House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City)

by Sarah J. Maas

  But the thought of sitting underground for another few hours grated enough that he found himself sitting on the roof instead. He needed the fresh, open air. Even if angels were still flying past—leaving the city. He made a point not to look toward the Comitium, looming at his back.

  Just before sundown, Syrinx in tow, Bryce emerged from the gallery with a grim expression that matched Hunt’s own.

  “Nothing?” he asked, landing on the sidewalk beside her.

  “Nothing,” she confirmed.

  “We’ll look tomorrow with fresh eyes.” Maybe there was something they were missing. Today had been long and awful and weird, and he was more than ready to collapse on her couch.

  He asked as casually as he could, “There’s a big sunball game on tonight. You mind if I watch it?”

  She glanced at him sidelong, her brows rising.

  “What?” he asked, unable to keep the corner of his mouth from twitching upward.

  “It’s just … you’re such … a guy.” She waved a hand at him. “With the sports and stuff.”

  “Females like sports as much as males.”

  She rolled her eyes. “This sunball-watching person doesn’t fit with my mental image of the Shadow of Death.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.” Hunt’s turn to lift a brow. “What do you think I do with my spare time?”

  “I don’t know. I assumed you cursed at the stars and brooded and plotted revenge on all your enemies.”

  She didn’t know the half of it. But Hunt let out a low chuckle. “Again, sorry to disappoint.”

  Her eyes crinkled with amusement, the last of the day’s sun lighting them into liquid gold. He forced himself to monitor the streets around them.

  They were a block from Bryce’s apartment when Hunt’s phone rang. She tensed, peering at his screen the same moment he did.

  The phone rang a second time. They both stared at the name that popped up, pedestrians streaming past.

  “You gonna answer it?” Bryce asked quietly.

  It rang a third time.

  Hunt knew. Before he hit the button, he knew.

  Which was why he stepped away from Quinlan, putting the phone to his ear just as he said blandly, “Hi, boss.”

  “I have work for you tonight,” Micah said.

  Hunt’s gut twisted. “Sure.”

  “I hope I’m not interrupting your fun with Miss Quinlan.”

  “We’re good,” Hunt said tightly.

  Micah’s pause was loaded. “What occurred in the lobby this morning is never to happen again. Understood?”

  “Yes.” He bit out the word. But he said it—and meant it—because the alternative to Micah was now staying at the Governor’s residence in the Comitium. Because Sandriel would have drawn out his punishment for refusing to bow, for embarrassing her, for days, weeks. Months.

  But Micah would give him this warning, and make him do this job tonight to remind him where the fuck he stood in the pecking order, and then that would be that.

  “Good,” Micah said. “The file’s waiting at your room in the barracks.” He paused, as if sensing the question now burning through Hunt. “The offer still stands, Athalar. Don’t make me reconsider.” The call ended.

  Hunt clenched his jaw hard enough to hurt.

  Quinlan’s forehead wrinkled with concern. “Everything okay?”

  Hunt slid the phone into his pocket. “It’s fine.” He resumed walking. “Just legion business.” Not a lie. Not entirely.

  The glass doors to her building opened. Hunt nodded toward the lobby. “You head up. I’ve got something to do. I’ll call if we get the date and time for Briggs.”

  Her amber eyes narrowed. Yeah, she saw right through it. Or rather, heard everything he wasn’t saying. Knew what Micah had ordered him to do.

  But she said, “All right.” She turned toward the lobby, but added over her shoulder, “Good luck.”

  He didn’t bother answering before he shot into the skies, phone already to his ear as he called Justinian to ask him to play sentry for a few hours. Justinian whined about missing the sunball game, but Hunt pulled rank, earning a grumbled promise that the angel would be at the adjacent rooftop in ten minutes.

  Justinian arrived in eight. Leaving his brother-in-arms to it, Hunt sucked in a breath of dusty, dry air, the Istros a teal ribbon to his left, and went to do what he did best.

  “Please.”

  It was always the same word. The only word people tended to say when the Umbra Mortis stood before them.

