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“What?” She narrowed her eyes at him.

Flynn crossed his arms. “I said I’ve known that you’re a princess for all of an hour and you’re already a pain in my ass.”

“I’m not a princess,” she said at the same moment Ruhn snapped, “She’s not a princess.”

Declan snorted. “Whatever, assholes.” He pulled back from Bryce, healing complete. “We should have realized. You’re the only one who even comes close to getting under Ruhn’s skin as easily as his father does.”

Flynn cut in, “Where did that thing come from?”

“Apparently,” she said, “people who take large quantities of synth can inadvertently summon a kristallos demon. It was probably a freak accident.”

“Or a targeted attack,” Flynn challenged.

“The case is over,” Bryce said flatly. “It’s done.”

The Fae lord’s eyes flashed with a rare show of anger. “Maybe it isn’t.”

Ruhn wiped the water off his face. “On the chance Flynn’s right, you’re staying with me.”

“Over my dead fucking body.” Bryce stood, water pouring off her. “Look, thanks for rescuing me. And thanks for royally fucking me and Hunt over back there. But you know what?” She bared her teeth and pulled out her phone, wiping water from it, praying the protective spell she’d paid good money for had held. It had. She scrolled through screens until she got to Ruhn’s contact info. She showed it to him. “You?” She swiped her finger, and it was deleted. “Are dead to me.”

She could have sworn her brother, her fuck-you-world brother, flinched.

She looked at Dec and Flynn. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

They didn’t come after her. Bryce could barely stop shaking long enough to steer her scooter home, but she somehow made it. Made it upstairs, walked Syrinx.

The apartment was too quiet without Hunt in it. No one had come to take his things. If they had, they’d have found that sunball hat missing. Hidden in the box alongside Jelly Jubilee.

Exhausted, Bryce peeled off her clothes and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She lifted a palm to her chest, where the weight of the Archesian amulet had been for the past three years.

Red, angry lines marred her skin where the kristallos had swiped, but with Declan’s magic still working on her, they’d be faded to nothing by morning.

She twisted, bracing herself to see the damage to the tattoo on her back. This last shred of Danika. If that fucking demon had wrecked it …

She nearly wept to see it intact. To look at the lines in that ancient, unreadable alphabet and know that even with everything gone to Hel, this still remained: The words Danika had insisted they ink there, with Bryce too plastered to object. Danika had picked the alphabet out of some booklet at the shop, though it sure as fuck didn’t look like any Bryce recognized. Maybe the artist had just made it up, and told them it said what Danika had wanted:

Through love, all is possible.

The same words on the jacket in a pile at her feet. The same words that had been a clue—to her Redner account, to finding that flash drive.

Nonsense. It was all fucking nonsense. The tattoo, the jacket, losing that amulet, losing Danika, losing Connor and the Pack of Devils, losing Hunt—

Bryce tried and failed to wrest herself from the cycle of thoughts, the maelstrom that brought them around and around and around, until they all eddied together.

73

The last Summit Hunt had attended had been in an ancient, sprawling palace in Pangera, bedecked in the riches of the empire: silk tapestries and sconces of pure gold, goblets twinkling with precious stones, and succulent meats crusted in the rarest spices.

This one was held in a conference center.

The glass and metal space was sprawling, its layout reminding Hunt of a bunch of shoeboxes stacked beside and atop each other. Its central hall rose three stories high, the stairs and escalators at the back of the space adorned with the crimson banners of the Republic, the long pathway leading to them carpeted in white.

Each territory in Midgard held their own Summit every ten years, attended by various leaders within their borders, along with a representative of the Asteri and a few visiting dignitaries relevant to whatever issues would be discussed. This one was no different, save for its smaller scope: Though Valbara was far smaller than Pangera, Micah held four different Summit meetings, each for a separate quadrant of his realm. This one, for the southeastern holdings—with Lunathion’s leaders at its heart—was the first.

The site, located in the heart of the Psamathe Desert, a good five-hour drive from Crescent City—an hour for an angel at top flying speeds or a mere half hour by helicopter—had its own holding cells for dangerous Vanir.

He’d spent the last five days there, marking them by the shift in his food: breakfast, lunch, dinner. At least Sandriel and Pollux had not come to taunt him. At least he had that small reprieve. He’d barely listened to the Hammer’s attempts to bait him during the drive. He’d barely felt or heard anything at all.