The door shut, the gallery darkening. Bryce stared at the computer screen before her, then typed in a few words.
There was still nothing on Hunt. No mention of him in the news. Not a whisper about whether the Umbra Mortis was imprisoned or tortured or alive or dead.
As if he had never existed. As if she had dreamed him up.
69
Hunt ate only because his body demanded it, slept because there was nothing else to do, and watched the TV screen in the hall beyond his cell bars because he’d brought this upon himself and Vik and Justinian and there was no undoing it.
Micah had left the latter’s body up. Justinian would hang there for seven full days and then be pulled off the crucifix—and dumped into the Istros. No Sailings for traitors. Just the bellies of the river beasts.
Viktoria’s box had already been dumped into the Melino? Trench.
The thought of her trapped on the seafloor, the deepest place in Midgard, nothing but dark and silence and that tight, tight space …
Dreams of her suffering had launched Hunt over to the toilet, puking up his guts.
And then the itching began. Deep in his back, radiating through the framework now beginning to regrow, it itched and itched and itched. His fledgling wings remained sore enough that scratching them resulted in near-blinding pain, and as the hours ticked by, each new bit of growth had him clenching his jaw against it.
A waste, he silently told his body. A big fucking waste to regrow his wings, when he was likely hours or days away from an execution.
He’d had no visitors since Isaiah six days ago. He’d tracked the time by watching the sunlight shift in the atrium on the TV feed.
Not a whisper from Bryce. Not that he dared hope she’d somehow find a way to see him, if only to let him beg on his knees for her forgiveness. To tell her what he needed to say.
Maybe Micah would let him rot down here. Let him go mad like Vik, buried beneath the earth, unable to fly, unable to feel fresh air on his face.
The doors down the hall hissed, and Hunt blinked, rising from his silence. Even his miserably itching wings halted their torture.
But the female scent that hit him a heartbeat later was not Bryce’s.
It was a scent he knew just as well—would never forget as long as he lived. A scent that stalked his nightmares, whetted his rage into a thing that made it impossible to think.
The Archangel of northwestern Pangera smiled as she appeared before his cell. He’d never get used to it: how much she looked like Shahar. “This seems familiar,” Sandriel said. Her voice was soft, beautiful. Like music. Her face was, too.
And yet her eyes, the color of fresh-tilled soil, gave her away. They were sharp, honed by millennia of cruelty and near-unchecked power. Eyes that delighted in pain and bloodshed and despair. That had always been the difference between her and Shahar—their eyes. Warmth in one; death in the other.
“I heard you want to kill me, Hunt,” the Archangel said, crossing her thin arms. She clicked her tongue. “Are we really back to that old game?”
He said nothing. Just sat on his cot and held her gaze.
“You know, when you had your belongings confiscated, they found some interesting things, which Micah was kind enough to share.” She pulled an object from her pocket. His phone. “This in particular.”
She waved a hand and his phone screen appeared on the TV behind her, its wireless connection showing every movement of her fingers through the various programs. “Your email, of course, was dull as dirt. Do you never delete anything?” She didn’t wait for his response before she went on. “But your messages …” Her lips curled, and she clicked on the most recent chain.
Bryce had changed her contact name one last time, it seemed.
Bryce Thinks Hunt Is the Best had written:
I know you’re not going to see this. I don’t even know why I’m writing to you.
She’d messaged a minute after that, I just … Then another pause. Never mind. Whoever is screening this, never mind. Ignore this.
Then nothing. His head became so, so quiet.
“And you know what I found absolutely fascinating?” Sandriel was saying, clicking away from the messages and going into his photos. “These.” She chuckled. “Look at all of this. Who knew you could act so … commonly?”
She hit the slideshow function. Hunt just sat there as photos began appearing on the screen.
He’d never looked through them. The photos that he and Bryce had taken these weeks.
There he was, drinking a beer on her couch, petting Syrinx while watching a sunball game.
There he was, making her breakfast because he’d come to enjoy knowing that he could take care of her like that. She’d snapped another photo of him working in the kitchen: of his ass. With her own hand in the foreground, giving a thumbs-up of approval.