House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City)

by Sarah J. Maas

  “Then you know what to do, Quinlan,” Jesiba said, the sound of rustling sheets or clothes filling the background. Two male voices grumbled in protest. Then the line went dead.

  Blowing out a breath, Bryce launched into motion.

  11

  The Archangel rang the buzzer precisely seven minutes later.

  Calming her panting, Bryce scanned the gallery for the tenth time, confirming that all was in place, the art dust-free, any contraband stored below—

  Her legs felt spindly, the old ache in her thigh clawing at the bone, but her hands remained steady as she reached the front door and hauled it open.

  The Archangel was gorgeous. Horrifically, indecently gorgeous.

  Hunt Athalar and Isaiah Tiberian stood behind him—almost as good-looking; the latter giving her another bland smile he obviously believed was charming. The former … Hunt’s dark eyes missed nothing.

  Bryce lowered her head to the Governor, stepping back, her stupid heels wobbling on the carpet. “Welcome, Your Grace. Please come in.”

  Micah Domitus’s brown eyes devoured her. His power pressed against her skin, ripped the air from the room, her lungs. Filled the space with midnight storms, sex and death entwined.

  “I assume your employer will be joining us through the vidscreen,” the Archangel said, stepping in from the glaringly bright street.

  Fucking Hel, his voice—silk and steel and ancient stone. He could probably make someone come by merely whispering filthy things in their ear.

  Even without that voice, it would have been impossible to forget what Micah was, what the Governor radiated with every breath, every blink. There were currently ten Archangels who ruled the various territories of the Republic, all bearing the title of Governor—all answering only to the Asteri. An ordinary angel’s magic might level a building if they were considered powerful. An Archangel’s power could level an entire metropolis. There was no predicting where the extra strength that separated Archangel from angel came from—sometimes, it was passed on, usually upon the careful breeding orders of the Asteri. Other times, it popped up in unremarkable bloodlines.

  She didn’t know much about Micah’s history—had never paid attention during history class, too busy drooling over the unfairly perfect face currently before her to listen to her teacher’s droning.

  “Miss Roga is waiting for our call,” she managed to say, and tried not to breathe too loudly as the Governor of Valbara swept past. One of his pristine white feathers brushed her bare collarbone. She might have shuddered—were it not for the two angels behind him.

  Isaiah just gave her a nod as he trailed Micah toward the chairs before the desk.

  Hunt Athalar, however, lingered. Holding her gaze—before he glanced at her collarbone. As if the feather had left a mark. The tattoo of thorns across his forehead seemed to turn darker.

  And just like that, that scent of sex rippling off the Archangel turned to rot.

  The Asteri and the Archangels could have easily found another way to hobble the power of the Fallen, yet they’d enslaved them with the witch spells woven into magical tattoos stamped onto their foreheads like fucked-up crowns. And the tattoos on their wrists: SPQM.

  Senatus Populusque Midgard.

  The Midgard Senate and People. Total fucking bullshit. As if the Senate was anything but a puppet ruling body. As if the Asteri weren’t their emperors and empresses, ruling over everything and everyone for eternity, their rotted souls regenerating from one form to the next.

  Bryce shoved the thought from her mind as she shut the iron door behind Hunt, just barely missing his gray feathers. His black eyes flashed with warning.

  She gave him a smile to convey everything she didn’t dare say aloud regarding her feelings about this ambush. I’ve faced worse than you, Umbra Mortis. Glower and snarl all you like.

  Hunt blinked, the only sign of his surprise, but Bryce was already turning toward her desk, trying not to limp as pain speared through her leg. She’d dragged up a third chair from the library, which had aggravated her leg further.

  She didn’t dare rub at the thick, curving scar across her upper thigh, hidden under her white dress. “Can I get you anything, Your Grace? Coffee? Tea? Something stronger?” She’d already laid out bottled sparkling water on the small tables between the chairs.

  The Archangel had claimed the middle seat, and as she smiled politely at him, the weight of his gaze pressed on her like a silken blanket. “I’m fine.” Bryce looked to Hunt and Isaiah, who slid into their chairs. “They’re fine, too,” Micah said.

