“Yeah,” Bryce agreed. “But what’s the alternative?”

  “Do you still have a soul?” Nesta asked.

  “Honestly? I don’t know,” Bryce admitted. “It feels like I do. But what will live on when I die?” She blew out a breath. “And if I were to die in this world … what would happen to my soul? Would it find its way back to Midgard, or linger here?” The words sounded even more depressing out loud.

  Something glaringly bright blinded her—her phone. Hunt’s face smiled up at her.

  “Here,” Nesta said. Bryce wordlessly took the phone, blinking back her tears at the sight of Hunt. “You kept your word and winnowed us. So take it.”

  Bryce knew it was for more than that, but she nodded her thanks all the same.

  She flashed the screen at Nesta and Azriel. “That’s Hunt,” she said hoarsely. “My mate.”

  Azriel peered at the picture. “He has wings.”

  Bryce nodded, throat unbearably tight. “He’s an angel—a malakh.” But talking about him made the burning in her eyes worse, so she slid the phone into her pocket.

  As they walked on, Nesta said, “When we stop again … can you show me how that contraption works?”

  “The phone?” The word couldn’t be translated into their language, and it sounded outright silly in their accent.

  But Nesta nodded, her eyes fixed on the tunnel ahead. “Trying to figure out what it does has been driving us all crazy.”

  * * *

  Tharion cornered the dragon in the pit’s bathroom. He could barely stand on his left leg thanks to a gash he’d taken in his thigh from the claws of the jaguar shifter he’d faced as the lunchtime entertainment. No prime time for him tonight, though—not with Ithan in the pit.

  “Do not fucking kill Holstrom,” he warned Ariadne.

  She tilted her head back, eyes flashing as they met his. “Oh? Who said I’m facing him?”

  Tharion and the others had spent most of the last twenty-four hours debating who the Viper Queen would select to face Ithan. And now, with less than an hour left until the fight and no opponent announced … “Who else would the Vipe unleash on him? You’re the only one here who’s stronger. The only one worth a fight.”

  “So flattering.”

  “Don’t kill him,” Tharion snarled.

  She batted her eyelashes. “Or what?”

  Tharion clenched his teeth. “He’s a good male, and a valuable one to a lot of people, and if you kill him, you’ll be playing into the Vipe’s hands. Make the fight fast, and make it as painless as you can.”

  Ari let out a cool laugh that belied the blazing heat in her eyes. “You don’t give me orders.”

  “No, I don’t,” Tharion said. “But I’m giving you advice. You kill Ithan, you hurt him beyond repair, and you will have more enemies than you know what to do with. Starting with Tristan Flynn—who might seem like an irreverent idiot, but is fully capable of ripping you apart with his bare hands—and ending with me.”

  Ariadne let out a snort and tried to stride around him. Tharion gripped her by the arm, the claws at the tips of his fingers digging into her soft flesh. “I mean it.”

  “And what about me?” she sneered.

  “What about you?”

  “Are you warning Ithan Holstrom not to harm me?”

  He blinked. “You’re a dragon.”

  Another one of those humorless laughs. “I have a job to do. I swore oaths, too.”

  “Always looking out for number one.”

  She tried to pry her arm free, but he dug his fingers in further. She hissed, “I’m not a part of your little cabal, and I don’t want to be. I don’t give a shit about you, or whatever you’re trying to pull against the Asteri. It’s clearly going to get you all killed.”

  “Then what do you want, Ari? A life of this?”

  Her skin heated, searing his palm, and he had no choice but to release her. She stalked toward the hall door that led to the eerily quiet pit. As the Viper Queen had promised, only she would watch.

  Ariadne opened the door, but tossed over a shoulder, “Do you like your wolf cooked with barbecue sauce or gravy?”

  * * *

  “So a phone,” Nesta said, overpronouncing the word as they crossed yet another small stream, hopping from stone to stone, “can take these photographs that capture a moment in time, but not the people in it?”

