Ten minutes, actually.
She left the room with a quiet “I’m so sorry” and then she was in the hall, stomach churning, breath stalling—
“Bryce,” Hunt said from a few steps behind, boots thudding on the tiled floor.
She couldn’t turn to face him. She’d left them, and they had suffered so much—
“Quinlan,” he growled. His hand wrapped around her elbow, halting her. The hall was empty, its window overlooking the crushing black sea beyond the glass.
“Bryce,” he said again, and gently turned her. She couldn’t stop her face from crumpling.
Hunt was there in an instant, wrapping her in his arms, wings folding around them, surrounding her with that familiar, beckoning scent of rain on cedar.
“Shhh,” he whispered, and she realized she’d begun crying, the full force of all that had happened to him, to her, crashing down.
Bryce slid her arms around his waist, clinging tight. “I was so worried—”
“I’m fine.”
She scanned his face, his silver-lined eyes. “Those dungeons weren’t … fine, Hunt.”
“I survived.”
But shadows darkened his face with the words. He bowed his head, leaning his brow against hers. That hateful halo pressed against her skin. “Barely,” he admitted. She tightened her arms around him, shaking. “The thought of you kept me going.”
He might as well have punched her in the heart. “You kept me going, too.”
“Yeah?” The love in his voice threatened to shatter her heart. “I knew these smoldering good looks would come in handy one day.”
She laughed brokenly. Lifted a hand to his face and traced its strong, beautiful lines.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed, and the pain in the words nearly knocked her to the ground.
“For what?”
He shut his eyes, throat bobbing. “For getting us into this mess.”
She pulled back. “You? You got us into this mess?”
He opened his eyes again, his gaze bleak as the sea beyond the wall of windows at their backs. “I should have warned you, should have made us all think before we jumped into this nightmare—”
She gaped. “You did warn me. You warned us all.” She cupped his cheek in a hand. “But the only ones to blame for any of this are the Asteri, Hunt.”
“I should have tried harder. None of us would be in this situation—”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” she said hotly, laying her palm on his chest. “Do I regret the pain and suffering that you all went through? Solas, yes. I can barely think about it. But do I regret that we took a stand, that we are taking a stand? No. Never. And you couldn’t have stopped me from starting that fight.” She frowned. “I thought we were on the same page about doing what needs to be done.”
His expression shuttered. “We were—are.”
“You don’t sound too sure of that.”
“You didn’t have to see your friends carved apart.”
The second the words were out, she knew from his wide eyes that he regretted them. But it didn’t stop them from hurting, from pelting her heart like stones. From sending her anger boiling up within her.
But she stared at the black ocean pressing against the glass, all that death held a few inches away. She said quietly, “I had to live with the terror of possibly never getting home, never seeing you again, wondering if you were even alive, every second I was gone.” She glanced at him sidelong in time to see something cold pass over his face. She hadn’t seen that coldness in a long, long time.
The face of the Umbra Mortis.
His voice was chilled, too, as he said, “Good thing we both made it, then.”
It wasn’t a resolution. Not even close. But this wasn’t the conversation she wanted to have with him. Not right now. So she said blandly, turning from the wall of windows, “Yeah. Good thing.”
“So we’re really headed to Avallen?” Hunt asked carefully, letting it drop as well, that Umbra Mortis face vanishing. “You ready to deal with King Morven?”
Bryce nodded, crossing her arms. “We won’t accomplish anything against the Asteri if I can’t learn what that portal to nowhere is and how it could possibly kill them. The Autumn King suggested that the Avallen Archives have a trove of information about the blades. And as for Morven … I just spent a few days with one asshole Fae King. Morven won’t be any worse.”
Hunt shifted on his feet, wings tucking in tight. “I’m down with the plan and all, but … you really think there’s anything in the Avallen Archives that hasn’t already been discovered?”