  Through the blood splattered on his helmet, Hunt regarded the male cougar shifter cowering before him. His clawed hands shook as he left them upraised. “Please,” the man sobbed.

  Every utterance dragged Hunt further away. Until the arm he outstretched was distant, until the gun he aimed at the male’s head was just a bit of metal.

  A death for a death.

  “Please.”

  The male had done horrible things. Unspeakable things. He deserved this. Deserved worse.

  “Pleasepleaseplease.”

  Hunt was nothing but a shadow, a wisp of life, an instrument of death.

  He was nothing and no one at all.

  “Ple—”

  Hunt’s finger curled on the trigger.

  Hunt returned early. Well, early for him.

  Thankfully, no one was in the barracks bathroom while he showered off the blood. Then sat under the scalding spray for so long that he lost track of time.

  He would have stayed longer had he not known that Justinian was waiting.

  So he patched himself up, pieced himself together. Half crawled out of the boiling-hot shower and into the person he was when he wasn’t forced to put a bullet between someone’s eyes.

  He made a few stops before getting back to Bryce’s apartment. But he made it back, relieving Justinian from his duties, and walked through Bryce’s door at eleven.

  She was in her bedroom, the door shut, but Syrinx let out a little yowl of welcome from within. Her scolding hush was proof that she’d heard Hunt return. Hunt prayed she wouldn’t come into the hall. Words were still beyond him.

  Her doorknob turned. But Hunt was already at his room, and didn’t dare look across the expanse of the great room as she said tightly, “You’re back.”

  “Yeah,” he choked out.

  Even across the room, he could feel her questions. But she said softly, “I recorded the game for you. If you still want to watch it.”

  Something tightened unbearably in his chest. But Hunt didn’t look back.

  He slipped into his room with a mumbled “Night,” and shut the door behind him.

  33

  The Oracle’s black chamber reeked of sulfur and roasted meat—the former from the natural gases rising from the hole in the center of the space, the latter from the pile of bull bones currently smoldering atop the altar against the far wall, an offering to Ogenas, Keeper of Mysteries.

  After last night, what he’d done, a sacred temple was the last place he wanted to be. The last place he deserved to be.

  The twenty-foot doors shut behind Hunt as he strode across the silent chamber, aiming for the hole in the center and wall of smoke behind it. His eyes burned with the various acrid scents, and he summoned a wind to keep them out of his face.

  Behind the smoke, a figure moved. “I wondered when the Shadow of Death would darken my chamber,” a lovely voice said. Young, full of light and amusement—and yet tinged with ancient cruelty.

  Hunt halted at the edge of the hole, avoiding the urge to peer into the endless blackness. “I won’t take much of your time,” he said, his voice swallowed by the room, the pit, the smoke.

  “I shall give you what time Ogenas offers.” The smoke parted, and he sucked in a breath at the being that emerged.

  Sphinxes were rare—only a few dozen walked the earth, and all of them had been called to the service of the gods. No one knew how old they were, and this one before him … She was so beautiful he forgot what to do with his body.
The golden lioness’s form moved with fluid grace, pacing the other side of the hole, weaving in and out of the mist. Golden wings lay folded against the slender body, shimmering as if they were crafted from molten metal. And above that winged lion’s body … the golden-haired woman’s face was as flawless as Shahar’s had been.

  No one knew her name. She was simply her title: Oracle. He wondered if she was so old that she’d forgotten her true name.

  The sphinx blinked large brown eyes at him, lashes brushing against her light brown cheeks. “Ask me your question, and I shall tell you what the smoke whispers to me.” The words rumbled over his bones, luring him in. Not in the way he sometimes let himself be lured in by beautiful females, but in the manner that a spider might lure a fly to its web.

  Maybe Quinlan and her cousin had a point about not wanting to come here. Hel, Quinlan had refused to even set foot in the park surrounding the black-stoned temple, opting to wait on a bench at its edge with Ruhn.

  “What I say here is confidential, right?” he asked.

