Bryce lifted her chin, though she remained sitting on the ground. “Are Ruhn and Hunt alive?”

  Something like distaste flashed in the Autumn King’s eyes. As if such mortal bonds should be the least of her concerns. “You show your hand, Bryce Quinlan.”

  “I thought my name was Bryce Danaan now,” she seethed.

  “To the detriment of the line, yes,” the Autumn King said, his eyes sparking. “Where have you been?”

  “There was a sample sale at the mall,” Bryce said flatly. “Are Ruhn and Hunt still alive?”

  The Autumn King’s head angled, gaze sweeping over her filthy T-shirt, her torn leggings. “I was informed that you were no longer on this planet. Where did you go?”

  Bryce declined to answer.

  Her father smiled slightly. “I can connect the dots. You arrive from off-world, bearing a knife that matches the Starsword. The dagger from the prophecy, no?” His eyes gleamed with greed. “Not seen since the First Wars. If I were to guess, you managed to reach a place I have long desired to go.” He glanced up at the orrery.

  “You might want to reconsider before packing your bags,” Bryce said. “They don’t take kindly to assholes.”

  “Your journey hasn’t impacted that smart mouth of yours, I see.”

  She smiled with saccharine sweetness. “You’re still an absolute bastard, I see.”

  The Autumn King pursed his lips. “I’d be careful if I were you.” He pushed off his desk and stalked toward her. “No one knows you’re here.”

  “Taking your daughter hostage: excellent parenting.”

  “You are my guest here until I see fit to release you.”

  “Which will be when?” She batted her eyelashes with exaggerated innocence.

  “When I have the reassurances I seek.”

  Bryce made a show of tapping her chin in contemplation. “How about this: You let me go, and I don’t fucking kill you for delaying me?”

  A soft, taunting laugh. How had her mother ever loved this cold-blooded reptile?

  “I’ve already sealed off the wards around this villa, and sent away my servants and sentries.”

  “You mean to tell me we’re going to do all our own cooking?”

  The intensity on his face didn’t falter. “No one shall even know that you are back in this world until I see fit.”

  “And then you’ll tell the Asteri?” Her heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t let that happen.

  Her father smiled again. “That depends entirely on you.”

  * * *

  Ithan ran himself into the ground all the way back to the eastern gate of Crescent City, hundreds of miles from the dock in Ionia where he’d left Tharion and the others.

  Make your brother proud.

  He hadn’t been able to get on that boat. Ketos might be able to walk away from the consequences of his actions, but Ithan couldn’t.

  Gilded by the setting sun, Crescent City bustled on as usual, unaware of what he’d done. How everything had changed.

  He took the coward’s path through the city, cutting through FiRo rather than going right to the Istros through Moonwood. If he saw another wolf right now …

  He didn’t want to know what he’d do. What he’d say.

  He was no one in the hustle of rush hour, but he kept to the alleys and side streets. He didn’t spare a glance for the Heart Gate as he sprinted past it, nor did he let himself look eastward toward Bryce and Danika’s old apartment when he passed that, too.

  He only looked ahead, toward the approaching river. Toward the Black Dock at the end of the street.

  Despite the chaotic throngs of evening commuters in the rest of the city, the Black Dock was silent and empty, wreathed in mist. Down the quay, a few mourners wept on benches, but no one stood on the dock itself.

  Ithan couldn’t bring himself to look deeper into the mists, toward the Bone Quarter. He prayed Connor wasn’t looking his way from across the river.

  Ithan shifted into his humanoid form before walking a block westward along the quay. Ithan knew where the entrance was—everyone did.

  No one ever went there, of course. No one dared.

  The great black door sat in the middle of a matching black marble building—a facade. The building had been styled after an elaborate mausoleum. The door was the focus, the main reason for its existence: to lead one not into the building, but below it.

  No one stood guard at the door. Ithan supposed nobody was needed. Anyone who wanted to rob this place would deserve all that they’d face inside.