  Very well, then. She strode around the desk, sliding her hand beneath its ledge to push a brass button and sending up a prayer to merciful Cthona that her voice remained calm, even as her mind kept circling back to the same thought, over and over: Briggs didn’t kill Danika, Briggs didn’t kill Danika, Briggs didn’t kill Danika—

  The wood panel in the wall behind her split open, revealing a large screen. As it flickered to life, she picked up the desk phone and dialed.

  Briggs had been a monster who had planned to hurt people, and he deserved to be in jail, but—he’d been wrongly accused of the murder.

  Danika’s killer was still out there.

  Jesiba answered on the first ring. “Is the screen ready?”

  “Whenever you are.” Bryce typed the codes into her computer, trying to ignore the Governor staring at her like she was a steak and he was … something that ate steak. Raw. And moaning. “I’m dialing you in,” she declared.

  Jesiba Roga appeared on the screen an instant later—and they both hung up their phones.

  Behind the sorceress, the hotel suite was decorated in Pangeran splendor: paneled white walls with gilded molding, plush cream carpets and pale pink silk drapes, a four-poster oak bed big enough for her and the two males Bryce had heard when she called before.

  Jesiba played as hard as she worked while over on the massive territory, seeking out more art for the gallery, either through visiting various archaeological digs or courting high-powered clients who already possessed them.

  Despite having less than ten minutes, and despite using most of that time to make some very important calls, Jesiba’s flowing navy dress was immaculate, revealing tantalizing glimpses of a lush female body adorned with freshwater pearls at her ears and throat. Her cropped ash-blond hair glowed in the golden firstlight lamps—cut shorter on the sides, longer on the top. Effortlessly chic and casual. Her face …

  Her face was both young and wise, bedroom-soft yet foreboding. Her pale gray eyes gleamed with glittering magic, alluring and deadly.

  Bryce had never dared ask why Jesiba had defected from the witches centuries ago. Why she’d aligned herself with the House of Flame and Shadow and its leader, the Under-King—and what she did for him. She called herself a sorceress now. Never a witch.

  “Morning, Micah,” Jesiba said mildly. A pleasant, disarming voice compared to that of other members of Flame and Shadow—the hoarse rasp of Reapers, or the silken tones of vampyrs.

  “Jesiba,” Micah purred.

  Jesiba gave him a slight smile, as if she’d heard that purr a thousand different times, from a thousand different males. “Pleased as I am to see your handsome face, I’d like to know why you called this meeting. Unless the Danika thing was an excuse to talk to sweet Bryce.”

  The Danika thing. Bryce kept her face neutral, even as she felt Hunt watching her carefully. As if he could hear her heart thundering, scent the sweat now coating her palms.

  But Bryce gave him a bored look in return.

  Micah leaned back in his chair, crossing his long legs, and said without so much as glancing at Bryce, “Tempting as your assistant is, we have important matters to discuss.”

  She ignored the outright entitlement, the timbre of that sensual voice. Tempting—as if she were a piece of dessert on a platter. She was used to it, but … these gods-damned Vanir males.

  Jesiba waved with ethereal grace to continue, silver nails sparkling in the ho
tel’s lamplight.

  Micah said smoothly, “I believe my triarii informed Miss Quinlan of the murder last night. One that was an exact match for the deaths of Danika Fendyr and the Pack of Devils two years ago.”

  Bryce kept herself still, unfeeling. She took a subtle inhale of the soothing peppermint wisps from the infuser a few inches away.

  Micah went on, “What they did not mention was the other connection.”

  The two angels flanking the Governor stiffened almost imperceptibly. This was clearly the first they were hearing of this as well.

  “Oh?” Jesiba said. “And do I have to pay for this information?”

  Vast, cold power crackled in the gallery, but the Archangel’s face remained unreadable. “I am sharing this information so we might combine resources.”

  Jesiba arched a blond brow with preternatural smoothness. “To do what?”

  Micah said, “For Bryce Quinlan to find the true murderer behind this, of course.”

  12

  Bryce had gone still as death—so unmoving that Hunt wondered if she knew it was a solid tell. Not about her own nerves, but about her heritage. Only the Fae could go that still.