  “Once the gods speak, I become the conduit through which their words pass.” She arranged herself on the floor before the hole, folding her front paws, claws glinting in the dim light of the braziers smoldering to either side of them. “But yes—this shall be confidential.”

  It sounded like a whole bunch of bullshit, but he blew out a breath, meeting those large brown eyes, and said, “Why does someone want Luna’s Horn?”

  He didn’t ask who had taken it—he knew from the reports that she had already been asked that question two years ago and had refused to answer.

  She blinked, wings rustling as if in surprise, but settled herself. Breathed in the fumes rising from the hole. Minutes passed, and Hunt’s head began to throb with the various scents—especially the reeking sulfur.

  Smoke swirled, masking the sphinx from sight even though she sat only ten feet away.

  Hunt forced himself to keep still.

  A rasping voice slithered out of the smoke. “To open the doorway between worlds.” A chill seized Hunt. “They wish to use the Horn to reopen the Northern Rift. The Horn’s purpose wasn’t merely to close doors—it opens them, too. It depends on what the bearer wishes.”

  “But the Horn is broken.”

  “It can be healed.”

  Hunt’s heart stalled. “How?”

  A long, long pause. Then, “It is veiled. I cannot see. None can see.”

  “The Fae legends say it can’t be repaired.”

  “Those are legends. This is truth. The Horn can be repaired.”

  “Who wants to do this?” He had to ask, even if it was foolish.

  “This, too, is veiled.”

  “Helpful.”

  “Be grateful, Lord of Lightning, that you learned anything at all.” That voice—that title … His mouth went dry. “Do you wish to know what I see in your future, Orion Athalar?”

  He recoiled at the sound of his birth name like he’d been punched in the gut. “No one has spoken that name in two hundred years,” he whispered.

  “The name your mother gave you.”

  “Yes,” he ground out, his gut twisting at the memory of his mother’s face, the love that had always shone in her eyes for him. Utterly undeserved, that love—especially when he had not been there to protect her.

  The Oracle whispered, “Shall I tell you what I see, Orion?”

  “I’m not sure I want to know.”

  The smoke peeled back enough for him to see her sensuous lips part in a cruel smile that did not wholly belong in this world. “People come from across Midgard to plead for my visions, yet you do not wish to know?”

  The hair on the back of his neck stood. “I thank you, but no.” Thanks seemed wise—like something that might appease a god.

  Her teeth shone, her canines long enough to shred flesh. “Did Bryce Quinlan tell you what occurred when she stood in this chamber twelve years ago?”

  His blood turned to ice. “That’s Quinlan’s business.”

  That smile didn’t falter. “You do not wish to know what I saw for her, either?”

  “No.” He spoke from his heart. “It’s her business,” he repeated. His lightning rose within him, rallying against a foe he could not slay.

  The Oracle blinked, a slow bob of those thick lashes. “You remind me of that which was lost long ago,” she said quietly. “I had not realized it might ever appear again.”

  Before Hunt dared ask what that meant, her lion’s tail—a larger version of Syrinx’s—swayed over the floor. The doors behind him opened on a phantom wind, his dismissal clear. But the Oracle said before stalking into the vapors, “Do yourself a favor, Orion Athalar: keep well away from Bryce Quinlan.”

  34

  Bryce and Ruhn had waited at the edge of the Oracle’s Park for Hunt, each minute dripping by. And when he’d emerged again, eyes searching every inch of her face … Bryce knew it was bad. Whatever he’d learned.

  Hunt waited until they’d walked down a quiet residential block bordering the park before he told them what the Oracle had said about the Horn.

  His words were still hanging in the bright morning air around them as Bryce blew out a breath. Hunt did the same beside her and then said, “If someone has learned how to repair the Horn after so long, then they can do the opposite of what Prince Pelias did. They can open the Northern Rift. It seems like one Hel of a motive to kill anyone who might rat them out.”

  Ruhn ran a hand over the buzzed side of his hair. “Like the acolyte at the temple—either as a warning to us to stay the fuck away from the Horn or to keep her from saying anything, if she’d found out somehow.”