  “Phones have cameras,” Bryce answered, “and the camera is the thing that … yeah. It’s like an instant drawing of the moment.” Gods, so many words and terms from her own language to explain. She forged ahead. “But with all the details rendered perfectly. And don’t ask me more than that, because I seriously have no idea how it actually works.”

  Nesta chuckled as she landed gracefully on the opposite bank. Azriel strode ahead into the dark, the carvings around him lit by Bryce’s star: more war, more death, more suffering … this time on a larger scale, entire cities burning, people screaming in pain, devastation and grief on a whole new level. No paradise to counter the suffering. Just death.

  Nesta paused on the stream bank to wait for Bryce to finish crossing. “And it also holds music. Like a Symphonia?”

  “I don’t know what that is, but yes, it holds music. I’ve got a few thousand songs on here.”

  “Thousand?” Nesta whirled as Bryce jumped from the last stone onto the bank, pebbles skittering from beneath her sneakers. “In that tiny thing? You recorded it all?”

  “No—there’s a whole industry of people whose job it is to record it, and again, I don’t know how it works.” Finding her footing, Bryce followed Azriel, now a hulking shadow silhouetted against the larger dark.

  Nesta fell into step beside her. “And it’s a way of talking mind-to-mind with other people.”

  “Sort of. It can connect to other people’s phones, and your voices are linked in real time …”

  “And let me guess: you don’t know exactly how it works.”

  Bryce snorted. “Pathetic, but true. We take our tech and don’t ask what the Hel makes it operate. I couldn’t even tell you how the flashlight in the phone works.” To demonstrate, she hit the button and the cave illuminated, the battle scenes and suffering on the walls around them even more stark. Azriel hissed from up ahead, whirling their way with his eyes shielded, and Bryce quickly turned it off.

  Nesta smirked. “I’m surprised it can’t cook you food and change your clothes, too.”

  “Give it a few years, and maybe it will.”

  “But you have magic to do these things?”

  Bryce shrugged. “Yeah. Magic and tech kind of overlap in my world. But for those of us without much in the way of the former, tech really helps fill the gap.”

  “And that weaponry you showed us,” Azriel said quietly, pausing his steps to let them catch up. “Those … guns.”

  “That’s tech,” Bryce said, “not magic. But some Vanir have found ways to combine magic and machine to deadly effect.”

  Their silence was heavy.

  “We’re here,” Azriel said, motioning to the darkness ahead. The reason, it turned out, that he had halted.

  A massive metal wall now blocked their way, thirty feet high and thirty feet wide at least, with a colossal eight-pointed star in its center.

  The carvings continued straight up to it: battle and suffering, two females running on either side of the passage, as if running for this very wall … Indeed, around the star, an archway had been etched. Like this was the destination all along.

  Bryce glanced back at Nesta. “Is this where you saw my star?”

  Nesta slowly shook her head, eyeing the wall, the embossed star, the cave that surrounded them. “I don’t know where this place is. What it is.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Bryce said with a bravado she didn’t feel, and approached the wall. Azriel, a live wire beside her, approached as well, a hand already on Truth-Teller.

  The lowest spike of the star extended down, right in front of Bryce. So she laid a hand on the metal and pushed. It didn’t budge.

  Nesta stalked to Bryce’s side, tapping a hand on the metal. A dull thud reverberated against the cave walls. “Did you really think it’d move?”

  Bryce grimaced. “It was worth a shot.”

  Nesta opened her mouth to say something—to make fun of Bryce, probably—but was silenced by groaning metal. She staggered back a step. Azriel threw an arm in front of her, blue light wreathing his scarred hand.

  Leaving Bryce alone before the door.

  But she couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted. Couldn’t take her eyes away from the shifting wall.

  The spikes of the star began to expand and contract, as if it were breathing. Metal clicked behind it, like gears shifting. Locks opening.

  And in the lowest spike of the star, a triangle of a door slid open.

  17

  Only dry, ancient darkness waited beyond the star door. No sound or hint of life. Just more darkness. Older, somehow, than the tunnel behind them. Heavier. More watchful.

  Like it was alive. And hungry.

  Bryce stepped into it anyway.

