“I thought you were here to heal them.” The Hawk glanced between her and the angels.

  “Only the wings,” Lidia said. “Why not play with other parts while they mend?”

  The Hammer smiled. “Can I watch?”

  “No.”

  Ruhn stirred, groaning softly, and it was all she could do to keep from pulling one of the long blades from the rack and plunging it through Pollux’s gut.

  “You know how I like to watch,” Pollux purred, and the Hawk chuckled. What an utter waste of life. He’d stood by while the Hammer committed his bloody atrocities. Had delighted in watching during those years with Sandriel, too.

  The Malleus’s eyes gleamed with naked lust. “Why don’t you put on a show for us?”

  “Get out,” she said, unamused. Pollux might pretend he had control, but he knew who the Asteri favored. Her orders were not to be ignored. “I don’t need distractions.”

  The Hawk snickered, but obeyed, stalking out. A true minion, through and through.

  The Hammer, however, walked over to her. With a lover’s gentleness, he put a hand on the side of her neck. And then squeezed tight enough to bruise as he said against her mouth, “I’ll fuck that disrespect out of you, Lidia. Bloody cunt or not.”

  Then he was striding up the steps, wings glowing with his wrath. He slammed the door behind him.

  Lidia waited, listening. When she was convinced they were both gone, she pulled the lever that sent the prisoners crashing to the floor and rushed to where Ruhn lay sprawled.

  “Get up.” She kept her voice hard, cold. But the prince opened his beautiful blue eyes.

  She scanned his face. Ruhn. No one answered. As if pain had carved him up and hollowed him out. Ruhn, listen to me.

  You’re dead to me, he’d said. It seemed he’d killed the connection between them, too. But Lidia still cast her thoughts toward his mind.

  Ruhn, I don’t have much time. I managed to make contact with people who can help get you out of here, but the Harpy is somehow about to be resurrected, and once she is, the truth will come out. If my plan’s to go off without a hitch, if you are to survive, you need to listen—

  Ruhn only closed his eyes and didn’t open them again.

  * * *

  Silence, heavy and unbearable, filled the chamber beneath the Prison. Bryce stared at the eight-pointed star, revulsion coursing through her in an oily slide.

  “They were horrible,” she rasped. “Self-serving, reckless monsters.”

  “Silene and Helena did shut the portal,” Nesta countered carefully.

  Bryce’s gaze snapped to the female. “Only after they opened it again—to escape. It was open because they wanted to run. And they left all those people behind. They could have held it open a little longer, could have saved them. But Silene chose herself. She’s a fucking disgrace.”

  “Surely their fate at Pelias’s hands,” Azriel said, “would explain some of their motivation in acting quickly.”

  Bryce pointed to the place where Silene had stood. “That fucking bitch locked out children to save herself and then tried to justify it.”

  It was no different than what the Valbaran Fae had done this spring in Crescent City—locking the innocents out of their villas while they cowered inside, protected by their wards.

  “What did you …,” Nesta began, a shade gently. “What was it that you expected to find here?”

  “I don’t know.” Bryce let out a bitter laugh. “I thought maybe … maybe they’d have some answer about how to kill the Asteri. But she glossed over that part. I thought that in the thousands of years since then, maybe the Fae of Midgard had evolved into the reprehensible shitheads they are. Not that they were reprehensible all along.”

  She scrubbed at her face, eyes stinging. “I thought having Theia’s light was … good. Like she was somehow better than Pelias. But she wasn’t.” And Aidas had loved her? “I thought it’d somehow give me an edge in this shitshow. But it fucking doesn’t. It just means I’m the heir to a legacy of selfish, scheming assholes.”

  And worse, that parasite in Midgard’s waters … what could even be done against that? Bryce sucked in a shuddering breath.

  A gentle hand rested on her shoulder. Nesta.

  “We need to tell Rhys,” Azriel said hoarsely. Like he was still reeling from all he’d heard. “Immediately.”

  Bryce’s gaze snapped to his face. The concern and determination there. Everything he’d seen … it was a threat to this world, to the people in it.