  Her boss, the young-faced sorceress, sighed. “Is your 33rd so incompetent these days that you truly need my assistant’s help?” Her lovely voice hardly softened her question. “Though I suppose I already have my answer, if you falsely convicted Philip Briggs.”

  Hunt didn’t dare grin at her outright challenge. Few people could get away with speaking to Micah Domitus, let alone any Archangel, like that.

  He considered the four-hundred-year-old sorceress on the screen. He’d heard the rumors: that Jesiba answered to the Under-King, that she could transform people into common animals if they provoked her, that she’d once been a witch who’d left her clan for reasons still unknown. Most likely bad ones, if she’d wound up a member of the House of Flame and Shadow.

  Bryce breathed, “I don’t know anything about this. Or who wanted to kill Tertian.”

  Jesiba sharpened her gaze. “Regardless, you are my assistant. You don’t work for the 33rd.”

  Micah’s mouth tightened. Hunt braced himself. “I invited you to this meeting, Jesiba, as a courtesy.” His brown eyes narrowed with distaste. “It does indeed appear that Philip Briggs was wrongly convicted. But the fact remains that Danika Fendyr and the Pack of Devils apprehended him in his laboratory, with undeniable evidence regarding his intention to bomb innocents at the White Raven nightclub. And though he was initially released due to a loophole, in the past two years, enough evidence has been found for his earlier crimes that he has been convicted of them, too. As such, he will remain behind bars and serve out the sentence for those earlier crimes as leader of the now-inactive Keres sect, and his participation in the larger human rebellion.”

  Quinlan seemed to sag with relief.

  But then Micah went on, “However, this means a dangerous murderer remains loose in this city, able to summon a lethal demon—for sport or revenge, we do not know. I will admit that my 33rd and the Auxiliary have exhausted their resources. But the Summit is in just over a month. There are individuals attending who will see these murders as proof that I am not in control of my city, let alone this territory, and seek to use it against me.”

  Of course it wasn’t about catching a deadly killer. No, this was pure PR.

  Even with the Summit so far off, Hunt and the other triarii had been prepping for weeks now, getting the units in the 33rd ready for the pomp and bullshit that surrounded the gathering of Valbaran powers every ten years. Leaders from across the territory would attend, airing their grievances, with maybe a few guest appearances from the ruling assholes across the Haldren.

  Hunt hadn’t yet attended one in Valbara, but he’d been through plenty of other Summits in Pangera, with rulers who all pretended they had some semblance of free will. The Summit meetings usually amounted to a week of powerful Vanir arguing until the overseeing Archangel laid down the law. He had little doubt Micah would be any different. Isaiah had experienced one already, and had warned him that the Archangel liked to flex his military might at the Summits—liked to have the 33rd in marching and flying formation, decked out in imperial regalia.

  Hunt’s golden breastplate was already being cleaned. The thought of donning the formal armor, the seven stars of the Asteri’s crest displayed across his heart, made him want to puke.

  Jesiba examined her silver nails. “Anything exciting happening at the Summit this time?”

  Micah seemed to weigh Jesiba’s casual expression as he said, “The new witch-queen will be formally recognized.”

  Jesiba didn’t let one speck of emotion show. “I heard of Hecuba’s passing,” the sorceress said. No tinge of grief or satisfaction. Just fact.

  But Quinlan tensed, as if she’d shout at them to get back to the murder. Micah added, “And the Asteri are sending Sandriel to deliver a report from the Senate regarding the rebel conflict.”

  Every thought eddied out of Hunt’s head. Even the usually unflappable Isaiah went rigid.

  Sandriel was coming here.

  Micah was saying, “Sandriel will arrive at the Comitium next week, and at the Asteri’s request, she will be my guest until the Summit.”

  A month. That fucking monster would be in this city for a month.

  Jesiba angled her head with unnerving grace. She might not have been a Reaper, but she sure as shit moved like one. “What does my assistant have to offer in finding the murderer?”