  “What is this place?” Bryce breathed, daring another step into the tunnel that lay on the door’s other side. Azriel and Nesta quickly fell into step behind her.

  A shriek of metal sliced through the air, and Bryce whirled—

  Too late. Even Azriel, now mid-stride, hadn’t been fast enough to stop the door from sliding shut. Its thud echoed through her feet, up her legs. Dust swirled.

  They’d been sealed in.

  Bryce’s star flared … and went out.

  A chill rippled up her arms, some primal instinct screaming at her to run without knowing why—

  Light flared at Azriel’s hand—faelight, he’d told her earlier. Two orbs of it drifted ahead, illuminating a short passageway. At its other end lay a vast, circular chamber, its floor carved with symbols and drawings akin to those on the walls of the tunnel.

  Nesta whispered, voice breathy with fear, “This is the place I last saw the star on your chest.” She drew Ataraxia, and the blade gleamed in the dimness. “We call it the Prison.”

  * * *

  It was like game day, Ithan told himself. The same restlessness coursing through his body, the same razor-sharp focus settling into place.

  Except there would be no ref. No rules. No one to call a time-out.

  He stood at the edge of the empty ring in the center of the fighting pit, surrounded by his friends and Sigrid. The sprites, unable to stomach the violence, had opted to stay away.

  There was no sign of the dragon.

  He hadn’t dared research how bad third-degree burns were. If he’d be in any shape to go help free Athalar and Ruhn. And the Helhound, apparently—what was that about?

  Focus. Survive the fight, win, and they could be out of here tonight. He was good at winning. Or he had been, once upon a time.

  “She’ll try to distract you,” Flynn said from beside him, staring at the empty ring. “But get around her flames, and I think you can take her.”

  “I thought you had the hots for the dragon,” Declan muttered. “No pun intended.”

  “Not when she’s about to toast my friend.”

  Ithan tried and failed to smile.

  “Ari won’t go easy on you,” Tharion finally chimed in. He’d returned to the suite an hour ago, but he’d gone into his bedroom and shut the door. At least he’d come down for the fight.

  “So he’s supposed to—what, Ketos?” Flynn asked. “Stand there and be burned to a crisp?”

  “I bet the Viper Queen would find that highly amusing,” Declan said grimly.

  Ithan, despite himself, finally smiled at that.

  Tharion’s face remained grave, though, as he said to Ithan, “Odds are, Ari’s going to hurt you. Badly. But she’s arrogant—use it against her.”

  Ithan felt Sigrid’s gaze on him, but he nodded at the mer. “Promise to wield that water magic of yours to douse the flames and I’ll be fine.”

  Tharion was in no mood to joke, though. “Holstrom, I … Look, I said some shit earlier that I—” He shook his head. “If you can get me out of here, I’ll make it count. It means a lot that you’d even try. That you care.”

  “We’re a pack,” Ithan said to Tharion, Flynn, and Dec. “It’s what we do for each other.” None of them contradicted it. His heart strained.

  Tharion’s eyes glimmered with emotion. “Thanks.”

  The double doors on the other side of the space creaked open to reveal the Viper Queen in a metallic gold jumpsuit and matching high-tops.

  “She’ll probably have Ari jump down from the rafters in a ball of flame,” Tharion murmured as the snake shifter moved across the chamber with sinuous, unhurried grace. Ithan looked up, but the shadowed top of the ring remained empty as far as his wolf-sharp eyes could see.

  The Viper Queen halted a few feet away and frowned at Ithan. “That’s what you chose to wear?” He examined his T-shirt and jeans. The same ones he’d been wearing since arriving in this Helhole. But she nodded to Tharion. “You should have spruced him up a bit.”

  Tharion said nothing, his face like stone.

  The Viper Queen turned, jumpsuit glimmering like molten gold, and strutted toward the nearest riser. She plunked herself down and waved an elegant hand to Ithan. “Begin.”

  Ithan glanced to the empty ring. “Where’s the dragon?”

  The Viper Queen pulled out her phone and typed into it, the screen casting her already pale face in an unearthly pallor. “Ariadne? Oh, she’s no longer in my employ.”

