“Leave me alone, Athalar.” She wouldn’t look at him. Couldn’t stand him or her brother or anyone. If the acolyte’s murder had been because of their presence at the temple, either as a warning or because the girl might have seen something related to the Horn, if they’d accidentally brought her death about … Her legs kept moving, swifter and swifter. Hunt didn’t falter for a beat.

She wouldn’t cry. Wouldn’t dissolve into a hyperventilating mess on the street corner. Wouldn’t scream or puke or—

After another block, Hunt said roughly, “I was there that night.”

She kept walking, her heels eating up the pavement.

Hunt asked, “How did you survive the kristallos?”

He’d no doubt been looking at the body just now and wondering this. How did she, a pathetic half-breed, survive when full-blooded Vanir hadn’t?

“I didn’t survive,” she mumbled, crossing a street and edging around a car idling in the intersection. “It got away.”

“But the kristallos pinned Micah, ripped open his chest—”

She nearly tripped over the curb, and whipped around to gape at him. “That was Micah?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

24

She had saved Micah Domitus that night.

Not some random legionary, but the gods-damned Archangel himself. No wonder the emergency responder had launched into action when he traced the phone number.

The knowledge rippled through her, warping and clearing some of the fog around her memories. “I saved the Governor in the alley.”

Hunt just gave her a slow, wincing nod.

Her voice sharpened. “Why was it a secret?”

Hunt waited until a flock of tourists had passed before saying, “For his sake. If word got out that the Governor had his ass handed to him, it wouldn’t have looked good.”

“Especially when he was saved by a half-breed?”

“No one in our group ever used that term—you know that, right? But yes. We did consider how it’d look if a twenty-three-year-old human-Fae female who hadn’t made the Drop had saved the Archangel when he couldn’t save himself.”

Her blood roared in her ears. “Why not tell me, though? I looked in all the hospitals, just to see if he’d made it.” More than that, actually. She’d demanded answers about how the warrior was recovering, but she’d been put on hold or ignored or asked to leave.

“I know,” Hunt said, scanning her face. “It was deemed wiser to keep it a secret. Especially when your phone got hacked right after—”

“So I was just going to live in ignorance forever—”

“Did you want a medal or something? A parade?”