Behind her, Nesta and Azriel unleashed twin bolts of magic, one silver, one blue—arcing toward Vesperus from two directions. Splitting Vesperus’s attention for a heartbeat—

  The heartbeat Bryce had used to kill Micah.

  The heartbeat that she used now to spring at the Asteri, sword in one hand, dagger in the other.

  Bone collided with metal, and Vesperus screeched in rage as Bryce plunged Truth-Teller and the Starsword into her chest.

  Bryce threw her power into the Starsword, light ripping through the black blade, willing it to tear this fucking monster apart—

  She willed it into Truth-Teller, and shadows flowed—

  And where the two blades met, where Bryce’s light merged at their nexus, power met power.

  Her ears hollowed out. Magic like lightning surged through her, from her. The chamber rippled, a muffled boom echoing through Bryce.

  Her blood roared, a beast howling at the moon. She was vaguely aware of a glow, of radiating light that flowed through the Starsword, the dagger—

  Vesperus thrashed, falling beyond Bryce’s grip, sinking to her knees.

  The Asteri hunched over, hands grappling on the hilts of the blades. She hissed as her skin touched the black metal. “I shall kill you for this.”

  But the words were slow … dragged out.

  No, that was time slowing, rippling, as it had with Micah, as if the blades were killing the Asteri, a great world power—

  A whip of blue magic shot through the world, a ribbon of cobalt piercing the starlight and darkness. She could see every loop and coil as it wrapped around Vesperus’s neck.

  Time resumed—sped up to its normal rate. “Stop!” Bryce shouted, but too late.

  Vesperus lifted a hand to her neck as Azriel’s blue light dissolved into her skin. She let out a strangled laugh as blood leaked from her mouth. “Still so ignorant. Your power is and will always be mine.”

  Blue magic appeared at her fingertips, absorbed from the Illyrian’s attack. She wrapped it around one hand like a glove and grasped the Starsword’s handle.

  As if it provided the barrier she needed, allowing her to touch the blade, Vesperus yanked the Starsword free and let it clatter to the stones, coated with gore.

  It … it hadn’t worked. The sword and dagger united hadn’t killed her.

  Hand glowing blue, Vesperus studied the dagger still in her chest and then smiled at Bryce as she wrapped her fingers, still wreathed in lightning, around the hilt. “I’m going to carve you up with this, girl.”

  Nesta rotated Ataraxia in her hand and swung upward. Azriel shouted at her, “Throw your power in the blade!”

  “No!” Bryce screamed. The Starsword and Truth-Teller had clearly been weakening the Asteri. If she could figure out how to amplify their power, she’d know how to kill them all—

  Vesperus had just yanked Truth-Teller from her chest in a smooth slide when Ataraxia severed flesh and bone, dark blood—or whatever ichor flowed in an Asteri’s veins—spraying.

  Vesperus’s dark head tumbled to the stones.

  Silver fire wreathed Ataraxia as Nesta plunged the blade into the Asteri’s fallen head. Again. And again. Ichor and light leaked from the broken body, and between one stab and the next, Nesta’s arm slowed, slowed, slowed—

  That was time slowing again. Bryce could see every spark of silver flame coiling about the blade, see it reflected in Nesta’s eyes.

  The sword descended into Vesperus’s head one last time. Inch by inch, shattering bone and spraying gore—

  Time snapped back into movement, but Vesperus did not.

  Vesperus, the only Asteri left on this world, lay dead.

  * * *

  There was a small boat waiting for them. That much had gone right.

  Tharion couldn’t stand to look at Ithan. At any of his friends, even the sprites, who’d done so much for him.

  The captain was waving to them, a silent order to hurry up while they still had the cover of darkness. Dawn was beginning to turn the sky gray.

  They ditched the car at the end of the dock and walked quickly toward the small boat. Once they were on the Depth Charger, they’d be untraceable, even if the Viper Queen tracked the car here.

  Tharion slid a hand into his pocket and fingered the white stone that would summon the ship. Dec, Flynn, and the sprites jumped into the boat, Dec quietly talking to the captain, but Holstrom had paused at the edge of the dock.

