He truly was pretty. And really seemed to be in a piss-poor mood. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Says the guy who’s grinding his teeth so hard I can hear them.”
Hunt cut her a glare and spread a muscled arm along the back of the couch. He’d changed when they’d returned thirty minutes ago, having grabbed a quick bite at a noodles-and-dumplings food cart just down the block, and now wore a soft gray T-shirt, black sweats, and a white sunball cap turned backward.
It was the hat that had proven the most confusing—so ordinary and … guy-ish, for lack of a better word, that she’d been stealing glances at him for the past fifteen minutes. Stray locks of his dark hair curled around the edges, the adjustable band nearly covered the tattoo over his brow, and she had no idea why, but it was all just … Disgustingly distracting.
“What?” he asked, noting her gaze.
Bryce reached forward, her long braid slipping over a shoulder, and grabbed his phone from the coffee table. She snapped a photo of him and sent a copy to herself, mostly because she doubted anyone would believe her that Hunt fucking Athalar was sitting on her couch in casual clothes, sunball hat on backward, watching TV and drinking a beer.
The Shadow of Death, everyone.
“That’s annoying,” he said through his teeth.
“So is your face,” she said sweetly, tossing the phone to him. Hunt picked it up, snapped a photo of her, and then set it down, eyes on the game again.
She let him watch for another minute before she said, “You’ve been broody since Briggs.”
His mouth twisted toward the side. “Sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
His fingers traced a circle along the couch cushion. “It brought up some bad shit. About—about the way I helped lead Shahar’s rebellion.”
She considered, retracing every horrid word and exchange in that cell beneath the Comitium.
Oh. Oh. She said carefully, “You’re nothing like Briggs, Hunt.”
His dark eyes slid toward her. “You don’t know me well enough to say that.”
“Did you willingly and gleefully risk innocent lives to further your rebellion?”
His mouth thinned. “No.”
“Well, there you have it.”
Again, his jaw worked. Then he said, “But I was blind. About a lot of things.”
“Like what?”
“Just a lot,” he hedged. “Looking at Briggs, what they’re doing to him … I don’t know why it bothered me this time. I’ve been down there often enough with other prisoners that—I mean …” His knee bounced. He said without looking at her, “You know what kinda shit I have to do.”
She said gently, “Yeah.”
“But for whatever reason, seeing Briggs like that today, it just made me remember my own …” He trailed off again and swigged from his beer.
Icy, oily dread filled her stomach, twisting with the fried noodles she’d inhaled thirty minutes ago. “How long did they do that to you—after Mount Hermon?”
“Seven years.”
She closed her eyes as the weight of those words rippled through her.
Hunt said, “I lost track of time, too. The Asteri dungeons are so far beneath the earth, so lightless, that days are years and years are days and … When they let me out, I went right to the Archangel Ramuel. My first … handler. He continued the pattern for two years, got bored with it, and realized that I’d be more useful dispatching demons and doing his bidding than rotting away in his torture chambers.”
“Burning Solas, Hunt,” she whispered.
He still didn’t look at her. “By the time Ramuel decided to let me serve as his assassin, it had been nine years since I’d seen sunlight. Since I’d heard the wind or smelled the rain. Since I’d seen grass, or a river, or a mountain. Since I’d flown.”
Her hands shook enough that she crossed her arms, tucking her fingers tight to her body. “I—I am so sorry.”
His eyes turned distant, glazed. “Hatred was the only thing that fueled me through it. Briggs’s kind of hatred. Not hope, not love. Only unrelenting, raging hatred. For the Archangels. For the Asteri. For all of it.” He finally looked at her, his eyes as hollow as Briggs’s had been. “So, yeah. I might not have ever been willing to kill innocents to help Shahar’s rebellion, but that’s the only difference between me and Briggs. Still is.”
She didn’t let herself reconsider before she took his hand.