“Not my tattoo.”

  “Then where?” Bryce breathed. If she could get answers—

  But Nesta strode ahead again into the darkness. “No place good.”

  * * *

  After another fitful rest, Azriel and Nesta were both still clearly pissed at Bryce. Rightly so, but wasn’t she allowed to be pissed, too? They’d manipulated her every step of the way, watching her like some animal in a zoo, making her think she’d caused that cave-in when they’d engineered it themselves …

  She shot Azriel a sidelong glare as they walked through the tunnel. He gave her a cool look in return.

  Behind him, the carvings continued, showing Fae frolicking over hills and thriving in ancient-looking walled cities. A scene of growth and change. But Azriel’s eyes slid ahead—and he nodded at where Nesta had stopped.

  “We have a problem,” Nesta murmured as they stepped up to her side.

  A chasm stretched before them, Bryce’s starlight glowing in a single ray straight across it. Bryce swallowed.

  Yeah, they really fucking did.

  * * *

  Ruhn managed to keep his food down, and that was about all he could say for himself as he lay on the filthy, reeking floor and slept.

  Maybe it was because he hadn’t managed to truly sleep in days. Maybe it was because Athalar had asked him to do it, and he knew, deep down, that he needed to grow the fuck up. But here he was. On a familiar-looking mental bridge. Staring at a burning female figure.

  Ruhn? Lidia’s voice caught. What happened?

  “I need to pass along intel.” Each word was cold and clipped.

  The flame around Lidia banked until it was nothing but her flowing golden hair, and it killed him. She was so fucking beautiful. It wouldn’t have mattered to him, hadn’t mattered to him during those weeks they’d gotten to know each other, but …

  She kept ten feet away. He hadn’t bothered with his stars and night. He didn’t care.

  “Bryce … was trying to go to Hel to ask for help. She didn’t make it there.”

  Lidia’s face was impassive. “How can you possibly know this?”

  “The Prince of the Pit paid Hunt a visit. He confirmed that Bryce isn’t with him—or his brothers.”

  To her credit, Lidia didn’t balk at the mention of Apollion—she didn’t even question why Hunt was in contact with him. “Where did she go?”

  “We don’t know. The plan was for her to head there to raise their armies and bring them back, but if she’s not there, we’re shit out of luck.”

  “Was there … was there a chance that Hel might have actually allied with you?” Disbelief laced every word.

  “Yeah. There still is.”

  “Why tell me any of this?”

  He clenched his jaw. “We weren’t sure if you or Command had any suspicions about where Bryce went, or if you were hoping she’d carry out some sort of miracle when she got back here. But we figured you should know that doesn’t seem like an option.”

  Lidia swore. She looked at her hands, as if she could see whatever plans Ophion might have had crumbling away. “We weren’t counting on any assistance from your sister or Hel, but I’ll pass along the warning nonetheless.” Her eyes churned with worry. “Is she …”

  Trust Day to get right to the heart of the matter.

  “I don’t know.” His flat tone conveyed everything.

  She angled her head, and he knew her well enough to know she was considering all he’d told her. The Oracle’s warning.

  But Lidia said, “She’s not dead.” Nothing but pure confidence filled her words.

  “Oh yeah?” He couldn’t keep his snide tone in check. “What makes you so sure?”

  She took his nastiness in stride. “Rigelus has his mystics hunting for her. He wants her found.”

  “He doesn’t know what I know.”

  “No—he knows more than you. He wouldn’t waste the effort if he believed Bryce was dead. Or in Hel. He knows she’s somewhere else.”

  Ruhn ignored the kernel of hope in his chest. “So what does it mean, then?”

  “It means he thinks Bryce’s location might make some difference.” She crossed her arms. “It means wherever he suspects she might be … it has him worried.”

  “I don’t see how it could make any difference.”

  “Then you underestimate your sister.”

  “Fuck you,” he snapped.

  “Rigelus isn’t underestimating Bryce for one moment,” she went on, tone sharpening. “One thousand mystics, Ruhn—all looking for her. Do you know how many tasks he usually has them doing? But they are all focused on finding her. That tells me he’s very, very scared.”