  Silently, Tharion came up beside him.

  The water was clear, even twenty feet above the bottom. Where he might have once jumped in, luxuriated in the crisp ocean water …

  He didn’t dare send a ripple through the waters of the world announcing his presence. Coward.

  Flynn called to them, “Get on, assholes!”

  Tharion glanced to Ithan, but the wolf was staring at the eastern horizon. The rising sun.

  “Ready?” Tharion asked.

  “I have to go back,” Holstrom rasped.

  “What?” Tharion faced him fully. “What do you mean?”

  The wolf slowly turned to look at him, his eyes bleak. Tharion felt the weight of his guilt at what he’d done to this male, in having Holstrom fight for him.

  “To Crescent City,” Ithan said, face like stone. “I have to go back.”

  “Why?”

  “Holstrom! Ketos!” Dec hollered as the boat’s engine churned.

  Ithan just said quietly, “To make it right.”

  A shudder of muscle and a ripple of light, and the human form became a massive wolf.

  “Ithan—” Tharion started.

  The wolf turned and sprinted down the dock, back toward the arid countryside, golden in the rising light.

  Flynn bellowed, “Holstrom, what the fuck!”

  But the wolf had already reached the shore. Then the main building of the marina. Then the alley beside it … and then he vanished.

  Silence fell, interrupted only by the grumble and splash of the engine. Tharion turned back toward the boat, toward the two friends onboard, the sprites gleaming like three small stars between them.

  “What the fuck happened?” Flynn demanded.

  Tharion shook his head, at a loss for words, and stepped onto the boat.

  His fault—all of it. He lifted his face to the sky as the boat peeled toward the open ocean, and wondered if he’d ever see Valbara again.

  If he even deserved to.

  27

  Bryce couldn’t move for a moment. Vesperus was dead.

  Nesta slashed her hand and the creature’s body burned with that strange silver fire.

  As the Asteri was reduced to ashes, Bryce grabbed the sword and dagger from the ground, both blades dripping with Vesperus’s blood.

  She whirled on Nesta, on Azriel. “You shouldn’t have killed her. If we could have gotten her under control, the amount of information that we could have pried from her—”

  “Do you have any idea what you almost did here?” Nesta raged, covered in Vesperus’s dark ichor. She still gripped Ataraxia in one hand, as if not yet decided whether she was done killing. “What you unleashed?”

  “Trust me, I know better than you guys what the Asteri can do.”

  “Then you have even less of an excuse for your actions,” Nesta snapped. Her sword rose.

  Azriel extended a scarred hand to Bryce, panting hard. “Open the passage out of here. You’re coming back with us. Right now.”

  To that cell under a different mountain. Where she had no doubt she’d be subjected to the interrogation Vesperus should have received.

  Bryce snorted. “Like Hel I am.” Debris began floating around her. “You killed the one person here who might have given me the answer I needed.”

  “You’re looking for ways to kill the Daglan. Well, I just killed that monster,” Nesta said. “Isn’t that answer enough?”

  “No,” Bryce said. “You’ve only left me with more questions.”

  She let her power flow outward from the star in her chest. From the Horn in her back.

  “Don’t you dare,” Azriel warned with lethal softness.

  But Bryce shoved out a slice of her power. Sharp and targeted, as Silene had used to carve the stones. As Azriel had focused his own power on her star earlier.

  Light cut through stone and sizzled, a line literally drawn at Azriel’s feet.

  Whatever had changed in her power with the addition of Silene’s magic … Fuck yeah. This would be useful.

  “I won’t tell them about you,” Bryce said coolly, even as part of her marveled at the laser she’d created out of pure magic. The other part of her cringed from it—from the power that was eerily similar to what Rigelus had used against her before she jumped through the Gate in the Eternal Palace. “I swear it on my mate’s life. Even if Rigelus …” She shook her head. “I won’t breathe a word to them about this place.”

  Azriel dared to put one foot over the line she’d blasted into the floor. “They’ll pry it from you. People like me, like them … we always get the information we need.” His gaze darkened with the promise of unending pain.

