All right. But … give him a few days. I don’t want him to think I’m kicking him out.
Why not? He was a dick to you.
There were five years before that when we were close.
So? He was a dick to you when you needed him most.
And I shut him out when he needed me most.
Bryce blinked, finding Hunt and Ithan watching her and Ruhn. The angel drawled, no hint of his previous haunted discomfort, “Some might consider it rude to have a silent conversation in front of other people.”
Ithan raised his hand in agreement. How he’d figured out what was going on, she could only attribute to his keen wolf’s abilities. Or his athlete’s skill at reading opponents.
Bryce stuck out her tongue. “Sorry you’re not magical, special Fae like us.”
“Here we go,” Hunt said, diving into his slice. “I was waiting for this day to come.”
“What day?” Ithan swigged from his beer.
Hunt smirked. “When Bryce realizes how truly obnoxious being a princess allows her to be.”
Bryce flipped him off. “If I have to suffer through the title, then you have to suffer through the effects.”
Hunt opened his mouth, but Ithan said, “I heard you had your Ordeal that day this spring. Congrats?”
Bryce went still. “Yeah. Uh, thanks.” She didn’t want to think about it—the nøkk, Syrinx nearly drowning, the tank … Syrinx rubbed against her ankles, as if sensing her distress. And Hunt, also reading it, said to Ruhn, “You had your Ordeal in Avallen, right? And our new friend Cormac was there?”
Before Ruhn could answer, Flynn and Dec strode into the apartment with a key Bryce definitely hadn’t authorized. She whipped her head to Ruhn. “You gave them fingerprint access and copies of my keys?”
Flynn slid into the chair beside hers and pulled her pizza toward himself. “We took Ruhn’s fingerprints when he was passed out during the Summer Solstice, as a way into the system. Then Dec added ours alongside them.”
Declan dropped into the chair beside Ruhn, taking one of her brother’s slices and a beer from the bucket in the center of the table. “We made copies of the physical keys before he noticed they were gone.”
“You’re really making me look good, you two,” Ruhn grumbled.
Bryce shoved out a hand. “I’m changing my fingerprint system to something more secure. Give me that key.”
Flynn only slid it into his pocket. “Come get it, babycakes.”
Hunt shot the Fae lord a glare, and Declan snickered. “Careful, Flynn,” Dec warned.
Ithan snorted, and the two males eyed him up. Of course they’d already noticed him—they were trained warriors—but they hadn’t yet deigned to acknowledge him.
Flynn flashed a charming smile full of teeth. “Hi, pup.”
Ithan’s fingers tightened into fists at the term. “Hey.”
Declan gave a mirror grin to Flynn’s. “Bryce needed a new pet?”
“Okay, okay,” Bryce cut in. “Let’s just say that we made a thousand dog jokes about Ithan, and he made a thousand Fae asshole jokes about you two idiots, and we now all thoroughly hate each other, but we can be adults and eat our food.”
“I second that.” Hunt dug into his third slice, using his other hand to clink beers with Bryce.
Flynn grinned again. “I thought I heard you ask Ruhn about his Ordeal. It was our Ordeal, too, you know.”
“I know,” Bryce said, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “But he won the prize sword, didn’t he?”
“Ouch.” Flynn clutched his chest.
“Cold, B,” Declan said.
Ruhn chuckled and leaned back in his seat, finishing off his beer before he said, “I was twenty-seven. My—our father sent me to Avallen to … check out the ladies.”
“There was a Fae female from a powerful family who the Autumn King wanted Ruhn to marry,” Flynn explained. “Unfortunately, Cormac wanted to marry her, too. Neither married her in the end, of course.”
Bryce groaned. “Please tell me all this tension between you two isn’t over a girl.”
“Only partially,” Declan said. “It’s also because Cormac and his twin cousins tried to kill us. Cormac literally put a sword through my gut.” He patted his rock-hard abs.
“Aren’t you Fae all … allies?” Ithan asked, brows raised.
Flynn nearly spat out his drink. “Valbaran Fae and Avallen Fae hate each other. The Avallen Fae are a bunch of backward assholes. Prince Cormac might be Ruhn’s cousin, but he can drop dead for all we care.”
“Strong family bonds, huh?” Hunt said.
Flynn shrugged. “They deserved what happened during the Ordeal.”
“Which was what, exactly?” Bryce asked.
“Humiliation,” Declan said with relish. “A few weeks into our visit, King Morven—Cormac’s dad—ordered Ruhn to go see if he could retrieve the Starsword from the caves.”
“Tell the whole story, Dec. Why did he order me to do that?” Ruhn growled.
Dec sheepishly grinned. “Because I bragged that you could.”
Ruhn cracked open another beer. “And?”
“And I made fun of Cormac for not having gone to retrieve it yet.”
“And?”
“And I said that one Valbaran Fae warrior was better than ten from Avallen.”
Bryce laughed. “So Uncle Morven sent you off to teach you a lesson?”
“Yep,” Flynn said. “All three of us. We didn’t realize until we were in the mist—the caves are literally full of it—that he also sent Cormac and the asshole twins to hunt us in there.”
“Starting blood feuds,” Bryce said to Declan, raising her hand for a high five. “Nice work.”
Declan clapped her hand, but Ithan asked, “So your Ordeals happened then?”
“Yeah,” Ruhn said, face darkening. “We all got lost in the caves. There was some … scary shit in there. Ghouls and wraiths—they were old and wicked. The six of us went from trying to kill each other to trying to stay alive. Long story short, Flynn and Dec and I wound up in these catacombs deep beneath the cave—”
“Surrounded by bloodsucking spirits who were going to eat our bodies, then our souls,” Flynn added. “Or was it our souls, then our bodies?”
Ruhn shook his head. “I got disarmed. So I looked in the sarcophagus in the center of the chamber where we were trapped, and … there it was. The Starsword. It was either die at the hands of those creatures or die trying to pull that sword from its sheath.” He shrugged. “Thankfully, it worked.”
Declan said, “Bastards ran screaming from the cave when Ruhn drew the sword. Right to where Cormac and the twins were hunting us.” He grinned again. “The three of them had no choice but to flee back to their castle. King Morven was not happy. Especially when Ruhn returned with the Starsword and told him to go fuck himself.”
Bryce lifted her brows at her brother. He smiled, lip ring glinting. “Not such a loser after all, huh?”
Bryce waved him off. “Whatever.”
Flynn suddenly asked Ithan, gaze on his tattooed neck, “You gonna keep that ink?”