  Ruhn swallowed hard. “What would happen if his mystics found her location?”

  Lidia shook her head, flames twining through the strands. “I don’t know. But he must have some plan in mind.”

  Ruhn asked, “Why can’t they find her? I thought his mystics could find anything.”

  “The universe is vast. Even a thousand mystics need some time to comb every galaxy and star system.”

  “How much time?”

  Her eyes simmered. “Not as much as Bryce likely needs—if she is indeed trying to do the impossible.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Find help.”

  It was about as much as Ruhn could take. He turned back toward his end of the bridge. “Ruhn.”

  He halted, shuddering at the way she spoke his name, the memory of how it had felt to hear it the first time, after the equinox ball, when she’d learned who he was.

  But that was the problem, wasn’t it? She knew who he was … and he knew who she was. Knew that while she might be Agent Daybright, she’d been the Hind for decades before she’d decided to turn rebel. Had committed plenty of despicable acts for Sandriel and the Asteri long before she’d killed the Harpy to save his life. Did changing sides erase the stain?

  She said quietly, “I’m doing what I can to help you.”

  Ruhn looked over a shoulder. She’d wrapped her arms around her middle. “I don’t give a fuck what you’re doing. I’m only here because other people’s lives might depend on it.”

  Hurt flashed in her eyes, and it was kindling to his temper. How dare she look that way, look like she was hurt, when it was his fucking heart—

  “You’re dead to me,” Ruhn hissed, and vanished.

  16

  “Too narrow for me to fly,” Azriel said, assessing the seemingly endless chasm between them and the rest of the tunnel. No bridge this time. Only a narrow, endless drop. Far too slim for Azriel to spread his wings. Far too wide for any of them to jump.

  “Is this another manipulation?” Bryce asked Nesta coolly.

  Nesta snorted. “The rock doesn’t lie. He can’t even spread his wings halfway.”

  To get this far and turn back with no answers, nothing to help her get home … The star still blazed ahead. Pointing to the tunnel across the chasm.

  “No one’s got any rope?” Bryce asked pathetically. She was met with incredulous silence. Bryce nodded to Azriel. “Those shadows of yours could take form—they caused that cave-in. Can’t you, like, make a bridge or something? Or your blue light … you seemed to think it could have restrained the Wyrm. Make a rope with that.”

  His brows rose. “Neither of those things is remotely possible. The shadows are made of magic, just very condensed. These”—he motioned to the blue stones in his armor—“concentrate my power and allow me to craft it into things that resemble weapons. But they’re still only magic—power.”

  Bryce’s mouth twisted to the side. “So it’s like a laser?” With the language now imprinted on her brain, her tongue stumbled over laser like it was truly the foreign word it was for them. She spoke it like she did in Midgard, but with the accent of this world layered over it, warping the word slightly.

  “I don’t know what that is,” Azriel said, at the same time Nesta declared, “This still doesn’t solve the issue of getting over there.”

  But Bryce frowned deeply at Azriel. “Do you ever use that power to, uh, charge people up?”

  “Charge?”

  “Fuel. Um. Give your power to someone else to help their power.”

  “Are you implying that I could do such a thing to you?”

  “I’m pretty sure the concept of a battery won’t have much meaning here, but yeah. My magic can be amplified by someone else’s power.” The other untranslatable word—battery—lay heavy on her tongue.

  But Nesta looked her over. “For what purpose?”

  “So I can teleport.” Another word that didn’t translate. “Winnow.” She pointed to the other side of the divide. “I could winnow us over there.”

  Azriel said, “Give me a reason to believe you won’t winnow out of here and leave us.”

  “I can’t. You’ll have to trust me.”

  “After what you just pulled?”

  “Remember that I’ll be trusting you not to blast a hole through my heart.” She tapped the star. “Aim right there.”

  “I told you already: we don’t want to kill you.”

  “Then aim carefully.”

  Azriel and Nesta exchanged a glance.

