Further proof of Ophion’s failure. They’d destroyed the mech-suit on Ydra, obliterated the lab days ago—yet it had all been too late. In secret, Rigelus had crafted this metal army and stationed it atop Mount Hermon’s barren peak. An improvement on the hybrids, these did not even require pilots to operate them, though they still had the capacity to hold a single Vanir soldier, if need be. As if the hybrids had been a well-calculated distraction for Ophion while Rigelus had secretly perfected these. Magic and tech now blended with lethal efficiency, with minimal cost to military life. But those suits spelled death for any remaining rebels, and damned the rest of the rebellion.

  She should have caught Rigelus’s sleight of hand—but she hadn’t. And now that horror would be unleashed on the world.

  The elevator opened, and Lidia and Pollux entered in silence. Lidia hit the button for the lowest sublevel—well, second lowest. The elevators did not descend to the catacombs, which could only be accessed by a winding crystal staircase. There, one thousand mystics slumbered.

  Each of whom were now focused on a single task: Find Bryce Quinlan.

  It begged the question: If everyone knew that the Northern Rift and other Gates only opened to Hel, why did the Asteri bother to expend such resources in hunting for her? Bryce had landed in Hel—surely there was no need to order the mystics to find her.

  Unless Bryce Quinlan had wound up somewhere other than Hel. A different world, perhaps. And if that was the case …

  How long would it take? How many worlds existed beyond Midgard? And what were the odds of Bryce surviving on any of them—or ever getting back to Midgard?

  The elevators opened into the dank dimness of the dungeons. Pollux prowled down the stone walkway, wings tightly furled. Like he didn’t want one speck of dirt from this place marring their pristine white feathers. “Is that why you’re keeping them alive? As bait for that bitch?”

  “Yes.” Lidia followed the screams past the guttering firstlight sconces along the wall. “Quinlan and Athalar are mates. She will return to this world because of that bond. And when she does, she will go straight to him.”

  “And the brother?”

  “Ruhn and Bryce are Starborn,” Lidia said, heaving open the iron door to the large interrogation chamber beyond. Metal grated against stone, its shriek eerily similar to the sounds of torment all around them. “She will want to free him—as her brother and her ally.”

  She stalked down the exposed steps into the heart of the chamber, where three males hung from gorsian shackles in the center of the room. Blood pooled beneath them, dribbling into the grate below their bare feet.

  She shut down every part of her that felt, that breathed.

  Athalar and Baxian dangled unconscious from the ceiling, their torsos patchworks of scars and burns. And their backs …

  A constant drip sounded in the otherwise silent chamber, like a leaking faucet. The blood still oozed from the stumps where their wings had been. The gorsian shackles had slowed their healing to near-human levels—keeping them from dying entirely, but ensuring that they suffered through every moment of pain.

  Lidia couldn’t look at the third figure hanging between them. Couldn’t get a breath down near him.

  Leather whispered over stone, and Lidia dove deep within herself as Pollux’s whip cracked. It snapped against Athalar’s raw, bloody back, and the Umbra Mortis jolted, swaying on his chains.

  “Wake up,” the Hammer sneered. “It’s a beautiful day.”

  Athalar’s swollen eyes cracked open. Hate blazed in their dark depths.

  The halo inked anew upon his brow seemed darker than the shadows of the dungeon. His battered mouth parted in a feral smile, revealing bloodstained teeth. “Morning, sunshine.”

  A soft, broken rasp of a laugh sounded to Athalar’s right. And though she knew it was folly, Lidia looked.

  Ruhn Danaan, Crown Prince of the Valbaran Fae, was staring at her.

  His lip was swollen from where Pollux had torn out his piercing. His eyebrow was crusted with blood from where that hoop had been ripped out, too. Across his tattooed torso, along the arms above his head, blood and dirt and bruises mingled.

  The prince’s striking blue eyes were sharp with loathing.

  For her.

  Pollux slashed his whip into Athalar’s back again, not bothering with questions. No, this was the warm-up. Interrogation would come later.

  Baxian still hung unconscious. Pollux had beaten him into a bloody pulp last night after severing his and Athalar’s wings with a blunt-toothed saw. The Helhound didn’t so much as stir.