  Crude, ancient markings covered the black door. Like scratches carved by inhuman fingernails. At its center, an etching of a horned, humanoid skull engulfed in flames stared out at him.

  Ithan knocked on its hateful face once. Twice. The metal thudded dully.

  The door yawned open, silent as a grave. Only darkness waited beyond, and a long, straight staircase into the gloom.

  It might as well have been Hel on Midgard.

  Ithan felt nothing, was nothing, as he strode in. As the door shut behind him, sealing him in solid, unending night.

  Locking him inside the House of Flame and Shadow.

  30

  If the Autumn King was indeed cooking their meals, then Bryce had to admit that he wasn’t a bad chef. Roast chicken, green beans, and some thickly sliced bread waited on the marble table in the vast dining room.

  Apparently, she’d arrived around three in the afternoon on a Friday. That was all she’d been able to get out of him while he’d led her from his office to a bedroom on the second floor. Not what the date was, or even the month. Or year.

  Nausea coursed through her. Hunt had been kept in the Asteri dungeons for years the last time … Was he still there? Was he even alive? Was Ruhn? Her family?

  There was nothing in her bedroom, an elegant—if bland—blend of marble and overstuffed furniture in varying shades of gray and white, to aid in answering these questions. Her father wanted her cut off from the world, and so it was: No TV. No phone—not even a landline. A glamour shimmered on the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking an interior lavender garden, blocking prying eyes from seeing in. A peek toward the sky showed an iridescent bubble over the whole place—wards. Like the ones the Fae had established to lock down their territory during the attack this spring.

  But it was the screams of pleading Fae parents as Silene locked them out of their home world, leaving their children to the Asteri’s cruelty, that echoed through Bryce’s head.

  And now, sitting across the massive dining table from her father hours later, having showered and changed into a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a skintight navy blue athletic jacket that he’d given her—she really fucking hoped they weren’t left over from a booty call—Bryce asked, “So is this the plan? Lock me up here until I get so bored that I tell you everything? Or is it to deprive me of information so that I’ll tell you anything in exchange for a snippet of news about Hunt?”

  Her father sliced into his chicken with a precision that told her exactly how he dealt with his enemies. But he sighed through his nose. “Your hosts in the other world must have had a high tolerance for irreverent nonsense, if you’re still alive.”

  “Most people call it charm.”

  He sipped from his wine. “How long were you there?”

  “Tell me about Ruhn and Hunt.”

  He sipped again. “That wasn’t even a good attempt to surprise me into answering.”

  “You know, only a real piece of shit would withhold that information.”

  He set down his wine. “Here is how this shall work. For every question of mine that you answer, you shall receive an answer to one of your questions. If I sense that you are lying, you shall not get a reply from me.”

  “You know, I just played this game with someone even more horrible than you—shocking, I know—and it didn’t end well for her. So I suggest we skip the Q and A and you tell me what I want to know.”

  He only stared. He’d sit here all fucking night.

  Bryce tapped her foot on the marble floor, weighing it out. “Fine.”

  “Did you truly go to the home world of the Fae?”

  “Yes.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Athalar and Ruhn are still alive.”

  Bryce tried not to sag with relief. “How long—”

  He held up a finger. “My turn.”

  Fucker.

  “What was their world like?”

  “I don’t know—I only saw a holding cell and some tunnels and caverns. But … it seemed free. Of the Asteri, at least.” And then, because she knew it would upset him, she said, “The Fae there are stronger than we are. The Asteri take a chunk of our power through the Drop—it feeds them, sustains them. In that other world, the Fae retain their full, pure power.”

  She could have sworn his face had paled, even under the flattering golden glow of the twin iron chandeliers dangling above. It made her more smug than she’d expected.

  “How long was I gone?” she asked.

  “Five days.”

  The timelines between their worlds were similar, then. “And—”

  “What did you learn while you were there?”

  How to reply? To give him the truth … “I’m still processing.”

  “That’s not an acceptable answer.”

