Bryce angled her head. “You mean … us?”
“I mean me and Cormac and whoever else we can trust. We carry out the raid, and Pippa and her cronies come running before we can steal the plans and suits they want.”