  Night, Lidia tried, casting her voice into the moldy air between herself and the Fae Prince. They’d never spoken mind-to-mind outside of their dreaming, but she’d been trying since he’d arrived here. Again and again, she’d cast her mind toward his. Only silence answered.

  Just as it had from the moment Ruhn had learned who she was. What she was.

  She knew he could communicate, even with the gorsian stones halting his magic and slowing his healing. Knew he’d done so with his sister before Bryce had escaped.

  Night.

  Ruhn’s lip pulled back in a silent snarl, blood snaking down his chin.

  Pollux’s phone rang, a shrill, strange sound in this ancient shrine to pain. His ministrations halted, a terrible silence in their wake. “Mordoc,” the Hammer said, whip still in one hand. He pivoted from Athalar’s swinging, brutalized body. “Report.”

  Lidia didn’t bother to protest the fact that her captain was reporting to the Hammer. Pollux had taken the Harpy’s death personally—he’d commandeered Mordoc and the dreadwolves to find any hint of where Bryce Quinlan might have gone.

  That he still believed Bryce was responsible for the Harpy’s death was only because Athalar and Ruhn hadn’t revealed that it was Lidia who’d murdered the Harpy. They knew who she was, and only the fact that she was vital to the rebellion kept them from spilling her secrets.

  For a moment, with Pollux turned away, Lidia let her mask drop. Let Ruhn see her true face. The one that had kissed his soul and shared her own with him, their very beings melding.

  Ruhn, she pleaded into his mind. Ruhn.

  But the Fae Prince did not answer. The hate in his eyes did not lessen. So Lidia donned her Hind’s mask once again.

  And as Pollux pocketed his phone and angled his whip anew, the Hind ordered the Hammer in the low, lifeless voice that had been her shield for so long now, “Get the barbed wire instead.”

  PART I

  THE DROP

  1

  Bryce Quinlan sat in a chamber so far beneath the mountain above that daylight must have been a myth to the creatures who dwelled there.

  For a place that apparently wasn’t Hel, her surroundings sure appeared like it: black stone, subterranean palace, even-more-subterranean interrogation cell … The darkness seemed inherent to the three people standing across from her: a petite female in gray silk, and two winged males clad in black scalelike armor, one of them—the beautiful, powerful male in the center of the trio—literally rippling with shadows and stars.

  Rhysand, he’d called himself. The one who looked so much like Ruhn.

  It couldn’t be coincidence. Bryce had leapt through the Gate intending to reach Hel, to finally take up Aidas’s and Apollion’s repeated offers to send their armies to Midgard and stop this cycle of galactic conquest. But she’d wound up here instead.

  Bryce glanced to the warrior beside Ruhn’s almost-twin. The male who’d found her. Who’d carried the black dagger that had reacted to the Starsword.

  His hazel eyes held nothing but cold, predatory alertness.

  “Someone has to start talking,” the short female said—the one who’d seemed so shocked to hear Bryce speak in the Old Language, to see the sword. Flickering braziers of something that resembled firstlight gilded the silken strands of her chin-length bob, casting the shadow of her slender jaw in stark relief. Her eyes, a remarkable shade of silver, slid over Bryce but remained unimpressed. “You said your name is Bryce Quinlan. That you come from another world—Midgard.”

  Rhysand murmured to the winged male beside him. Translating, perhaps.

  The female went on, “If you are to be believed, how is it that you came here? Why did you come here?”

  Bryce surveyed the otherwise empty cell. No table glittering with torture instruments, no breaks in the solid stone beyond the door and the grate in the center of the floor, a few feet away. A grate from which she could have sworn a hissing sound emanated.

  “What world is this?” Bryce rasped, the words gravelly. After Ruhn’s body double had introduced himself in that lovely, cozy foyer, he’d grabbed her hand. The strength of his grip, the brush of his calluses against her skin had been the only solid things as wind and darkness had roared around them, the world dropping away—and then there was only solid rock and dim lighting. She’d been brought to a palace carved beneath a mountain, and then down the narrow stairs to this dungeon. Where he’d pointed to the lone chair in the center of the room in silent command.

