“No,” Ruhn said. “Though Maximus Tertian died a few hours after having a business meeting with Bryce.”

His father set down the prism, his lip curling. “I told you to warn that girl to stay quiet.”

That girl. Bryce was always that girl, or the girl, to their father. Ruhn hadn’t heard the male speak her name in twelve years. Not since her first and last visit to this villa.

Everything had changed after that visit. Bryce had come here for the first time, a coltish thirteen-year-old ready to finally meet her father and his people. To meet Ruhn, who had been intrigued at the prospect of finding he had a half sister after more than sixty years of being an only child.

The Autumn King had insisted that the visit be discreet—not saying the obvious: until the Oracle whispers of your future. What had gone down had been an unmitigated disaster not only for Bryce, but for Ruhn as well. His chest still ached when he remembered her leaving the villa in tears of rage, refusing to look back over her shoulder even once. His father’s treatment of Bryce had opened Ruhn’s eyes to the Autumn King’s true nature … and the cold Fae male before him had never forgotten this fact.

Ruhn had visited Bryce frequently at her parents’ place over the next three years. She’d been a bright spot—the brightest spot, if he felt like being honest. Until that stupid, shameful fight between them that had left things in such shambles that Bryce still hated his guts. He didn’t blame her—not with the words he’d said, that he’d immediately regretted as soon as they’d burst from him.

Now Ruhn said, “Bryce’s meeting with Maximus preceded my warning to behave. I arrived right as she was wrapping up.” When he’d gotten that call from Riso Sergatto, the butterfly shifter’s laughing voice unusually grave, he’d sprinted over to the White Raven, not giving himself time to second-guess the wisdom of it. “I’m her alibi, according to Tiberian—I told him that I walked her home, and stayed there until well after Tertian’s time of death.”

His father’s face revealed nothing. “And yet it still does not seem very flattering that the girl was at the club on both nights, and interacted with the victims hours before.”

Ruhn said tightly, “Bryce had nothing to do with the murders. Despite the alibi shit, the Governor must believe it, too, because Tiberian swore Bryce is being guarded by the 33rd.”

It might have been admirable that they bothered to do so, had all the angels not been arrogant assholes. Luckily, the most arrogant of those assholes hadn’t been the one to pay Ruhn this particular visit.

“That girl has always possessed a spectacular talent for being where she shouldn’t.”