The Hind said, “Your father suggested I meet you. I agreed.” Ruhn suspected that his father hadn’t just told her his location to provide an alibi, but also to warn him to keep the fuck out of trouble.
Ithan picked up his cards, scanned them, and swore. The Harpy said nothing as she examined her own hand.
The Hind held Ruhn’s gaze as the game began. She was the spitting image of Luna, with her upswept chignon, the regal angle of her neck and jaw. As coldly serene as the moon. All she needed was a pack of hunting hounds at her side—
And she had them, in her dreadwolves.
How had someone so young risen in the ranks so swiftly, gained such notoriety and power? No wonder she left a trail of blood behind her.
“Careful now,” the Harpy said with that oily smile. “The Hammer doesn’t share.”
The Hind’s lips curved upward. “No, he doesn’t.”
“As Ithan said,” Ruhn drawled, “pass.”
The Harpy glowered, but the Hind’s smile remained in place. “Where is your famed sword, Prince?”
With Bryce. In the Bone Quarter. “Left it at home this morning,” Ruhn answered.
“I heard you spent the night at your sister’s apartment.”
Ruhn shrugged. Was this interrogation merely to fuck with him? Or did the Hind know something? “I didn’t realize you had the authority to grill Aux leaders in this city.”
“The authority of the Asteri extends over all. Including Starborn Princes.”
Ruhn caught the bartender’s eye, signaling for another whiskey. “So this is just to prove you’ve got bigger balls?” He draped an arm over the back of his chair, cards in one hand. “You want to head up the Aux while you’re in town, fine. I could use a vacation.”
The Harpy’s teeth flashed. “Someone should rip that tongue from your mouth. The Asteri would flay you for such disrespect.”
Ithan drew another card and said mildly, “You’ve got some nerve, coming to our city and trying to start shit.”
The Hind replied with equal calm, “So do you, lusting after the female your brother loved.”
Ruhn blinked.
Ithan’s eyes turned dangerously dark. “You’re full of shit.”
“Am I?” the Hind said, drawing a card herself. “Of course, as my visit here will likely entail meeting the princess, I looked into her history. Found quite a chain of messages between you two.”
Ruhn thanked the bartender as the male brought over a whiskey and then quickly retreated. Ruhn said into Ithan’s mind, She’s trying to rile you. Ignore her.
Ithan didn’t answer. He only said to the Hind, voice sharpening, “Bryce is my friend.”
The Hind drew another card. “Years of pining in secret, years of guilt and shame for feeling what he does, for hating his brother whenever he talks about Miss Quinlan, for wishing that he had been the one who’d met her first—”
“Shut up,” Ithan growled, rattling the glasses on the table, pure feral wolf.
The Hind went on, unfazed, “Loving her, lusting for her from the sidelines. Waiting for the day when she would realize that he was the one she was meant to be with. Playing his little heart out on the sunball field, hoping she’d notice him at last. But then big brother dies.”
Ithan paled.
The Hind’s expression filled with cool contempt. “And he hates himself even more. Not only for losing his brother, for not being there, but because of the one, traitorous thought he had after learning the news. That the path to Bryce Quinlan was now cleared. Did I get that part right?”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Ithan growled, and the Harpy laughed.
Calm down, Ruhn warned the male.
But the Hind said, “Call.”
Mind reeling, Ruhn laid out the decent hand he’d gotten. The Harpy put hers down. Good. He’d beaten her. The Hind gracefully spread hers across the table.
A winning hand. Beating Ruhn by a fraction.
Ithan didn’t bother to show his cards. He’d already shown them, Ruhn realized.
The Hind smiled again at Ithan. “You Valbarans are too easy to break.”
“Fuck you.”
The Hind rose, gathering her cards. “Well, this has been delightfully dull.”
The Harpy stood with her. Black talons glinted at the angel’s fingertips. “Let’s hope they fuck better than they play poker.”
Ruhn crooned, “I’m sure there are Reapers who’ll stoop to fuck you.”
The Hind snickered, earning a glare from the Harpy that the deer shifter ignored. The Harpy hissed at Ruhn, “I do not take being insulted lightly, princeling.”
“Get the Hel out of my bar,” Ruhn snarled softly.
She opened her mouth, but the Hind said, “We’ll see you soon, I’m sure.” The Harpy understood that as a command to leave and stormed out the door onto the sunny street. Where life, somehow, continued onward.
The Hind paused on the threshold before she left, though. Peered over her shoulder at Ruhn, her silver necklace glinting in the sunlight trickling in. Her eyes lit with unholy fire.
“Tell Prince Cormac I send my love,” the Hind said.
Bryce was one breath away from calling the Autumn King when the door to the apartment opened. And apparently, she looked a Hel of a lot worse than her brother or Ithan, because they immediately demanded to know what had happened to her.
Hunt, nursing a beer at the kitchen counter, said, “Emile and Sofie aren’t in the Bone Quarter. But we found out some major shit. You’d better sit down.”
Yet Bryce went up to her brother, scanning him from the piercings along his ear to his tattooed arms and ass-kicking boots. Not one sleek black hair out of place, though his skin was ashen. Ithan, standing at his side, didn’t give her the chance to turn to him before approaching the fridge and grabbing a beer of his own.
“You’re all right?” Bryce asked Ruhn, who was frowning at the dirt and blood on her—the wound on her back had thankfully closed, but was still tender.
Tharion said from where he sat on the couch, feet propped on the coffee table, “Everyone is fine, Legs. Now let’s sit down like a good little rebel family and tell each other what the Hel happened.”
Bryce swallowed. “All right. Yeah—sure.” She scanned Ruhn again, and his eyes softened. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“We couldn’t answer our phones.”
She didn’t let herself reconsider before throwing her arms around her brother and squeezing tight. A heartbeat later, he gently hugged her back, and she could have sworn he shuddered in relief.
Hunt’s phone buzzed, and Bryce pulled away from Ruhn. “Celestina wants me at the Comitium for Ephraim’s arrival,” Hunt said. “She wants her triarii assembled.”
“Oh, Ephraim’s already here.” Ithan dropped onto the couch. “We learned the hard way.”
“You saw him?” Bryce asked.
“His cronies,” Ithan said, not looking at her. “Played poker with them and everything.”
Bryce whirled on Ruhn. Her brother nodded gravely. “The Hind and the Harpy showed up to the bar where we were lying low. I can’t tell if it was because Mordoc sniffed around the alley where Cormac made the intel drop or what. But it was … not great.”