“None of the angels—the powerful, adored angels—that my mother worked for bothered to care that she’d been killed. No one investigated who did it, and no one granted me leave to mourn. She was nothing to them. But she was … she was everything to me.” His throat ached. “I made the Drop and joined Shahar’s cause soon after that. I battled on Mount Hermon that day for her—my mother. In her memory.” Shahar had taken those memories and made them into weapons.

Bryce’s fingers pressed his. “It sounds like she was a remarkable person.”

“She was.” He pulled his hand away at last.

But she still smiled at him, his chest tightening to the point of pain as she said, “All right. I’ll video chat my parents. Playing legionary with you can wait.”

Bryce spent most of the evening cleaning. Hunt helped her, offering to fly over to the nearest apothecary and get an insta-clean spell, but Bryce waved him off. Her mom was such a neat freak, she claimed, that she could tell the difference between magically cleaned bathrooms and hand-scrubbed ones. Even on video chat.

It’s that bleach smell that tells me it’s been done properly, Bryce, her daughter had imitated to Hunt in a flat, no-nonsense voice that made him just a little nervous.

Bryce had used his phone throughout, snapping photos of him cleaning, of Syrinx taking the toilet paper rolls from their container and shredding them on the carpet they’d just vacuumed, of herself with Hunt stooped over his toilet behind her, brushing down the inside.

By the time he’d snatched the phone out of her gloved hands, she’d again changed her contact name, this time to Bryce Is Cooler Than Me.

But despite the smile it brought to his face, Hunt kept hearing Micah’s voice, threats both spoken and implied. Find who is behind this. Get. The. Job. Done. Don’t make me reconsider our bargain. Before I take you off this case. Before I sell you back to Sandriel. Before I make you and Bryce Quinlan regret it.

Once he solved this case, it would be over, wouldn’t it? He’d still have ten kills left for Micah, which could easily take years to fulfill. He’d have to go back to the Comitium. To the 33rd.

He found himself looking at her while they cleaned. Taking out his phone and snapping some photos of her as well.

He knew too much. Had learned too much. About all of it. About what he might have had, without the halo and slave tattoos.

“I can open a bottle of wine, if you need some liquid courage,” Bryce was saying as they sat before her computer at the kitchen island, the video chat service dialing her parents. She’d bought a bag of pastries from the corner market on their way home—a stress-coping device, he assumed.