  So she’d sat, waiting for the handcuffs or shackles or whatever restraints they used in this world, but none had come.

  The short female countered, “Why do you speak the Old Language?”

  Bryce jerked her chin at the female. “Why do you?”

  The female’s red-painted lips curved upward. It wasn’t a reassuring sight. “Why are you covered in blood that is not your own?”

  Score: one for the female.

  Bryce knew her blood-soaked clothes, now stiff and dark, and her blood-crusted hands did her no favors. It was the Harpy’s blood, and a bit of Lidia’s. All coating Bryce as a part of a careful game to keep her alive, to keep their secrets safe, while Hunt and Ruhn had—

  Her breath began sawing in and out. She’d left them. Her mate and her brother. She’d left them in Rigelus’s hands.

  The walls and ceiling pushed in, squeezing the air from her lungs.

  Rhysand lifted a broad hand wreathed in stars. “We won’t harm you.” Bryce found the rest of the sentence lurking within the dense shadows around him: if you don’t try to harm us.

  She closed her eyes, fighting past the jagged breathing, the crushing weight of the stone above and around her.

  Less than an hour ago, she’d been sprinting away from Rigelus’s power, dodging exploding marble busts and shattering windows, and Hunt’s lightning had speared through her chest, into the Gate, opening a portal. She’d leapt toward Hel—

  And now … now she was here. Her hands shook. She balled them into fists and squeezed.

  Bryce took a slow, shuddering breath. Another. Then opened her eyes and asked again, her voice solid and clear, “What world is this?”

  Her three interrogators said nothing.

  So Bryce fixed her eyes on the female, the smallest but by no means the least deadly of the group. “You said the Old Language hasn’t been spoken here in fifteen thousand years. Why?”

  That they were Fae and knew the language at all suggested some link between here and Midgard, a link that was slowly dawning on her with terrible clarity.

  “How did you come to be in possession of the lost sword Gwydion?” was the female’s cool reply.

  “What … You mean the Starsword?” Another link between their worlds.

  All of them just stared at her again. An impenetrable wall of people accustomed to getting answers in whatever way necessary.

  Bryce had no weapons, nothing beyond the magic in her veins, the Archesian amulet around her neck, and the Horn tattooed into her back. But to wield it, she needed power, needed to be fueled up like some stupid fucking battery—

  So talking was her best weapon. Good thing she’d spent years as a master of spinning bullshit, according to Hunt.

  “It’s a family heirloom,” Bryce said. “It’s been in my world since it was brought there by my ancestors … fifteen thousand years ago.” She let the last few words land with a pointed glance at the female. Let her do the math, as Bryce had.

  But the beautiful male—Rhysand—said in a voice like midnight, “How did you find this world?”

  This was not a male to be fucked with. None of these people were, but this one … Authority rippled off him. As if he was the entire axis of this place. A king of some sort, then.

  “I didn’t.” Bryce met his star-flecked stare. Some primal part of her quailed at the raw power within his gaze. “I told you: I meant to go to Hel. I landed here instead.”

  “How?”

  The things far below the grate hissed louder, as if sensing his wrath. Demanding blood.

  Bryce swallowed. If they learned about the Horn, her power, the Gates … what was to stop them from using her as Rigelus had wanted to? Or from viewing her as a threat to be removed?

  Master of spinning bullshit. She could do this.

  “There are Gates within my world that open into other worlds. For fifteen thousand years, they’ve mostly opened into Hel. Well, the Northern Rift opens directly into Hel, but …” Let them think her rambling. An idiot. The party girl most of Midgard had labeled her, that Micah had believed her to be, until she was vacuuming up his fucking ashes. “This Gate sent me here with a one-way ticket.”

  Did they have tickets in this world? Transportation?

  She clarified into their silence, “A companion of mine gambled that he could send me to Hel using his power. But I think …” She sorted through all that Rigelus had told her in those last moments. That the star on her chest somehow acted as a beacon to the original world of the Starborn people.

  Grasping at straws, she nodded to the warrior’s dagger. “There’s a prophecy in my world about my sword and a missing knife. That when they’re reunited, so will the Fae of Midgard be.”