  Azriel asked her with terrifying calm, “What happened to the Horn?”

  Bryce held his stare, seething, beyond trying to spin any bullshit.

  But Nesta said, “She is the Horn, Azriel. It’s inked into her flesh.” She lowered her hand from Bryce’s shoulder and peered at her. “Isn’t that right? It’s the only thing that would have made your tattoo react that way earlier.”

  Azriel’s hazel eyes flickered with predatory intent. He’d carve it out of her fucking back.

  If she ran for the exit tunnel … They’d said something about a climb out of here, then a hike down a mountain.

  But this court was an island. She wouldn’t be able to get away from them.

  Azriel began circling her with an unhurried, calculating precision. Bryce turned with him, keeping him in sight, but doing so exposed her back to Nesta, who she suspected might be the apex predator in the room.

  “That’s how you got to this world,” Nesta went on, backing up a step—no doubt to provide space to draw Ataraxia. “Why you, and no one else, can come. Why you said no one would be able to follow you here. Because only you have the Horn. Only you can move between worlds.”

  “You got me,” Bryce said, throwing up her hands in mock surrender and taking a step out of Nesta’s range. “I’m a big, bad, world-jumping monster. Like my ancestors.”

  “You’re a liability,” Nesta said flatly, eyes taking on that silvery sheen—that otherworldly fire.

  “I told you guys a hundred times already: I didn’t even want to come here—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nesta said. “You did come here, to the place where the Daglan are still apparently dead set on returning.”

  “The Asteri would need the Horn to open a portal. They might find me, but they can’t get in.”

  “But you want to go home,” Nesta said, “and for that you’ll have to open a door to Midgard. What if Rigelus is right there? Waiting to come through?”

  Bryce turned to keep facing Azriel, but—

  Only shadows surrounded her.

  Nesta had distracted her, enough that her focus had slipped and Azriel had vanished. They’d worked in silent, perfect tandem.

  Not to attack, she realized, as a shadow darker than the ones around it raced for the tunnel across the chamber. But to go get reinforcements.

  “No!” Bryce threw out a hand, and light ruptured from her fingers. It slammed into Azriel’s shadows, fracturing the darkness and revealing the warrior beneath. But not enough to stop his sprint—

  She needed more power.

  The eight-pointed star at her feet glimmered. As if her magic had nudged something within it. Like embers flaring in stirred ashes. What if her star hadn’t been guiding her to the knowledge, but to something … different? Something tangible.

  Like calls to like.

  To you, in this very stone, Silene had said, I leave the inheritance and the burden that my own mother passed to me.

  This place, this Prison and the court it had once been, was Bryce’s inheritance. Hers to command, as Silene had commanded it.

  And that memory, of Silene lying next to the Harp in the center of this room, reaching for one of the carvings with a kernel of light forming at her finger …

  In this very stone …

  Silene had warped her former palace and home into this Prison. She must have imbued some magic in the rock to do it. Must have given over some part of her power to not only change the terrain, but to house the monsters in their cells.

  Theia had shown her how to do it. In those last moments with her daughters, Theia had used the Harp to transfer magic from herself into Silene and Helena, to protect them. It had appeared as a star. Had Silene replicated that here?

  Was it possible that the Harp, in that moment that Silene reached for it, power at the ready, had been able to transfer her magic to this place?

  … I leave the inheritance and the burden that my own mother passed to me.

  And precisely as Theia had gifted her own power to Silene … perhaps Silene had in turn left that same power here, to be claimed by a future scion.

  One by one, rapid as shooting stars, the thoughts raced through Bryce. More on instinct than anything else, she dropped to her knees and slammed her hand atop the eight-pointed star. Bryce reached with her mind, through layers of rock and earth—and there it was. Slumbering beneath her.

  Not firstlight, not as she knew it on Midgard—but raw Fae power from a time before the Drop. The power ascended toward her through the stone, like a glimmering arrow fired into the dark—

  Azriel flapped his wings and was instantly airborne, swooping for the tunnel exit.

