Hunt asked, wings twitching, “But why make an entire underground warren of caves? And why dedicate it to her rapist husband?”

  Bryce shrugged. “As a reason to keep coming here. She built him a tomb that would last, where his sword might lie forever until a worthy successor came along.”

  “You can’t possibly know that,” Hunt said carefully. Like he was afraid of getting into another fight.

  It did something to her heart, that caution, but Bryce said, “The caves are nearly identical to the ones in her home world—caves she grew up navigating. And Avallen, like her childhood home, is wreathed in mist. It’s a thin place as well. Judging by all the mists in here, maybe Avallen, these caves, are an even stronger thin place than the one in the Fae world. The Prison—the court it had been before that … Vesperus said that she chose it originally because it was a thin place, good for traveling between worlds. Theia knew this, too. She must have told Helena.”

  Tharion cleared his throat. “So Helena made all these caves just to have a private line to Hel?”

  “Pretty much,” Bryce said. “Avallen had everything she needed. But for her to have built the caves this way suggests resources. Helena couldn’t have done it in secret. She had to have had approval from Pelias. And what better way to hide this, to protect it through the ages, than to wrap it up in a temple to the patriarchy?” Bryce pointed to the sarcophagus room above them. To the bones she’d have liked to scatter into a septic tank. “She knew the Fae males would never tear this place down or disturb it—for fuck’s sake, Morven refuses to update Avallen in any way because he wants it to stay the same as it was when Pelias was alive. Helena knew these males well. She knew if she hid this under here, it’d be preserved, and remain undisturbed.”

  “Okay, assuming for a moment that we believe all that,” Tharion said, “how do you know this was some secret chamber she used to commune with Hel, of all places? What do the pitcher and bowl mean?”

  “She’d get thirsty with all the salt down here?” Baxian quipped, and Hunt grunted.

  But Sathia walked up to the stream. “That water filters straight through the black salt, and this chamber is thick with it.” She met Bryce’s stare, brows knotting. “Can you summon a demon if you drink water laced with black salt?”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like that, even during my demon-hunting years,” Hunt said.

  “If Helena was summoning demons here, someone would have noticed,” Baxian said. “The temperature would have dropped enough that anyone else in the caves would have felt it, even a level above.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t summoning them here,” Bryce said, walking to the pitcher and bowl, to the eight-pointed star they sat upon. The slits in two of the points had been deeply carved—too deep for her to see how far into the rock they went. But Bryce tapped the side of her head. “But in here.”

  “What?” Hunt asked.

  Bryce knelt and dipped the ewer into the dark, icy water. The vessel and bowl, too, had been carved from black salt. “The Starborn could mind-speak. Still can.” She nodded up toward the river a level above, with the Murder Twins lurking somewhere on its other side. “Maybe the salt helped her mind-speak with Hel. Maybe someone in Hel can tell us how to kill the Asteri. Apollion himself ate Sirius … Maybe he’s had the answer all along.”

  Hunt blurted, “Don’t you dare—”

  Bryce lifted the jug to her lips, but lightning smashed the vessel apart before she could drink.

  She whirled, temper searing through her.

  Hunt was glowing with lightning, furious as he advanced on her. “Do not drink from that—”

  “This is not the time to go Alphahole!”

  “—without me,” he finished.

  Bryce could only gape at her mate as he grabbed the drinking bowl and held it out to her.

  Ready to follow her into Hel.

  * * *

  Together, then. As their powers, their souls, were linked, so they’d drink the salt-laced water together.

  “This … might be a very bad idea,” Tharion said as Bryce and Hunt sat facing each other, knee to knee and hand to hand.

  Hunt was inclined to agree. But he said, “Apollion appeared to both me and to Bryce in dream states. Maybe he was using the same communication method he’d used with Helena.”

  “So, what,” Baxian said as Sathia gathered the water in the drinking bowl. “You’re going to drink and hope you pass out and … talk to Hel? Ask them for answers about the sword and knife that they might have somehow forgotten to tell you until now?”

  “Helena left this here,” Bryce said, holding Hunt’s stare. No doubt or fear—only steely focus gleamed in his mate’s eyes. “Just as Silene left everything in the caves of her home world. For someone to find. Someone who could bear the Starsword, and whose starlight would lead them down here. Someone who might also have learned the truth … and known where to look.” Bryce turned her gaze to the ceiling, the stairs upward. “I think Helena left this to help us.”