  Hunt shoved it down—the roaring, the trembling, the stillness. Shoved it down and down and down until it was just another wave in the black, roiling pit inside himself. Forced himself to concentrate on the conversation. And not on the psychopath on her way to this city.

  Micah’s stare settled on Bryce, who had turned so pale her freckles were like splattered blood across the bridge of her nose. “Miss Quinlan is, thus far, the only person alive to have witnessed the demon the murderer summoned.”

  Bryce had the nerve to ask, “What about the angel in the alley?”

  Micah’s face remained unchanged. “He had no memories of the attack. It was an ambush.” Before Bryce could push, he went on, “Considering the delicate nature of this investigation, I am now willing to look outside the box, as they say, for assistance in solving these murders before they become a true problem.”

  Meaning, the Archangel needed to look good in front of the powers that be. In front of Sandriel, who would report it all to the Asteri and their puppet Senate.

  A murderer on the loose, capable of summoning a demon that could kill Vanir as easily as humans? Oh, it’d be precisely the sort of shit Sandriel would delight in telling the Asteri. Especially if it cost Micah his position. And if she gained it for herself. What was the northwestern quadrant of Pangera compared to all of Valbara? And Micah losing everything meant his slaves—Hunt, Isaiah, Justinian, and so many others—went to whoever inherited his Governor’s title.

  Sandriel would never honor Micah’s bargain with Hunt.

  Micah turned to Hunt, a cruel tilt to his lips. “You can guess, Athalar, who Sandriel will be bringing with her.” Hunt went rigid. “Pollux would be all too happy to report his findings as well.”

  Hunt fought to master his breathing, to keep his face neutral.

  Pollux Antonius, Sandriel’s triarii commander—the Malleus, they called him. The Hammer. As cruel and merciless as Sandriel. And an absolute motherfucking asshole.

  Jesiba cleared her throat. “And you still don’t know what kind of demon it was?” She leaned back in her chair, a frown on her full mouth.

  “No,” Micah said through his teeth.

  It was true. Even Hunt hadn’t been able to identify it, and he’d had the distinct pleasure of killing more demons than he could count. They came in endless breeds and levels of intelligence, ranging from the beasts that resembled feline-canine hybrids to the humanoid, shape-shifting princes who ruled over Hel’s seven territories, each one darker t
han the last: the Hollow, the Trench, the Canyon, the Ravine, the Chasm, the Abyss, and the worst of them all—the Pit.

  Even without a specific identification, though, given its speed and what it had done, the demon fit with something belonging to the Pit, perhaps a pet of the Star-Eater himself. Only in the depths of the Pit could something like that evolve—a creature who had never seen light, never needed it.

  It didn’t matter, Hunt supposed. Whether the demon was accustomed to light or not, his particular skills could still turn it into chunks of sizzling meat. A quick flash of light and a demon would either turn tail or writhe in pain.

  Quinlan’s voice cut through the storm in Hunt’s head. “You said that there was another connection between the murders then and the one now. Beyond the … style.”

  Micah looked at her. To her credit, Quinlan didn’t lower her eyes. “Maximus Tertian and Danika Fendyr were friends.”

  Bryce’s brows twitched toward each other. “Danika didn’t know Tertian.”

  Micah sighed toward the wood-paneled ceiling high above. “I suspect there might have been a good deal about which she didn’t inform you.”

  “I would have known if she was friends with Maximus Tertian,” Quinlan ground out.

  Micah’s power murmured through the room. “Careful, Miss Quinlan.”

  No one took that kind of tone with an Archangel, at least not anyone with nearly zero power in their veins. It was enough to get Hunt to set aside Sandriel’s visit and focus on the conversation.

  Micah went on, “There is also the fact that you knew both Danika and Maximus Tertian. That you were at the White Raven nightclub on each of the nights the murders happened. The similarity is enough to be … of interest.”

  Jesiba straightened. “Are you saying that Bryce is a suspect?”

  “Not yet,” Micah said coldly. “But anything is possible.”

  Quinlan’s fingers curled into fists, her knuckles going white as she no doubt tried to restrain herself from spitting at the Archangel. She opted to change the subject instead. “What about investigating the others in the Pack of Devils? None of them might have been a target?”