Ithan bared his teeth. Flynn, Dec, and Marc clicked off the safeties on their guns.
But Sabine just said to Sigrid through a mouth full of fangs, “You look exactly like him.”
4
Pain and dark and quiet. That was the entirety of Hunt Athalar’s world.
No, that wasn’t true.
Those things were the entirety of the world beyond his tortured body, his sawed-off wings, the aching hunger writhing in his stomach and thirst burning his throat, the slave brand stamped on his wrist. The halo inked anew upon his brow by Rigelus himself, its oppressive power somehow heavier and oilier than the first. All that he had achieved, regained … wiped away. His very existence belonged to the Asteri once more.
But inside him, beyond that sea of pain and despair, Bryce was the entirety of his world.
His mate. His wife. His princess.
Prince Hunt Athalar Danaan. He would have hated the last name were it not for the fact that it was a marker of her ownership over his soul, his heart.
There was Bryce, and nothing else. Not even Pollux’s barbed-wire whips could rip her face from his mind. Not even that blunt-toothed saw had severed it from him, even as it had hewn through his wings.
Bryce, who had gotten away. Gone to Hel to seek aid. He’d stay here, let Pollux rip him to shreds, cut through his wings again and again, if it meant that the Asteri’s attention stayed away from her. If it bought her time to rally the force needed to take on these fuckers.
He’d die before he told them where she was. His only consolation was that Ruhn would do the same.
Baxian, bloody and swaying on the other side of Ruhn, didn’t know where Bryce had gone, but he knew plenty about what Bryce had been up to lately. Yet the Helhound hadn’t given Pollux an inch. Hunt would have expected nothing less of a male Urd had chosen to be Danika Fendyr’s mate.
It was quiet now—the only sound the clank of their chains. Blood and piss and shit coated the floor beneath them, the smell almost as unbearable as the pain.
Pollux was creative, Hunt would give him that. Where others might have gone for stabbing in the gut and twisting, the Hammer had learned the exact points on the feet to whip and burn to cause maximum agony while keeping his victims conscious.
Or maybe it was the Hind who’d learned those tricks. She stood behind her lover and watched with dead eyes as the Hammer slowly—so slowly—took them apart.
That was the other secret he and Danaan would keep. The Hind—what and who she was.
Oblivion beckoned, a sweet release Hunt had come to crave as much as Bryce’s body entwined with his. He pretended, sometimes, that when he fell into the blackness, he was falling into her arms, into her sweet, tight heat.
Bryce. Bryce. Bryce.
Her name was a prayer, an order.
He had little hope of leaving this place alive. His only job was to make sure he held out long enough for Bryce to do what she had to do. After his series of colossal fuckups over the centuries … it was the least he could offer up.
He should have seen it coming—part of him had seen it coming a few weeks ago, when he’d tried to convince Bryce not to go down this road. He should have fought harder. Should have told her this outcome was inevitable, especially if he was involved.
He’d known not to trust Celestina with her whole new Governor, new rules bullshit. He’d let her win him over, and the Archangel had fucking betrayed them. All that talk about being a friend of Shahar’s—he’d eaten it up. Let the memory of his long-dead lover cloud his instincts, as Celestina had surely gambled it would.
What was this but another Fallen rebellion? On a smaller scale, yes, but the stakes had been so much higher this time. Then, he’d lost an army, lost his lover—had known she was dying as time had stretched and slowed around him. Had known she was dead when time had resumed its normal speed once more, and the whole world had changed.
Yet the ties that now bound him to others—not only Bryce, but to the two males in this dungeon with him—had become unbearable. Their pain was his pain. Perhaps worse than what he endured before.
Shahar had been given the easy end. To die at Sandriel’s hand, to die on the battlefield, swift and final … It had been easier.
A few feet away, Baxian groaned softly.
Hunt’s arms had gone numb, shoulders popping out of their sockets from trying to support the weight of their bodies. He mustered his energy, his focus, enough to say to Baxian, “How … how you doing?”
Baxian let out a wet cough. “Great.”
Next to Hunt, Ruhn grunted. It might have been a laugh. Their only options were screaming and sobbing, or laughing at this giant fucking disaster.