The thought of her trapped on the seafloor, the deepest place in Midgard, nothing but dark and silence and that tight, tight space …

Dreams of her suffering had launched Hunt over to the toilet, puking up his guts.

And then the itching began. Deep in his back, radiating through the framework now beginning to regrow, it itched and itched and itched. His fledgling wings remained sore enough that scratching them resulted in near-blinding pain, and as the hours ticked by, each new bit of growth had him clenching his jaw against it.

A waste, he silently told his body. A big fucking waste to regrow his wings, when he was likely hours or days away from an execution.

He’d had no visitors since Isaiah six days ago. He’d tracked the time by watching the sunlight shift in the atrium on the TV feed.

Not a whisper from Bryce. Not that he dared hope she’d somehow find a way to see him, if only to let him beg on his knees for her forgiveness. To tell her what he needed to say.

Maybe Micah would let him rot down here. Let him go mad like Vik, buried beneath the earth, unable to fly, unable to feel fresh air on his face.

The doors down the hall hissed, and Hunt blinked, rising from his silence. Even his miserably itching wings halted their torture.

But the female scent that hit him a heartbeat later was not Bryce’s.

It was a scent he knew just as well—would never forget as long as he lived. A scent that stalked his nightmares, whetted his rage into a thing that made it impossible to think.

The Archangel of northwestern Pangera smiled as she appeared before his cell. He’d never get used to it: how much she looked like Shahar. “This seems familiar,” Sandriel said. Her voice was soft, beautiful. Like music. Her face was, too.

And yet her eyes, the color of fresh-tilled soil, gave her away. They were sharp, honed by millennia of cruelty and near-unchecked power. Eyes that delighted in pain and bloodshed and despair. That had always been the difference between her and Shahar—their eyes. Warmth in one; death in the other.

“I heard you want to kill me, Hunt,” the Archangel said, crossing her thin arms. She clicked her tongue. “Are we really back to that old game?”

He said nothing. Just sat on his cot and held her gaze.

“You know, when you had your belongings confiscated, they found some interesting things, which Micah was kind enough to share.” She pulled an object from her pocket. His phone. “This in particular.”