The thick veils of morning mist hadn’t burned off by the time Hunt trailed Bryce on her way to work. No new updates had been delivered to him on the bombing, and there was no mention of further attacks that matched the kristallos’s usual methods.

But Hunt still kept his focus sharp, assessing every person who passed the redhead below. Most people spotted Syrinx, prancing at the end of his leash, and gave her a healthy berth. Chimeras were volatile pets—prone to small magics and biting. No matter that Syrinx seemed more interested in whatever food he could swindle out of people.

Bryce wore a little black dress today, her makeup more subdued, heavier on the eyes, lighter on the lipstick … Armor, he realized as she and Syrinx wound through other commuters and tourists, dodging cars already honking with impatience at the usual Old Square traffic. The clothes, the hair, the makeup—they were like the leather and steel and guns he donned every morning.

Except he didn’t wear lingerie beneath it.

For whatever reason, he found himself dropping onto the cobblestones behind her. She didn’t so much as flinch, her sky-high black heels unfaltering. Impressive as Hel, for her to walk on the ancient streets without snapping an ankle. Syrinx huffed his greeting and kept trotting, proud as an imperial parade horse. “Your boss ever give you a day off?”

She sipped from the coffee she balanced in her free hand. She drank a surely illegal amount of the stuff throughout the day. Starting with no less than three cups before they’d left the apartment. “I get Sundays off,” she said. Palm fronds hissed in the chill breeze above them. The tan skin of her legs pebbled with the cold. “Many of our clients are busy enough that they can’t come in during the workweek. Saturday is their day of leisure.”

“Do you get holidays off at least?”

“The store is closed on the major ones.” She idly jangled the tri-knot amulet around her neck.

An Archesian charm like that had to cost … Burning Solas, it had to cost a fuck-ton. Hunt thought about the heavy iron door to the archives. Perhaps it hadn’t been put there to keep thieves out … but to keep things in.

He had a feeling she wouldn’t tell him any details about why the art required her to wear such an amulet, so he instead asked, “What’s the deal with you and your cousin?” Who would be arriving at the gallery at some point this morning.

Bryce gently pulled on Syrinx’s leash when he lunged for a squirrel scampering up a palm tree. “Ruhn and I were close for a few years when I was a teenager, and then we had a big fight. I stopped speaking to him after that. And things have been … well, you see how things are now.”

“What’d you fight about?”