  “I won’t let it come to that,” Bryce said, and sent her power searing through her star again—right into the crystal sarcophagus.

  Crystal like the Gate that had opened the way to this world.

  The sarcophagus glowed … and then darkened into a pit.

  “Please,” Azriel said, his gaze now on her hands. On the Starsword—and on Truth-Teller. Something like panic filled his hazel eyes.

  Shaking her head, Bryce backed toward the hole she’d made in the world. In the universe. She could only pray it would lead her to Midgard.

  She met Nesta’s stare. Raging silver fire flickered there.

  “You’re as much of a monster as they are,” Nesta accused.

  Bryce knew. She’d always known. “Love will do that to you.”

  Silver flames roared for her in a tidal wave, but Bryce was already leaping, sheathing the blades as she moved. Cold like nothing she’d known tore past her head, her spine—

  And then the light from Nesta’s silver flame winked out as the gate shut above Bryce, nothing but darkness surrounding her as she plunged deeper and deeper into the pit.

  Toward home.

  PART II

  THE SEARCH

  28

  Hours after Pollux and the Hawk had left with Rigelus, Hunt was no closer to knowing who they would select to die. His bet was on Baxian, but there was a good chance Pollux would realize that killing Ruhn would devastate Bryce. If Bryce ever got back home to learn of it.

  He’d been surprised and disturbed to stir from unconsciousness to find a familiar, growing weight at his back. A glance to Baxian had shown him the source: their wings were somehow regrowing at rapid speed, despite the gorsian shackles. Someone had to have given them something to orchestrate the healing—though it couldn’t mean anything good.

  He wondered if their captors had realized that the relentless itching would be a torment as awful as the whips and brands. Gritting his teeth against it, Hunt writhed, arching his spine, as if it’d help ease the merciless sensation. He’d give anything, anything, for one scratch—

  “Orion.” Aidas’s voice sounded in his head, in the chamber. A cat with eyes like blue opals crouched on the floor, amid the blood and waste. The same form Rigelus had used to deceive Hunt months ago.

  “Aidas … or Rigelus?” Hunt groaned.

  Aidas was smart enough to get it—Hunt needed proof. The demon prince said, “Miss Quinlan first met me on a park bench outside of the Oracle’s Temple when she was thirteen. I asked her what blinds an Oracle.”

  The real thing, then. Not some trick of the Asteri.

  “Bryce,” Hunt moaned.

  “I’m looking for her,” Aidas said. Hunt could have sworn the cat looked sad.

  “What does Rigelus want from my lightning?”

  Aidas’s tail swished. “So that’s why he’s working so hard to break you.”

  “He threatened to kill one of them if I didn’t give some to him.” A nod to Ruhn and Baxian.

  Aidas bristled. “You mustn’t do so, Athalar.”

  “Too late. He harvested it into a crystal like firstlight. And the fucker’s going to kill one of them anyway.”

  Aidas’s blue eyes filled with worry, but the prince said nothing.

  So Hunt said again, “What does he want from my lightning?”

  “If I were to guess … The same thing Sofie Renast’s lightning was hunted for: to resurrect the dead.”

  Hunt’s head swam. “My lightning can’t do that. We didn’t even know Sofie’s lightning could do that.”

  Aidas blinked. “Well, apparently, Rigelus thinks both sources of lightning can.”

  “How did you find that out? We didn’t discover that, and we were trying to dig up information about Sofie for weeks.” Hunt fought the fog in his head. No, he knew this wasn’t possible.

  “I don’t just sit around waiting for you to contact me,” Aidas said. “My spies hear whispers around Midgard … and when some concern me, I go to investigate.”

  “So the River Queen was on the hunt for Sofie to … engage in some necromancy? Why not go to the Bone Quarter?”

  “I don’t know what the River Queen wanted.”

  Hunt scoured his memory for what had happened to Sofie’s corpse after they’d found it in the morgue aboard the Depth Charger. What had Cormac done with it? Was it still on the ship? And if so, did the Ocean Queen know what she had in her possession? The questions swarmed, but one rose to the forefront. “Why didn’t Rigelus just hunt down Sofie’s body? Why bother going after me?”

