“Watch that thing,” Hunt snapped as the elevator finally emptied and they walked in. “You’ll take my eye out.”
She leaned nonchalantly against the far glass wall. Mercifully, no one got inside with them. Hunt wasn’t stupid enough to think that it was by pure chance.
They’d made only one stop on their way here, to buy her a replacement phone for the one she’d lost at the club. She’d even coughed up a few extra marks for a standard protection spell package on the phone.
The glass-and-chrome store had been mostly empty, but he hadn’t failed to notice how many would-be shoppers spied him through the windows and kept far away. Bryce hadn’t seemed to notice, and while they’d waited for the employee to bring out a new phone for her, she’d asked him for his own, so she could trawl the news feeds for any updates on the club attack. Somehow, she’d wound up going through his photos. Or lack of them.
“There are thirty-six photos on this phone,” she said flatly.
Hunt had frowned. “So?”
She scrolled through the paltry collection. “Going back four years.” To when he’d arrived in Lunathion and gotten his first phone and taste of life without a monster ruling over him. Bryce had gagged as she opened a photo of a severed leg on a bloody carpet. “What the fuck?”
“I sometimes get called to crime scenes and have to snap a few for evidence.”
“Are any of these people from your bargain with—”
“No,” he said. “I don’t take pictures of them.”
“There are thirty-six photos on your four-year-old phone, and all of them are of dismembered bodies,” she said. Someone gasped across the store.
Hunt gritted his teeth. “Say it a little louder, Quinlan.”
She frowned. “You never take any others?”
“Of what?”
“Oh, I don’t know—of life? A pretty flower or good meal or something?”
“What’s the point?”
She’d blinked, then shook her head. “Weirdo.”
And before he could stop her, she’d angled his phone in front of her, beamed from ear to ear, and snapped a photo of herself before she handed it back to him. “There. One non-corpse photo.”
Hunt had rolled his eyes, but pocketed the phone.
The elevator hummed around them, shooting upward. Bryce watched the numbers rise. “Do you know who that legionary was?” she asked casually.
“Which one? There was the one drooling on the Traskian carpet, the one with his tongue rolled out on the floor, or the one who was staring at your ass like it was going to talk to him?”
She laughed. “They must keep you all starved for sex in these barracks if the presence of one female sends them into such a tizzy. So—do you know his name? The one who wanted to have a chat with my ass.”
“No. There are three thousand of us in the 33rd alone.” He glanced at her sidelong, watching her monitor the rising floor numbers. “Maybe some guy that checks out your ass before he says hello isn’t someone worth knowing.”
Her brows lifted as the elevator stopped and the doors opened. “That is precisely the kind of person I’m looking for.” She stepped into the simple hallway, and he followed her—realizing as she paused that he knew where they were going, and she only faked it.
He turned left. Their footsteps echoed off the tan granite tile of the long corridor. The stone was cracked and chipped in spots—from dropped weapons, magical pissing contests, actual brawls—but still polished enough that he could see both their reflections.
Quinlan took in the hall, the names on each door. “Males only, or are you mixed?”
“Mixed,” he told her. “Though there are more males than females in the 33rd.”
“Do you have a girlfriend? Boyfriend? Someone whose ass you gawk at?”
He shook his head, trying to fight the ice in his veins as he stopped before his door, opened it, and let her inside. Trying to block out the image of Shahar plunging to the earth, Sandriel’s sword through her sternum, both angels’ white wings streaming blood. Both sisters screaming, faces nearly mirror images of each other. “I was born a bastard.” He shut the door behind them, watching her survey the small room. The bed was big enough to fit his wings, but there wasn’t space for much else beyond an armoire and dresser, a desk stacked with books and papers, and discarded weapons.
“So?”
“So my mother had no money, and no distinguished bloodline that might have made up for it. I don’t exactly have females lining up for me, despite this face of mine.” His laugh was bitter as he opened the cheap pine armoire and pulled out a large duffel. “I had someone once, someone who didn’t care about status, but it didn’t end well.” Each word singed his tongue.