House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) by Sarah J. Maas Read Free Book Online Page B

the wolves were all watching very, very intently.
    Even Danika knew there were limits to how far she could push Connor without serious consequences.
    For a heartbeat, Bryce debated grabbing the Second by the shoulder and explaining that he’d be better off finding a nice, sweet wolf who wanted to have a litter of pups, and that he didn’t really want someone who was ten kinds of fucked-up, still liked to party until she was no better than a puking-in-an-alley CCU student, and wasn’t entirely sure if she could love someone, not when Danika was all she really needed anyway.
    But she didn’t grab Connor, and by the time Bryce scooped her keys from the bowl beside the door, he’d slumped onto the couch—again, in her spot—and was staring pointedly at the screen. “Bye,” she said to no one in particular.
    Danika met her gaze from across the room, her eyes still wary but faintly amused. She winked. “Light it up, bitch.”
    “Light it up, asshole,” Bryce replied, the farewell sliding off her tongue with the ease of years of usage.
    But it was Danika’s added “Love you” as Bryce slipped out intothe grimy hallway that made her hesitate with her hand on the knob.
    It’d taken Danika a few years to say those words, and she still used them sparingly. Danika had initially hated it when Bryce said them to her—even when Bryce explained that she’d spent most of her life saying it, just in case it was the last time. In case she wouldn’t get to say goodbye to the people who mattered most. And it had taken one of their more fucked-up adventures—a trashed motorcycle, and literally having guns pointed at their heads—to get Danika to utter the words, but at least she now said them. Sometimes.
    Forget Briggs’s release. Sabine must have really done a number on Danika.
    Bryce’s heels clacked on the worn tile floor as she headed for the stairs at the end of the hall. Maybe she should cancel on Reid. She could grab some buckets of ice cream from the corner market and cuddle in bed with Danika while they watched their favorite absurd comedies.
    Maybe she’d call up Fury and see if she could pay a little visit to Sabine.
    But—she’d never ask that of Fury. Fury kept her professional shit out of their lives, and they knew better than to ask too many questions. Only Juniper could get away with it.
    Honestly, it made no sense that any of them were friends: the future Alpha of all wolves, an assassin for high-paying clients waging war across the sea, a stunningly talented dancer and the only faun ever to grace the stage of the Crescent City Ballet, and … her.
    Bryce Quinlan. Assistant to a sorceress. Would-be, wrong-body-type dancer. Chronic dater of preening, breakable human men who had no idea what to do with her. Let alone what to do with Danika, if they ever got far enough into the dating crucible.
    Bryce clomped down the stairs, scowling at one of the orbs of firstlight that cast the crumbling gray-blue paint in flickering relief. The landlord went as cheap as possible on the firstlight, likely siphoning it off the grid rather than paying the city for it like everyone else.
    Everything in this apartment building was a piece of shit, to be honest.
    Danika could afford better. Bryce certainly couldn’t. And Danika knew her well enough not to even suggest that she alone pay for one of the high-rise, glossy apartments by the river’s edge or in the CBD. So after graduation, they’d only looked at places Bryce could swing with her paycheck—this particular shithole being the least miserable of them.
    Sometimes, Bryce wished she’d accepted her monstrous father’s money—wished she hadn’t decided to develop some semblance of morals at the exact moment the creep had offered her mountains of gold marks in exchange for her eternal silence about him. At least then she’d currently be lounging by some sky-high pool deck, ogling oiled-up angels as they swaggered past, and not avoiding the letch of a janitor who