  “I learned,” she snapped, “that most of the Fae, no matter what world they’re on, are a bunch of selfish assholes.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Oh?”

  She crossed her arms. “Let’s just say that I know a female who could wipe your sorry ass from existence and not break a sweat.”

  And yet Nesta hadn’t done that to Bryce. She’d thought it luck, but was it possible the female had pulled her punches? Nesta hadn’t been anything like Silene or Theia.

  It didn’t matter now, but the thought lingered.

  “That still doesn’t answer my question. You must have gone to that world for a reason—what did you learn?”

  “One, I wound up there by accident. Two, technically, I did answer your question, so be more specific next time.”

  Something dark and lethal passed over her father’s face. “How—”

  Bryce held up a finger, mocking him. “What happened after I left?”

  Her father’s whiskey-colored eyes simmered with flame at the sight of that finger, the command and insistence of the right to speak it conveyed. The sight must have been especially galling from a female.

  But he seemed to tamp down his anger and said with a smugness of his own, like he was savoring the bad news as much as she had while giving hers, “The Asteri threw Athalar and your brother into their dungeons, and managed to contain the knowledge of what occurred at their palace. They only informed those of us who needed to know.” He drained his wine. “Did you bring these Fae back into Midgard with you?”

  “Did you see them arrive here with me?” No need to tell him that she didn’t part on good terms. Azriel might very well have killed her if she’d stayed a moment longer.

  Bryce braced her forearms on the table, gorsian shackles thudding against the cool marble. “So you’ve known Ruhn is in the Asteri’s dungeons for five days and have done nothing to help him?”

  “Ruhn deserves all that is coming his way. He chose his fate.”

  Her fingers curled into fists, nails digging into her flesh. “He’s your son, for fuck’s sake.”

  “I can have others.”

  “Not if I kill you first.” A familiar white haze crept over her vision.

  Her father smiled, as if noting the primal fury of the Fae—but purely human rage. “You’re so like your mother.” He smirked. “No questions about her fate?”

  “I know you wouldn’t be able to keep from telling me if something had happened to her. You’d take too much pleasure in it. Why have the Asteri kept Hunt and Ruhn alive?”

  “I believe it is my turn.”

  “I believe it’s my turn. No questions about her fate? counts as a question, asshole.”

  Her father’s eyes flickered, as if amused despite himself—and impressed. “Very well.”

  “Why have they kept Ruhn and Hunt alive?”

  “To use them against you, I assume, though I cannot say for sure.” He poured himself more wine, the fading sunlight streaming through the windows making the liquid glow like fresh blood. “Tell me about the knife—it is the one from our prophecies, the sibling to the Starsword?”

  “The one and only. They call it Truth-Teller.” He opened his mouth again, but she tapped her fingers on the table. Better get the lay of the land, assess where any allies might be—if they survived. “What’s the status of Ophion?”

  “No attacks since the one on the lab. Their numbers are nearly depleted. Ophion is, for all intents and purposes, dead.”

  Bryce reined in her wince.

  The Autumn King drank from his wine again. At this rate, he’d get through the whole bottle before the sun had fully set. “How did you attain Truth-Teller?”

  “I stole it.” She smiled slightly at his frown of distaste. “What of my other friends—are they all alive?”

  “If you counted that traitor Cormac amongst your friends, then no. But the rest of them, as far as I have heard, are alive and well.” Bryce reeled. Cormac was— “Did you steal the dagger to fulfill the prophecy?”

  She shrugged with what nonchalance she could muster and set down her fork. “I’m tired of this game.”

  Cormac was dead. Had he died that day at the lab, or had it been afterward—perhaps in the Asteri’s dungeons, under their questioning? Or had they simply sent the male home to his shitty father and let the King of Avallen rip him to shreds for dishonoring his household?

  The Autumn King smiled like he’d won. “Then you are dismissed. I shall see you tomorrow.”

  She pushed past her twisting grief to say, “Fuck you.”

