It was Bryce’s face—the coloring was just different. An equally attractive brown-skinned, dark-haired human male stood beside her, arm slung around her slim shoulders, grinning like a fiend at whoever was behind the camera. Hunt could just barely make out the writing on the silver dog tags dipping over the man’s gray button-up.

Well, holy shit.

Randall Silago was Bryce’s adoptive father? The legendary war hero and sharpshooter? He had no idea how he’d missed that fact in her file, though he supposed he had been skimming when he’d read it years ago.

No wonder his daughter was so fearless. And there, to the right of Ember, stood Bryce.

She was barely past three, that red hair pulled high into two floppy pigtails. Ember was looking at her daughter—the expression a bit exasperated—as if Bryce was supposed to be in the nice clothes that the two adults were wearing. But there she was, giving her mother an equally sassy look, hands on her chubby hips, legs set apart in an unmistakable fighting stance. Covered head to toe in mud.

Hunt snickered and turned to the other photo on the dresser.

It was a beautiful shot of two women—girls, really—sitting on some red rocks atop a desert mountain, their backs to the camera, shoulder-to-shoulder as they faced the scrub and sand far below. One was Bryce—he could tell from her sheet of red hair. The other was in a familiar leather jacket, the back painted with those words in the Republic’s most ancient language. Through love, all is possible.

It had to be Bryce and Danika. And—that was Danika’s jacket that Bryce now wore.

She had no other photos of Danika in the apartment.

Through love, all is possible. It was an ancient saying, dating back to some god he couldn’t remember. Cthona, probably—what with all the mother-goddess stuff she presided over. Hunt had long since stopped visiting temples, or paying much attention to the overzealous priestesses who popped up on the morning talk shows every now and then. None of the five gods had ever helped him—or anyone he cared about. Urd, especially, had fucked him over often enough.

Danika’s blond ponytail draped down Bryce’s back as she leaned her head against her friend’s shoulder. Bryce wore a loose white T-shirt, showing a bandaged arm braced on her knee. Bruises peppered her body. And gods—that was a sword lying to Danika’s left. Sheathed and clean, but—he knew that sword.

Sabine had gone ballistic searching for it when it was discovered to be missing from the apartment where her daughter had been murdered. Apparently it was some wolf heirloom. But there it lay, beside Bryce and Danika in the desert.