Her lips curled upward. “Rebel prince and bookworm.” Athalar looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “I’ll make a deal with you.”
Hunt growled his objection, but Ruhn’s mind churned. This was the Bryce he knew—always angling for the advantage.
“No interest in helping out of the goodness of your heart, Princess?” Cormac taunted.
“I want out of this marriage,” Bryce said smoothly, running a finger over the counter’s edge. Ruhn pretended not to see Athalar’s shudder. “But I know that if I end our engagement too soon, my … sire will send along someone who isn’t as motivated to work with me.” Truth. “So we’ll team up with Tharion here to find Emile. And I’ll even help you find out whatever intel it was that Danika wanted Sofie to learn. But I want this engagement ended when I say it’s time. And I want you to teach me about my magic. If not, good luck to you. I’ll be sure to point Pippa and her Lightfall unit right in your direction.”
Hunt smirked. Ruhn avoided doing the same. Tharion just tucked his arms behind his head. Only Ithan seemed surprised. Like he’d never seen this side of Bryce.
“Fine,” Cormac said. “But the engagement will only be broken once my work here for Ophion is done. I need the reason to be in Valbara.”
Ruhn expected Bryce to object, but she seemed to think it over. “We do need the cover to be seen together,” she mused. “Otherwise, anyone who knows what a piece of shit you are would wonder why the Hel I would stoop to hang with you. It’d be suspicious.”
Hunt coughed into his shoulder.
Ruhn blurted, “Am I the only one here who thinks this is insane?”
Ithan said, “I think we’re all dead meat for even talking about this.”
But Hunt rubbed his jaw, solemn and weary. “We need to talk this over before deciding.” Bryce’s hand brushed over his once more.
Ruhn grunted his agreement and said to his cousin, “You’ve dropped a shit-ton of information on us. We need to process.” He gestured toward the door in dismissal. “We’ll contact you.”
Cormac didn’t move an inch. “I require your blood oath not to say a word of this.”
Ruhn barked a laugh. “I’m not making a blood oath. You can trust us. Can we trust you?”
“If I can trust cowards who like painting their nails while the rest of the world suffers, then you can trust me.”
Bryce said wryly, “Going in hard with the charm, Cormac.”
“Swear a blood oath. And I’ll leave.”
“No,” Bryce said with surprising calm. “I have a manicure in ten minutes.”
Cormac glowered. “I’ll require your answer tomorrow. In the meantime, I am entrusting my life to you.” His eyes slid to Ruhn’s. “Should you wish to hear my pitch, I’ll be at the bar on Archer and Ward today. Your services would be … greatly valued.”
Ruhn said nothing. The fucker could rot.
Cormac’s eyes narrowed with cold amusement. “Your father remains unaware of your mind-speaking gifts, doesn’t he?”
“Are you threatening me?” Ruhn snarled.
Cormac shrugged, walking toward the door. “Come meet me at the bar and find out.”
“Asshole,” Ithan murmured.
Cormac paused with his hand on the knob. He sucked in a breath, the powerful muscles of his back rippling. When he looked over his shoulder, the amusement and threats were gone. “Beyond Sofie, beyond Emile … This world could be so much more. This world could be free. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want that.”
“Hard to enjoy being free,” Hunt countered darkly, “if you’re dead.”
Cormac opened the door, stepping into the swirling shadows. “I can think of no better reason to yield my life.”
17
“Does anyone else feel like they’re about to wake up from a bad dream?” Ithan’s question echoed into the fraught silence of the apartment.
Bryce checked the clock on her phone. Had it really been less than an hour since she’d walked down the teeming lunchtime streets with Ruhn? She rubbed idly at her star, still glowing faintly, and said to no one in particular, “I need to get back to the archives.”
Ruhn exclaimed, “After all that, you’re going back to work?”
But she strode across the room, throwing Hunt a glance that had him following. He always got her like that—they didn’t need Ruhn’s fancy mind-speaking to communicate.