  Like a small sun emerging from the stone itself, a ball of light burst from the floor. A star, twin to the one in Bryce’s chest. Her starlight at last awoke again, as if reaching with shining fingers for that star hovering inches away.

  With trembling hands, Bryce guided the star to the one gleaming on her chest. Into her body.

  White light erupted everywhere.

  Power, uncut and ancient, scorched through her veins. The hair on her head rose. Debris floated upward. She was everywhere and nowhere. She was the evening star and the last rays of color before the dark.

  Azriel had nearly reached the tunnel. Another flap of his wings and he’d be swallowed by its dark mouth.

  But at a mere thought from Bryce, stalactites and stalagmites formed, closing in on him. The room became a wolf, its jaws snapping for the winged warrior—

  The rock had moved for her, as it had for Silene.

  “Stop him,” she said in a voice that was more like her father’s than anything she’d ever heard come out of her mouth.

  Azriel swept for the tunnel archway—and slammed into a wall of stone. The exit had sealed.

  Slowly, he turned, wings rustling. Blood trickled out of his nose from his face-first collision with the rock now in his path. He spread his wings, bracing for a fight.

  The mountain shook, the chamber with it. Debris fell from the ceiling. Walls began shifting, rock groaning against rock. As if the place this had once been was fighting to emerge from the stone.

  But Nesta raced at Bryce, Ataraxia drawn, silver flame wreathing the blade.

  Bryce lifted a hand, and spike after spike of rock ruptured from the ground, blocking Nesta’s advance. The chamber shuddered again—

  “Stop,” Azriel roared, something like panic in his voice. “The cells—”

  From far away, she could sense it: the things lurking within the mountain, her mountain. Twisted, wretched creatures. Some had been here since Silene had trapped them. Had been contemplating their escape and revenge all this time. She’d let them out if she restored the mountain to its former glory.

  And in that moment, the mountain—the island—spoke to her.

  Alone. It was so alone—it had been waiting all this time. Cold and adrift in this thrashing gray sea. If she could reach out, if she could open her heart to it … it might sing again. Awaken. There was a beating, vibrant heart locked away, far beneath them. If she freed it, the land would rise from its slumber, and such wonders would spring again from its earth—

  The mountain shook again. Nesta and Azriel had halted ten feet away, Ataraxia a blazing light, Truth-Teller enveloped by shadows. The Starsword remained sheathed at Azriel’s back—but she could have sworn it twitched. As if urging Azriel to draw it.

  Nesta warned Bryce, her eyes on the shaking earth, “If you open those cells—”

  “I don’t want to fight you,” Bryce said, voice oddly hollow, like the surge of magic she’d taken from Silene’s store had emptied out her soul. “I’m not your enemy.”

  “Then let us bring you back to our High Lord,” Nesta snapped. Ataraxia flashed in answer.

  “To do what? Lock me up? Cut the Horn out of my skin?”

  “If that’s what’s necessary,” Nesta said coldly, knees bending, readying to strike. “If that’s what it takes to keep our world safe.”

  Bryce bared her teeth in a feral grin. More spikes of rock shot up from the ground, angling toward Nesta and Azriel. “Then come and take it.”

  With a flap of his wings, Azriel burst toward her, fast as a striking panther—

  Bryce stomped her foot. Those spikes of stone stretched higher, blocking his way. Blue light flared from him, smashing through the stones.

  Bryce stomped her foot again, summoning more lethal spears of rock—but there were none left. Only a vast, gaping void.

  Bryce had only a second to realize there literally was a void below her feet, before the ground beneath them collapsed entirely.

  23

  If the prisoners had done something as drastic as biting off Ruhn’s hand, they had to be dangerously close to breaking. Which left Lidia with too little time, and too few options.

  The one before her now seemed the wisest and swiftest. She could only trust that Declan Emmet had gotten the coded message she’d sent through her secure labyrinth of channels and was turning the cameras away at this very moment.

  The Mistress of the Mystics had scuttled off as soon as Lidia had stalked through the doors to the dank hall—surely to grouse to Rigelus about Lidia’s unexpected arrival. She’d ordered Lidia to wait at the front desk.