  “What?” Tharion and Flynn blurted at the same time.

  The Viper Queen didn’t look up from her phone, thumbs flying. The light bounced off her long nails, also painted a metallic gold. “An offer too good to refuse came in an hour ago.”

  “She’s not your slave,” Tharion snapped, face more livid than Ithan had ever seen. “You don’t fucking own her.”

  “No,” the Viper Queen agreed, typing away, “but the arrangement was … advantageous to us both. She agreed.” She at last lifted her head. Nothing remotely kind lay within her green eyes as she surveyed Tharion. “If you ask me, I think she said yes in order to avoid having to toast Holstrom to a crisp. I wonder who might have made her feel bad about that?”

  They all turned to the mer, who gaped at the Viper Queen.

  “Of course,” the Vipe went on, typing again on her phone, “I didn’t inform her new employer that the dragon’s a softhearted worm. But given her new surroundings, I think she’ll harden up quickly.” The swish of a message being sent punctuated her words.

  Tharion looked like he was going to be sick. Ithan didn’t blame him.

  But Ithan willed himself to focus, his breathing to steady. She wanted him off-balance. Wanted him reeling. He squared his shoulders. “So who am I fighting, then?”

  The Viper Queen slid her phone into her pocket and smiled, revealing those too-white teeth.

  “The Fendyr heir, of course.”

  * * *

  “We should get Rhys.”

  “We’d have to hike up through the mountain, climb down past the wards, then hope we’re not too far to reach him mind-to-mind.”

  Bryce listened to Azriel and Nesta quietly argue, content to let them debate while she took in the chamber.

  “This place is lethal,” Azriel insisted gravely. “The wards in there are sticky as tar.”

  “Yes,” Nesta admitted, “but we’ve come all this way, so let’s see why we’ve been dragged here.”

  “Why she’s been dragged here—by that star.” They both turned toward her at last, expressions taut.

  Bryce composed her own face into the portrait of innocence as she asked, “What is the Prison?”

  Nesta’s lips pursed for a heartbeat before she said, “A misty island off the coast of our lands.” She glanced at Azriel and mused, “Do you think we somehow walked beneath the ocean?”

  Azriel slowly shook his head, his dark hair shining in the faelights bobbing overhead. “There’s no way we walked that far. The door must have been a portal of some sort, moving us from the mainland out here.”

  Nesta’s brows lifted. “How is that possible?”

  “There are caves and doors throughout the land,” Azriel said, “that open into distant places. Maybe that was one of them.” His gaze flicked to Bryce, noting how closely she was listening to all that, and said, “Let’s go in.”

  He took Bryce’s hand in his broad, callused one, pulling her toward the chamber beyond.

  His face was a mask of cold determination in the light of the golden orbs floating over them, his hazel eyes darting around to monitor the gloom.

  This close to him, hand in hand, she could feel the sword and dagger again thrumming and pulsing. They throbbed against her eardrums—

  The hilt of the Starsword shifted in her direction—she could have reached out and touched it with her other hand. One movement, and its hilt would be in her grip.

  Azriel shot her a warning look.

  Bryce kept her face bland, bored. Had his glance been to warn her to be careful for her own safety, or for her not to make one wrong move?

  Maybe both.

  Too soon, too quickly, they neared the entrance to the large, round chamber at the end of the short passage. The faelight danced over carvings etched and embossed onto the stone floor, as ornate and detailed as those in the tunnels leading here. The entire floor of the chamber was covered with them.

  But between her and that room hung a sense of foreboding, of heaviness, of keep the fuck out.

  Even the sword and dagger seemed to go quiet. Her star remained extinguished. Like their task was done. They’d arrived at the place they’d been compelled to bring her.

  Bryce sucked in a breath. “I’m going in. Keep a step back,” she warned Azriel.

  “And miss the fun?” Azriel muttered. Nesta chuckled behind them.

  “I mean it,” Bryce said, trying to tug her hand from his. “You stay here.”

  His fingers tightened on hers, not letting go. “What do you sense?”