  Bryce added, “Look, I’d offer you something in return if I could. But you literally took everything of value from me.” She pointed to the sword at Azriel’s back.

  Nesta angled her head. Then reached into her pocket. “What about this?”

  Her phone.

  Her phone. With Nesta’s movement, the lock screen came on, blaring bright in the gloom, with Hunt’s face right there. His beautiful, wonderful face, so full of joy—

  Azriel and Nesta were blinking at the bright light, the photo, and then the phone was gone, stashed in Nesta’s pocket again.

  “There’s a portrait hidden inside its encasing,” Nesta added. “Of you and three females.”

  The photo of Bryce, Danika, June, and Fury. She’d forgotten she’d put it in there before heading to Pangera. But there, in Nesta’s pocket, shielded by those fancy-ass waterproofing spells she’d purchased, was her only link back to Midgard. To the people who mattered. And if she was stuck in this fucking world … that might very well be all she had left of her own.

  “Were you waiting to dangle that in front of me?” Bryce asked.

  A shrug from Nesta. “I guessed you might find it valuable.”

  “Who’s to say I’m not playing you? Making you think it means something to me so I can leave you down here anyway?”

  “Same reason you came running back to see if we were alive,” Azriel said coolly.

  Fine. She’d exposed herself with that one. So she said to Azriel, “Hit the star.”

  “How much power?”

  Gods, this was potentially a really bad idea. Experimenting with power she didn’t know or understand—

  “A little. Just make sure you don’t deep-fry me.”

  After the shit with the Wyrm, he’d probably like nothing more than to do exactly that. But Azriel’s lips tugged upward. “I’ll try my best.”

  Bryce braced herself, sucking in a deep breath—

  Azriel struck before she could exhale. Searing, sharp power, a bolt of blue right into her star. Bryce bent over, coughing, breathing around the burn, the alien strangeness of the power.

  “Are you all right?” Nesta asked with something like concern.

  Was it his power? Or something about this world? Even Hunt’s hadn’t felt like this—so undiluted, like one-hundred-proof liquor.

  Bryce closed her eyes and counted to ten, breathing hard. Letting it ease into her blood. Her bones. It tingled along her limbs.

  Slowly, she straightened, opening her eyes. From the way the others’ faces were illuminated, she knew her gaze had turned incandescent.

  They tensed, reaching for their weapons, bracing for her to flee or attack. But Bryce extended her hands—now glowing white—to them.

  Nesta took one first. Then Azriel’s hand, battered and deeply scarred, slid around hers. Light leaked from where their skin met. She could have sworn his shadows hovered, watching like curious snakes.

  Bryce pictured the tunnel mouth. She wanted to go there—

  A blink, and it was done.

  The raw power in her faded with the jump. Enough that the incandescence vanished and her skin returned to its normal state. Until only her star remained glowing once more.

  But she found Azriel and Nesta observing her with different expressions than before. Wariness, yet something like respect, too.

  “Let’s go,” Azriel said, and released her hand. Because the sword and dagger weren’t merely tugging now. They were singing, and all she had to do was reach out for them—

  But before she could give in to temptation, Azriel stalked into the dark.

  Staying a few feet behind him still wasn’t enough to block out the blades’ song. But Bryce tried to ignore it, well aware of Nesta’s watchful gaze. Tried to pretend that everything was totally fine.

  Even if she knew that it wasn’t. Not even close. And she had a feeling that whatever waited at the end of these tunnels would be way worse.

  * * *

  “The Cauldron,” Nesta said hours later, pointing to yet another carving on the wall. It indeed showed a giant cauldron, perched atop what seemed to be a barren mountain peak with three stars above it.

  Azriel halted, angling his head. “That’s Ramiel.” At Bryce’s questioning look, he explained, “A mountain sacred to the Illyrians.”

  Bryce nodded to the carving. “What’s the big deal about a cauldron?”

  “The Cauldron,” Azriel amended. Bryce shook her head, not understanding. “You don’t have stories of it in your world? The Fae didn’t bring that tradition with them?”