  “You presented yourself to him rather conveniently, Athalar. Not to mention that you’re alive, and much easier to command than a corpse.”

  “There are some Archangels who might disagree with you.”

  Aidas’s mouth twitched upward, but he said, “It will likely take time for Rigelus to figure out a way to wield the lightning he extracted from you. Though I admit I am … disturbed to learn of his new experimentation. It does not bode well for any of us, if Rigelus is tangling with the dead.”

  “Why now?” Hunt asked. “I’ve been enslaved to them for centuries, for Urd’s sake.”

  “Perhaps they’ve at last learned what your father bred you to be.”

  Even the miserable itching in his back was forgotten at those words. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  But Aidas only shook his head. “A tale for another time, Athalar.”

  “A tale for now, Aidas. These cryptic mentions of my father, the black crown, secrets about my powers—”

  “Mean nothing, if you do not get out of these dungeons.”

  “Then stop fucking popping out of the shadows and find a key.”

  “I cannot. My body isn’t real here.”

  “It was real enough in Quinlan’s apartment.”

  “That was a portal, a summoning. This is like … a phone call.”

  “Then send one of your buddies through the Northern Rift to help us—”

  “The distance from Nena is too great. They wouldn’t arrive in time to make a difference. You will get answers, Athalar, I promise. If you survive. But if the Asteri can use your lightning to raise the dead, in ways swifter and less limited than traditional necromancy, then the armies they might create—”

  “You’re not making me feel any better about giving some over.” Another bit of guilt to burden his soul. He didn’t know how he wasn’t already broken beneath the sheer weight of it.

  “Try not to give him more, then.” But Aidas threw him a pitying look. “I am sorry that one of your companions will die tomorrow.”

  “Fuck,” Hunt said hoarsely. “Any idea who they’ve picked?”

  Aidas angled his head, more feline than princely. Like he could hear things Hunt couldn’t. “The one whose death will mean the most to both you and Bryce.” Hunt closed his eyes. “The Fae Prince.”

  This was all Hunt’s fault. He’d learned nothing since the Fallen. And he’d been fine with taking on the punishment himself, but for others to do it, for Ruhn to—

  “I’m sorry,” the Prince of the Chasm said again, and sounded like he meant it.

  But Hunt said hoarsely, “If you find her … if you see her again … tell her …”

  Not to come back. Not to dare enter this world of pain and suffering and misery. That he was so damn sorry for not stopping all of this.

  “I know,” Aidas said, not needing Hunt to finish before he vanished into darkness.

  29

  Bryce had dropped down between worlds. And yet when she landed, she collided sideways with a wall.

  Apparently, magical interstellar travel didn’t care about physics.

  Her head throbbed; her mouth was painfully dry. The rough fibers of a carpet scraped her cheek, muffling the sounds of an enclosed space. It was dry, vaguely musty. Familiar-smelling.

  “Isn’t this interesting,” drawled a male voice in her own language. It was the most wonderful sound she’d ever heard.

  Though she’d have wished, perhaps, for the words to have come from someone other than the Autumn King.

  He loomed over her, his hands wreathed in flame. Above him, a golden orrery clicked and whirred. She’d landed in her father’s private study.

  The Autumn King’s lips curled in that familiar cruel smile. “And where have you been, Bryce Quinlan?”

  Bryce opened her mouth, power rallying—

  And sputtering out.

  “For an old bastard, you move fast,” she groaned, straining against the gorsian shackles on her wrists. No chains attached to them, at least—just the cuffs of the shackles. But it was enough. Bryce couldn’t so much as summon a flicker of starlight.

  Her father knew it. He strolled to his giant wooden desk like he had all the time in the world.

  In those initial seconds when she’d landed here, in the worst fucking place in the whole fucking world, he’d not only disabled her power with those shackles—he’d also disarmed her. The Starsword and Truth-Teller now lay behind him on his desk. Along with her phone.