House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City, #2)

by Sarah J. Maas

It wouldn’t have surprised him if her name were stamped on his heart.

“You mean, that he went down on me?” Hunt choked, and Ruhn let out a garbled string of curses. Ithan walked to the coffee machine and muttered something about it being too early.

“Assess faster. Roast it like a—” “Do not make a joke about—” “Hot dog.”

Hunt landed in the dirt beside her and let out a bellow that shook the Gate itself.

Hunt was the heart of a storm personified.

Hunt’s voice was a thunderclap as he said behind her, “Light it up, Bryce.”

“Stop sniffing me, Ruhn.”

“Nah,” Bryce’s brother said, smiling wickedly. “I don’t think so.”

A familiar ripple of charged air filled the room a moment before Hunt said, “Neither do I,”

Tharion said with mock outrage, “I had dibs on the pup as my friend.”

“But wherever you’re headed when this life is over, Quinlan, that’s where I want to be, too.”

“You’re the first person I’ve spoken to normally in … a very long time.” “How long?” “So long that I think I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be myself.

He helped himself to Tristan Flynn’s array of fancy shampoos and body products, all marked FLYNN’S. DO NOT TOUCH, RUHN. I MEAN IT THIS TIME.

“Tell him that Her Royal Highness Princess Bryce Danaan is calling.”

“Boo-hoo.” You mock a Prince of Hel?

I grow tired of these questions. I shall feast.

Hes giving Tairn

“Aw, Legs,” Tharion said, reading her softening features. He reached out a hand to toy with the ends of her hair. “You’re too nice to me.”

She bossed him around even in his imagination.

“Vanir pricks.” Tharion blew him a kiss.

“Light it up, Hunt.”

“Close your eyes, boys.”

But Bryce didn’t balk from the knee-wobbling power surging around Athalar. Like she saw all of him and welcomed it into her heart.

It means that he’s going ballistic in the way that only mates can when the other is threatened. It’s what happened then, and what’s happening now. You’re true mates—the way Fae are mates, in your bodies and souls.

Athalar was dangerous before. But as a mated male, he’s utterly lethal.

“You sure you’re cool with freeing a bunch of pissed-off fire sprites in your house?” But Flynn waved him off. “We’ve got sprinklers and smoke alarms.”

“I’m beyond your pay grade, lordling.” “Try me.”

“Sex teleporting?”

“You just want to bang Athalar again,”

“I thought that was a given.”

So Ruhn said, the first time he’d said it aloud, “I’m not going to have children.”

Dec and Flynn, the three sprites with them, pointed to Ithan.

“Please tell me they’re at least here legally,” Ruhn said quietly. “Nope,” Flynn said cheerfully.

“Where are her clothes?” “She wouldn’t wear them,”

“You in, Chosen One?” Ruhn’s mouth quirked to the side. “Hel yeah, Starborn.”

“Welcome. Let’s talk about all those times Ruhn tried to talk to you at the Summit and you ignored him.”

She’d wear the crown, but my mother’s general, Morganthia, would rule.”

“Say please,”

“I love you undone like this,” he said, moving again. Setting the pace. “Utterly at my mercy.”

The sprites had drunk an entire bottle of wine between them and spent the meal burping up embers.

“You are now Bryce Adelaide Danaan.”

“He needs a medwitch!” “I am a medwitch,”

Declan asked the queen, “When can he come home?”

“We got you, wolf.”

“In a world full of enemies, you’re my only friend.”

“I thought you told her, Father.”

“Princess Bryce Danaan and Prince Hunt Athalar.”

“It’s ‘You little bitch, Your Highness.’

“Everything that ever happened to me, it was all so I could meet you, Quinlan. Be here with you. I’m yours. Forever.”

“Everything I am is yours,”

I took a gamble with this idiot”—she jerked a thumb toward Hunt, who gaped at her—“and