  Bryce surveyed the giant cauldron. “No. We have five gods, but no cauldron. What does it do?”

  “All life came and comes from it,” Azriel said with something like reverence. “The Mother poured it into this world, and from it, life blossomed.”

  Nesta said quietly, “But it is also real—not a myth.” Her swallow was audible. “I was turned High Fae when an enemy shoved me into it. It’s raw power, but also … sentient.”

  “Like that mask you put on earlier.”

  Azriel folded his wings tightly, clearly wary of discussing such a powerful instrument with a potential enemy. But Nesta asked, “You detected a sentience in the Mask?”

  Bryce nodded. “It didn’t, like, talk to me or anything. I could just … sense it.”

  “What did it feel like?” Nesta asked quietly.

  “Like death,” Bryce breathed. “Like death incarnate.”

  Nesta’s eyes grew distant, grave. “That’s what the Mask can do. Give its wearer power over Death itself.”

  Bryce’s blood chilled. “And this is a … normal type of weapon here?”

  “No,” Azriel said from ahead, shoulders tense. “It is not.”

  Nesta explained, “The Mask is one of three objects of catastrophic power, Made by the Cauldron itself. The Dread Trove, we call it.”

  “And the Mask is … yours?”

  “I was also Made by the Cauldron,” Nesta said, “which allows me to wield it.” She spoke with no pride or boasting. Merely cold resignation and responsibility.

  “Made,” Bryce mused. “You said that my tattoo was Made.”

  “It is a mystery to us,” Nesta said. “You’d need to have had the ink Made by the Cauldron, in this world, for it to be so.”

  The Horn had come from here. Had been brought by Theia and Pelias into Midgard. Perhaps it, too, had been forged by the Cauldron.

  Bryce tucked away the knowledge, the questions it raised. “We don’t have anything like the Cauldron on Midgard. Solas is our sun god, Cthona his mate and the earth goddess. Luna is his sister, the moon; Ogenas, Cthona’s jealous sister in the seas. And Urd guides all—she’s the weaver of fate, of destiny.” Bryce added after a moment, “I think she’s the reason I’m here.”

  “Urd,” Nesta murmured. “The Fae say the Cauldron holds our fates. Maybe it became this Urd.”

  “I don’t know,” Bryce said. “I always wondered what happened to the gods of the original worlds, when their people crossed into Midgard. Did they follow them? Did I bring Urd or Luna or any of them with me?” She gestured to the caves. “Are they here, or am I alone, stranded in your world with no gods to call my own?”

  They began walking again, the questions hanging there unanswered.

  Bryce asked, because some small part of her had to know after what she’d seen of the Mask, “When you die, where do your souls go?” Did they even believe in the concept of a soul? Maybe she should have led with that.

  But Azriel said softly, “They return to the Mother, where they rest in joy within her heart until she finds another purpose for us. Another life or world to live in.” He glanced sidelong at her. “What about your world?”

  Bryce’s gut twisted. “It’s … complicated.”

  With nothing else to do as they walked, she explained it: the Bone Quarter and other Quiet Realms, the Under-King and the Sailings. The black boats tipping or making it to shore. The Death Marks that could purchase passage. And then she explained the secondlight, the meat grinder of souls that churned their lingering energy into more food for the Asteri.

  Her companions were silent when she finished. Not with contemplation, but with horror.

  “So that is what awaits you?” Nesta asked at last. “To become … food?”

  “Not me,” Bryce said quietly. “I, ah … I don’t know what’s coming for me.”

  “Why?” Azriel asked.

  “That friend I mentioned—the one who learned the truth about the Asteri? When she died, I worried that she might not be given the honor of making it to shore during her Sailing. I … couldn’t let her bear that final disrespect. I didn’t know then about the secondlight. So I bargained with the Under-King: my soul, my place in the Bone Quarter in exchange for hers.” Again, that horrified quiet. “So when I die, I won’t rest there. I don’t know where I’ll go.”

  “It has to be a relief,” Nesta said, “to at least know you won’t go to the Bone Quarter. To be harvested.” She shuddered.