“No,” Cormac said. “She was connected to them, but didn’t report to them. As far as I understood from Sofie, Danika had her own agenda.”
Bryce watched Cormac, her head angled to the side. Ruhn knew that look.
Bryce was planning something. Had definitely already planned something.
Bryce stepped closer to Cormac. The padding of her bare feet was the only sound. Ruhn braced himself for whatever was about to come out of her mouth. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think Aidas is in the habit of allowing Asteri loyalists into my apartment.”
“Aidas.” Cormac started, face paling. “That cat was the Prince of the Chasm?”
“Yep,” Bryce said. “And I think Aidas brought you here as a gift to me.” Athalar blinked at her, but Bryce went on, “Talk all you like about tracking Tharion here, and wanting to recruit Ruhn, but don’t for one minute think that Aidas wasn’t involved in your being here at the exact moment he told me to learn about my powers.” She crossed her arms. “What do you know about the Starborn gifts?”
Cormac said nothing. And Ruhn found himself saying, half in dread that Bryce was right, “I told you the other night that our cousin here was obsessed enough with the idea of getting the Starsword that he learned everything he could about Starborn powers. He’s a veritable library of information.”
Cormac cut him a glare. But he admitted, “I did spend … much of my youth reading about the various gifts.”
Her lips curled upward. “Rebel prince and bookworm.” Athalar looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “I’ll make a deal with you.”
Hunt growled his objection, but Ruhn’s mind churned. This was the Bryce he knew—always angling for the advantage.
“No interest in helping out of the goodness of your heart, Princess?” Cormac taunted.
“I want out of this marriage,” Bryce said smoothly, running a finger over the counter’s edge. Ruhn pretended not to see Athalar’s shudder. “But I know that if I end our engagement too soon, my … sire will send along someone who isn’t as motivated to work with me.” Truth. “So we’ll team up with Tharion here to find Emile. And I’ll even help you find out whatever intel it was that Danika wanted Sofie to learn. But I want this engagement ended when I say it’s time. And I want you to teach me about my magic. If not, good luck to you. I’ll be sure to point Pippa and her Lightfall unit right in your direction.”
Hunt smirked. Ruhn avoided doing the same. Tharion just tucked his arms behind his head. Only Ithan seemed surprised. Like he’d never seen this side of Bryce.
“Fine,” Cormac said. “But the engagement will only be broken once my work here for Ophion is done. I need the reason to be in Valbara.”
Ruhn expected Bryce to object, but she seemed to think it over. “We do need the cover to be seen together,” she mused. “Otherwise, anyone who knows what a piece of shit you are would wonder why the Hel I would stoop to hang with you. It’d be suspicious.”
Hunt coughed into his shoulder.
Ruhn blurted, “Am I the only one here who thinks this is insane?”
Ithan said, “I think we’re all dead meat for even talking about this.”
But Hunt rubbed his jaw, solemn and weary. “We need to talk this over before deciding.” Bryce’s hand brushed over his once more.
Ruhn grunted his agreement and said to his cousin, “You’ve dropped a shit-ton of information on us. We need to process.” He gestured toward the door in dismissal. “We’ll contact you.”
Cormac didn’t move an inch. “I require your blood oath not to say a word of this.”
Ruhn barked a laugh. “I’m not making a blood oath. You can trust us. Can we trust you?”
“If I can trust cowards who like painting their nails while the rest of the world suffers, then you can trust me.”
Bryce said wryly, “Going in hard with the charm, Cormac.”
“Swear a blood oath. And I’ll leave.”
“No,” Bryce said with surprising calm. “I have a manicure in ten minutes.”
Cormac glowered. “I’ll require your answer tomorrow. In the meantime, I am entrusting my life to you.” His eyes slid to Ruhn’s. “Should you wish to hear my pitch, I’ll be at the bar on Archer and Ward today. Your services would be … greatly valued.”
Ruhn said nothing. The fucker could rot.
Cormac’s eyes narrowed with cold amusement. “Your father remains unaware of your mind-speaking gifts, doesn’t he?”
“Are you threatening me?” Ruhn snarled.
Cormac shrugged, walking toward the door. “Come meet me at the bar and find out.”
“Asshole,” Ithan murmured.
Cormac paused with his hand on the knob. He sucked in a breath, the powerful muscles of his back rippling. When he looked over his shoulder, the amusement and threats were gone. “Beyond Sofie, beyond Emile … This world could be so much more. This world could be free. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want that.”
“Hard to enjoy being free,” Hunt countered darkly, “if you’re dead.”
Cormac opened the door, stepping into the swirling shadows. “I can think of no better reason to yield my life.”
17
“Does anyone else feel like they’re about to wake up from a bad dream?” Ithan’s question echoed into the fraught silence of the apartment.
Bryce checked the clock on her phone. Had it really been less than an hour since she’d walked down the teeming lunchtime streets with Ruhn? She rubbed idly at her star, still glowing faintly, and said to no one in particular, “I need to get back to the archives.”
Ruhn exclaimed, “After all that, you’re going back to work?”
But she strode across the room, throwing Hunt a glance that had him following. He always got her like that—they didn’t need Ruhn’s fancy mind-speaking to communicate.
She halted by the front door. None of Cormac’s power lingered—not even a wisp of shadow. Not one ember. For a heartbeat, she wished she had the serenity of Lehabah to return to, the serenity of the gallery and its quiet library.
But those things were irrevocably gone.
Bryce said as calmly as she could to the males watching her, schooling her face into neutrality, “We just had a bomb dropped into our lives. A bomb that is now ticking away. I need to think. And I have a job that I’m contractually obligated to show up to.”
Where she could close her office door and figure out if she wanted to run like Hel from that bomb or face its wrath.
Hunt put a hand on her shoulder, but said nothing. He’d leapt in front of a bomb for her months ago. Had shielded her body with his own against the brimstone missile. There was nothing he could do to shield her from this, though.
Bryce couldn’t bear to see the worry and dread she knew would be etched on his face. He knew what they were walking into. The enemy and odds they faced.
She pivoted to Tharion instead. “What do you want to do, Tharion? Not because the River Queen is pulling your puppet strings—what do you want?”
“This apartment, for starters,” Tharion said, leaning his head back against the cushions, muscled chest expanding as he heaved a breath. “I want to find answers. Regardless of my orders, I want the truth of what I am facing—the enemy at my front as well as my back. But I’m inclined to believe Cormac—he didn’t display any signs of lying.”