  Master of spinning bullshit, indeed.

  “So maybe I’m here for that. Maybe the sword sensed that dagger and … brought me to it.”

  Silence. Then the silent, hazel-eyed warrior laughed quietly.

  How had he understood without Rhysand translating? Unless he could simply read her body language, her tone, her scent—

  The warrior spoke with a low voice that skittered down her spine. Rhysand glanced at him with raised brows, then translated for Bryce with equal menace, “You’re lying.”

  Bryce blinked, the portrait of innocence and outrage. “About what?”

  “You tell us.” Darkness gathered in the shadow of Rhysand’s wings. Not a good sign.

  She was in another world, with strangers who were clearly powerful and wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. Every word from her lips was vital to her safety and survival.

  “I just watched my mate and my brother get captured by a group of intergalactic parasites,” she snarled. “I have no interest in doing anything except finding a way to help them.”

  Rhysand looked to the warrior, who nodded, not taking his gaze off Bryce for so much as a blink.

  “Well,” Rhysand said to Bryce, crossing his muscled arms. “That’s true, at least.”

  Yet the petite female remained unmoved. In fact, her features had tightened at Bryce’s outburst. “Explain.”

  They were Fae. There was nothing to suggest that they were better than the pieces of shit Bryce had known for most of her life. And somehow, despite appearing to be stuck a few centuries behind her own world, they seemed even more powerful than the Midgardian Fae, which could only lead to more arrogance and entitlement.

  She needed to get to Hel. Or at the very least back to Midgard. And if she said too much …

  The female noted her hesitation and said, “Just look in her mind already, Rhys.”

  Bryce went rigid. Oh gods. He could pry into her head, see anything he wanted—

  Rhysand glanced at the female. She held his stare with a ferocity that belied her small stature. If Rhysand was in charge, his underlings certainly weren’t expected to be silent cronies.

  Bryce eyed the lone door. No way to reach it in time, even on the off chance they’d left it unlocked. Running wouldn’t save her. Would the Archesian amulet provide any protection? It hadn’t prevented Ruhn’s mind-speaking, but—

  I do not pry where I am not willingly invited.

  Bryce lurched back in the chair, nearly knocking it over at the smooth male voice in her mind. Rhysand’s voice.

  But she answered, thanking Luna for keeping her own voice cool and collected, Code of mind-speaking ethics?

  She felt him pause—as if almost amused. You’ve encountered this method of communication before.

  Yes. It was all she’d say about Ruhn.

  May I look in your memories? To see for myself?

  No. You may not.

  Rhysand blinked slowly. Then he said aloud, “Then we’ll have to rely on your words.”

  The petite female gaped at him. “But—”

  Rhysand snapped his fingers and three chairs appeared behind them. He sank gracefully onto one, crossing an ankle over a knee. The epitome of Fae beauty and arrogance. He glanced up at his companions. “Azriel.” He motioned lazily to the male. Then to the female. “Amren.”

  Then he motioned to Bryce and said neutrally, “Bryce … Quinlan.”

  Bryce nodded slowly.

  Rhysand examined his trimmed, clean nails. “So your sword … it’s been in your world for fifteen thousand years?”

  “Brought by my ancestor.” She debated the next bit, then added, “Queen Theia. Or Prince Pelias, depending on what propaganda’s being spun.”

  Amren stiffened slightly. Rhysand slid his eyes to her, clocking the movement.

  Bryce dared to push, “You … know of them?”

  Amren surveyed Bryce from her blood-splattered neon-pink shoes to her high ponytail. The blood smeared on Bryce’s face, now stiff and sticky. “No one has spoken those names here in a very, very long time.”

  In fifteen thousand years, Bryce was willing to bet.

  “But you have heard of them?” Bryce’s heart thundered.

  “They once … dwelled here,” Amren said carefully.

  It was the last scrap of confirmation Bryce needed about what this planet was. Something settled deep in her, a loose thread at last pulling taut. “So this is it, then. This is where we—the Midgard Fae—originated. My ancestors left this world and went to Midgard … and we forgot where we came from.”