He had done this, brought this upon himself and his companions, and he would pay for it over and over and—
“Wait!” The female voice rang out from across the lobby.
Hunt froze. Everyone froze.
“Wait!”
No. No, she couldn’t be here. He couldn’t bear for her to see him like this, knees wobbling and a breath away from puking again. Because Pollux strode beside him, and Sandriel prowled in front of him, and they would destroy her—
But there was Bryce. Running toward them. Toward him.
Fear and pain tightened her face, but her wide eyes were trained on him as she shouted again, to Sandriel, to the entire lobby full of angels, “Wait!”
She was breathless as the crowd parted. Sandriel halted, Pollux and the guards instantly on alert, forcing Hunt to pause with them, too.
Bryce skidded to a stop before the Archangel. “Please,” she panted, bracing her hands on her knees, her ponytail drooping over a shoulder as she tried to catch her breath. No sign of that limp. “Please, wait.”
Sandriel surveyed her like she would a gnat buzzing about her head. “Yes, Bryce Quinlan?”
Bryce straightened, still panting. Looked at Hunt for a long moment, for eternity, before she said to the Archangel of northwestern Pangera, “Please don’t take him.”
Hunt could barely stand to hear the plea in her voice. Pollux let out a soft, hateful laugh.
Sandriel was not amused. “He has been gifted to me. The papers were signed yesterday.”
Bryce pulled something from her pocket, causing the guards around them to reach for their weapons. Pollux’s sword was instantly in his hand, angled toward her with lethal efficiency.
But it wasn’t a gun or a knife. It was a piece of paper.
“Then let me buy him from you.”
Utter silence.
Sandriel laughed then, the sound rich and lilting. “Do you know how much—”
“I’ll pay you ninety-seven million gold marks.”
The floor rocked beneath Hunt. People gasped. Pollux blinked, eyeing Bryce again.
Bryce extended a piece of paper toward Sandriel, though the malakh didn’t take it. Even from a few feet behind the Archangel, Hunt’s sharp eyesight could make out the writing.
Proof of funds. A check from the bank, made out to Sandriel. For nearly a hundred million marks.
A check from Jesiba Roga.
Horror sluiced through him, rendering him speechless. How many years had Bryce added to her debt?
He didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve her. Not for a heartbeat. Not in a thousand years—
Bryce waved the check toward Sandriel. “Twelve million more than his asking price when you sold him, right? You’ll—”
“I know how to do the mathematics.”
Bryce remained with her arm outstretched. Hope in her beautiful face. Then she reached up, Pollux and the guards tensing again. But it was to just unclasp the golden amulet from around her neck. “Here. To sweeten the deal. An Archesian amulet. It’s fifteen thousand years old, and fetches around three million gold marks on the market.”
That tiny necklace was worth three million gold marks?
Bryce extended both the necklace and the paper, the gold glinting. “Please.”
He couldn’t let her do it. Not even for what remained of his soul. Hunt opened his mouth, but the Archangel took the dangling necklace from Bryce’s fingers. Sandriel glanced between them. Read everything on Hunt’s face. A snake’s smile curled her mouth. “Your loyalty to my sister was the one good thing about you, Athalar.” She clenched her fist around the amulet. “But it seems those photographs did not lie.”
The Archesian amulet melted into streams of gold on the floor.
Something ruptured in Hunt’s chest at the devastation that crumpled Bryce’s face.
He said quietly to her, his first words all day, “Get out of here, Bryce.”
But Bryce pocketed the check. And slid to her knees.
“Then take me.”
Terror rocked him, so violently he had no words when Bryce looked up at Sandriel, tears filling her eyes as she said, “Take me in his place.”
A slow grin spread across Pollux’s face.
No. She’d already traded her eternal resting place in the Bone Quarter for Danika. He couldn’t let her trade her mortal life for him. Not for him—
“Don’t you dare!” The male bellow cracked across the space. Then Ruhn was there, wreathed in shadows, Declan and Flynn flanking him. They weren’t foolish enough to reach for their guns as they sized up Sandriel’s guards. Realized that Pollux Antonius, the Malleus, stood there, sword angled to punch through Bryce’s chest if Sandriel so much as gave the nod.