Ruhn drew the sword, the metal whining, and laid it on the table between them. Bryce leaned back, away from it, as a bead of starlight sang down the fuller and sparkled at the tip.

“Fancy,” Hunt said, earning a glare from Ruhn, who had raised a brow at Bryce, no doubt expecting some kind of reverence from her at a sword that was older than this city, older than the Vanir’s first step in Midgard.

“The sword was part of a pair,” Ruhn said to him. “A long-bladed knife was forged from the iridium mined from the same meteorite, which fell on our old world.” The world the Fae had left to travel through the Northern Rift and into Midgard. “But we lost the knife eons ago. Even the Fae Archives have no record of how it might have been lost, but it seems to have been sometime during the First Wars.”

“It’s another of the Fae’s countless inane prophecies,” Bryce muttered. “When knife and sword are reunited, so shall our people be.”

“It’s literally carved above the Fae Archives entrance—whatever the fuck it means,” Ruhn said. Bryce gave a small smile at that.

Hunt grinned. Her little smile was like seeing the sun after days of rain.

Bryce pretended not to notice his grin, but Ruhn gave him a sharp look.

Like he knew every filthy thing Hunt had thought about Bryce, everything he’d done to pleasure himself while imagining it was her mouth around him, her hands, her soft body.

Shit—he was in such deep, unrelenting shit.

Ruhn only snorted, as if he knew that, too, and sheathed the sword again.

“I’d like to see the Fae Archives,” Lehabah sighed. “Think of all that ancient history, all those glorious objects.”

“Kept locked away, only for their pure-blooded heirs to see,” Bryce finished with a pointed glance at Ruhn.

Ruhn held up his hands. “I’ve tried to get them to change the rules,” he said. “No luck.”

“They let in visitors on the major holidays,” Lehabah said.

“Only from an approved list,” Bryce said. “And fire sprites are not on it.”

Lehabah rolled over onto her side, propping her head up with a fiery hand. “They would let me in. I am a descendent of Queen Ranthia Drahl.”

“Yeah, and I’m the seventh Asteri,” Bryce said dryly.

Hunt was careful not to react at the tone. The first bit of spark he’d seen in days.

“I am,” Lehabah insisted, turning to Ruhn. “She was my six-times-great-grandmother, dethroned in the Elemental Wars. Our family was cast from favor—”

“The story changes every time,” Bryce told Hunt, whose lips twitched.

“It does not,” Lehabah whined. Ruhn was smiling now, too. “We stood a chance at earning back our title, but my great-great-grandmother was booted from the Eternal City for—”

“Booted.”