  Lidia had lingered long enough to ensure the mistress had indeed left, then promptly ignored her order.

  “Irithys,” Lidia said to the sprite lying on the bottom of the crystal ball. Curled on her side, the queen remained asleep. Or pretended to be. “I need your help.”

  The Sprite Queen cracked open an eye. “To torture more people?”

  “To torture me.”

  Irithys opened both eyes this time. Slowly sat up. “What?”

  Lidia brought her face close to the crystal and said quietly, “There is an angel in the dungeon. Hunt Athalar.”

  Irithys sucked in a breath—she knew him. How could she not, as one of the Fallen in her own way? Though Irithys hadn’t fought in the failed rebellion, she’d been born into the consequences: heir to a damned people, a queen enslaved upon the moment of her crowning. She’d know every key player in the saga—know every decision that had led to the punishment that rippled across generations of sprites.

  “He has begun the fight anew. And this spring, a sprite befriended him; she died to save his mate. Her name was Lehabah. She claimed to be a descendent of Queen Ranthia Drahl.” Just as Lidia had seen the footage of Athalar slaying Sandriel, so, too, had she witnessed the final stand of the fire sprite who had saved Bryce Quinlan. Rigelus had considered it imperative that Lidia know everything about the threat to the Asteri’s power.

  Irithys’s eyes widened at the mention of their long-dead queen’s line. The bloodline believed gone. The queen whose decision to rebel alongside Athalar and his Archangel had led to this enslaved fate for all sprites, for Irithys herself. But she said evenly, “So?”

  Lidia said, “I need you to help me free Hunt Athalar and two of his companions.”

  Irithys stood, flame a mistrusting yellow. “Is this another warm-up?”

  Lidia didn’t have time for lies, for games. “The warm-up with Hilde was a test. Not to see what you could do, but who you are.”

  The queen’s head angled. The yellow hue remained.

  Lidia said, “To see if you were as honorable as I had hoped. As trustworthy.”

  “For what?” The sprite spat the words, sparks of pure red flying from her.

  “To help me with a diversion—one that might save more lives than the three in the dungeon.”

  Irithys sniffed. “You are Rigelus’s pet.” She waved with a burning hand to the mystics slumbering in their tanks. “No better than them, obeying him in all things. They would lie if he commanded them to. Would drown themselves, if he so much as breathed the word.”

  “I can explain later. Right now I only have”—she choked on the word—“trust to offer.”

  “What of the cameras?” Irithys glanced to the ever-watchful eyes mounted throughout the space.

  “I have people in my employ who have ensured that they are looking elsewhere right now,” Lidia said, praying that it was true.

  And with an appeal to Luna, she tapped the crystal ball, dissolving it. She still had the access Rigelus had granted in her blood to open the ball—she could still make this happen.

  She’d intended to use the Sprite Queen to attempt to melt the gorsian shackles off Ruhn, Baxian, and Athalar, but things had changed. She needed Irithys for something far bigger.

  Irithys stood in the open air, arms crossed, now a familiar, wary orange shade. “And this?” She gestured to the ink on her neck.

  Lidia said quietly, as calmly as she could, “I made a bargain with Hilde for her freedom. She need only do one favor for me when the time comes, and she’ll walk free.”

  Irithys angled her head again. “And the part about me torturing you …?”

  “Will come after that. To make it believable.”

  “Make what believable?”

  Lidia checked her watch. Not much time. “I need to know if you’re in or out.”

  To her credit, the Sprite Queen didn’t waste time. Lidia held her stare, and let the queen see all that lay beneath it. Surprise lit Irithys’s face … but she nodded slowly, turning a determined hue of ruby.

  “Get the hag,” the queen said.

  * * *

  It was a matter of a few minutes to get Hilde brought down. The guards didn’t question the Hind, and her luck had held—the mistress was still off complaining to Rigelus.

  Hilde glared at Lidia as she stood before the sprite, the queen free of her crystal and burning a bright bloodred. “And I walk free as soon as I do this favor for you?”