  He merely inclined his head and resumed eating in silence.

  * * *

  Ithan strode down the steps of the House of Flame and Shadow in darkness so pure that even his wolf eyes couldn’t pierce it.

  He’d never heard anything about what waited at the bottom of the stairs. But he figured he was out of options.

  He lost track of how long he walked downward, the air tight and dry. Like a tomb.

  The scuff of his sneakers against the steps echoed off the black walls. His eyes strained with the effort of trying to see, to no avail. If the steps ended in a plunge, he’d have no idea. No warning.

  It was true, in the end, that he had no warning. But not for a drop. Metal clanked, and his skull with it, as Ithan slammed into a wall. He rebounded, swearing—

  Light, golden and soft, cracked through the stairwell.

  It wasn’t a wall. It was a door, and beyond it, silhouetted by the light, was a slim female figure. Even before he could make out her face, he knew the voice. Arch, cultured, bored.

  “Well, that’s one way of knocking,” drawled Jesiba Roga.

  31

  Jesiba Roga led Ithan through a subterranean hall of black stone, lit only by crackling fires in hearths shaped like roaring, fanged mouths. In front of those fireplaces lounged draki of varying hues, vampyrs drinking goblets of blood, and daemonaki in business suits typing away on laptops.

  A weirdly … normal place. Like a private club.

  He supposed it was a private club, of sorts. The headquarters of any House were open to all its members, at any time. Some chose to dwell within them, mostly the workers who ran the House’s daily operations. But some just came to hang out, to meet, to rest.

  Ithan, to his embarrassment, had never been to Lunathion’s House of Earth and Blood headquarters. Hadn’t been to its main headquarters, either, up in Hilene. Bryce had as a kid, he remembered, but he couldn’t recall the details.

  Ithan followed Jesiba down the long hall, past people who barely looked his way, and then through a set of double doors of black wood carved with the horned skull sigil of the House.

  He didn’t know what he’d expected. A council chamber, some fancy office …

  Not the sleek, onyx bar, lit with deep blue lighting, like the heart of a flame. A jazz quartet played on a small stage beneath an archway in the rear of the space, the many high tables—all adorned with glass votives of that blue light—oriented toward the music. But Roga headed right for the obsidian glass bar, the gilded stools before it.

  A golden-scaled draki female in a gauzy black dress worked the bar, and nodded toward Roga. The sorceress nodded back shallowly as she took a seat and patted the stool beside her, ordering Ithan, “Sit.”

  Ithan threw the sorceress a glare at the blatant reference to his canine nature, but he obeyed.

  A moment later, the bartender slid two dark glasses toward them, both rippling with smoke. Jesiba knocked hers back in one go, smoke curling from her mouth as she said, “I thought the porters had smoked too much mirthroot when they told me that Ithan Holstrom was walking down the entry steps.”

  Ithan peered into his dark glass, at the amber liquid that looked and smelled like whiskey, though he’d never seen whiskey with smoke rising from it.

  “It’s called a smokeshow,” Roga drawled. “Whiskey, grated ginger, and a little draki magic to make it look fancy.”

  Ithan took her word for it and swallowed the whole thing in one mouthful. It burned all the way down—burned through the nothingness in him.

  “Well,” Roga said, “based on how eagerly you drank that and the fact that you’re here at all, I can assume things are … not going well for you.”

  “I need a necromancer.”

  “And I need a new assistant, but you’d be surprised how few competent ones are out there.”

  Ithan didn’t hide his glower. “I’m serious.”

  Roga signaled the bartender for another round. “As am I. Ever since Quinlan left me to go work at the Fae Archives, I’ve been up to my neck in paperwork.”

  Ithan was pretty sure that wasn’t how it had gone down with Bryce and Jesiba, but he said, “Look, I didn’t come here to talk to you—”

  “Yes, but you’re lucky as Hel that the porters called me to deal with you, and not someone else. One of the vamps might have taken a taste by now.”