  Hunt nodded. “Isaiah questioned the others at the temple—they said the girl was the only acolyte on duty the night the Horn was stolen, and was interviewed then, but claimed she didn’t know anything about it.”

  Guilt twisted and writhed within Bryce.

  Ruhn said, “Maybe she was scared to say anything. And when we showed up …”

  Hunt finished, “Whoever is looking for the Horn doesn’t want us anywhere near it. They could have learned she’d been on duty that night and gone to extract information from her. They’d have wanted to make sure she didn’t reveal what she knew to anyone else—to make sure she stayed silent. Permanently.”

  Bryce added the girl’s death to the list of others she’d repay before this was finished.

  Then she asked, “If that mark on the crate really was the Horn, maybe the Ophion—or even just the Keres sect—is seeking the Horn to aid in their rebellion. To open a portal to Hel, and bring the demon princes back here in some sort of alliance to overthrow the Asteri.” She shuddered. “Millions would die.” At their chilled silence, she went on, “Maybe Danika caught on to their plans about the Horn—and was killed for it. And the acolyte, too.”

  Hunt rubbed the back of his neck, his face ashen. “They’d need help from a Vanir to summon a demon like that, but it’s a possibility. There are some Vanir pledged to their cause. Or maybe one of the witches summoned it. The new witch queen could be testing her power, or something.”

  “Unlikely that a witch was involved,” Ruhn said a shade tightly, piercings along his ear glinting in the sun. “The witches obey the Asteri—they’ve had millennia of unbroken loyalty.”

  Bryce said, “But the Horn can only be used by a Starborn Fae—by you, Ruhn.”

  Hunt’s wings rustled. “So maybe they’re looking for some way around the Starborn shit.”

  “Honestly,” Ruhn said, “I’m not sure I could use the Horn. Prince Pelias possessed what was basically an ocean of starlight at his disposal.” Her brother’s brow furrowed, and a pinprick of light appeared at his fingertip. “This is about as good as it gets for me.”

  “Well, you’re not going to use the Horn, even if we find it, so it won’t matter,” Bryce said.

  Ruhn crossed his arms. “If someone can repair the Horn … I don’t even know how that would be possible. I read some mentions of the Horn
having a sort of sentience to it—almost like it was alive. Maybe a healing power of some sort would be applicable? A medwitch might have some insight.”

  Bryce countered, “They heal people, not objects. And the book you found in the gallery’s library said the Horn could only be repaired by light that is not light, magic that is not magic.”

  “Legends,” said Hunt. “Not truth.”

  “It’s worth looking into,” Ruhn said, and halted, glancing between Bryce and Hunt, who was watching her warily from the corner of his eye. Whatever the fuck that meant. Ruhn said, “I’ll look up a few medwitches and pay some discreet visits.”

  “Fine,” she said. When he stiffened, she amended, “That sounds good.”

  Even if nothing else about this case did.

  Bryce tuned out the sound of Lehabah watching one of her dramas and tried to concentrate on the map of Danika’s locations. Tried but failed, since she could feel Hunt’s eyes lingering on her from across the library table. For the hundredth time in that hour alone. She met his stare, and he looked away quickly. “What?”

  He shook his head and went back to his research.

  “You’ve been staring at me all afternoon with that weird fucking look on your face.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table, then blurted, “You want to tell me why the Oracle warned me to stay the Hel away from you?”

  Bryce let out a short laugh. “Is that why you seemed all freaked when you left the temple?”

  “She said she’d reveal her vision for you—like she has a damned bone to pick with you.”

  A shiver crawled down Bryce’s spine at that. “I don’t blame her if she’s still pissed.”

  Hunt paled, but Bryce said, “In Fae culture, there’s a custom: when girls get their cycle for the first time, or when they turn thirteen, they go to an Oracle. The visit provides a glimpse toward what sort of power they might ascend to when mature, so their parents can plan unions years before the actual Drop. Boys go, too—at age thirteen. These days, if the parents are progressive, it’s just an old tradition to figure out a career for their children. Soldiers or healers or whatever Fae do if they can’t afford to lounge around eating grapes all day.”