  “Helena and Silene weren’t … good people,” Baxian warned.

  “No, but they hated the Asteri,” Bryce said. “They wanted to get rid of them as much as we do.” And it was hope that brimmed in her eyes then, so bright it nearly stole Hunt’s breath away. For a moment, not even a full heartbeat, he nearly believed they might succeed. “If this buys us a shot, whatever it might be, we have to try. I want answers. I want the truth.”

  Bryce lifted the bowl to her lips and drank.

  * * *

  Bryce was falling backward, and yet not moving. Her body remained kneeling, yet her soul fell, icing over, into the dark, into nothing and nowhere. A presence around her, beside her, flickered with lightning. Hunt.

  He was with her. Soul-falling alongside her.

  It was a leap. All of it was a leap, but she had to believe that Urd had led her here. That Helena had been as smart as her sister, and would have fought the male who abused her until the very end. That Helena had played the game not only for her lifetime, but for future generations.

  Hoping that maybe one day, millennia from her death, another female might come along with starlight—Theia’s starlight—in her veins. Passed down not from Pelias, but from Helena herself. Theia’s starlight.

  Passed down to her. Bryce Adelaide Quinlan.

  And maybe she wasn’t who Helena or Silene would have chosen, certainly not with their anti-human bullshit, but that wasn’t her problem.

  The falling sensation stopped. There was only blackness, frigid and dry. Her starlight flickered, a pale, feeble light in the impenetrable dark. A hand found hers, and she didn’t need to look to know Hunt stood beside her in … whatever this place was. This dreamworld.

  Two blue lights glowed in the distance, closing in on them. Hunt’s fingers tightened on hers in warning. His lightning flickered. But the lights drew nearer. And nearer. And when they crossed into the light of her star …

  Aidas was smiling faintly—joy and hope brightening his remarkable eyes. “It seems you got a little lost on your way to find me, Bryce Quinlan. But welcome to Hel.”

  58

  It took two days of working without rest to help the people of the Meadows. But Ithan didn’t mind, barely thought about the need to go to Avallen to find Sofie’s body or the exhaustion as he dug through the rubble, or carried out the dead or dying, or held down the wounded long enough for Hypaxia or another medwitch to save them. And still there were more. So many more humans, hurt or dead.

  There was no sign of the Governor, but the 33rd showed up, at least. The Aux—Fae and a scant number of wolves—arrived soon after. Ithan kept clear of the latter, both to avoid conflict and to avoid being spotted by any Asteri sympathizers who might have come to gloat over the ruins.

  But he kept his head down. Kept working. Doing what little he could to help or clear or at least respectfully move the fallen.

  There were no Sailings, not for the humans. There’d never been Sailings for them. So their bodies were laid out in rows upon rows inside the lobby of the nearest intact office building.

  Barely a dozen wolves had shown up. Only the equivalent of two packs had come to help. It was a disgrace.

  Something in this world had to change. And as Ithan piled up the dead, as he laid child after child in that building lobby, he realized that change had to start with him.

  Make your brother proud.

  He had to get to Avallen. Had to get Sigrid back. Only with her, with an alternate Fendyr heir to lead the wolves … Only then could changes begin.

  A new future. For all of them.

  * * *

  For the first five minutes, Tharion didn’t stop monitoring Bryce’s and Hunt’s breathing.

  Baxian and Tharion had caught them as they’d suddenly toppled backward, unconscious, and laid them gently on the black salt ground. They didn’t move. Only the rise and fall of their chests showed any signs of life. Whatever was happening, it indeed took place in their minds.

  Tharion, Sathia, and Baxian sat a few cautious feet away from their friends. “How long do we give them?” Sathia asked. “Until we try to wake them, I mean.”

  Tharion swapped a look with Baxian. “Fifteen minutes?”

  “Give them thirty,” Baxian said. Then added, “We’ll keep monitoring them, though.”

  Silence fell, interrupted only by their breathing and the sound of the stream trickling through the cavern. Beside Tharion, Sathia was turning the black salt drinking bowl over in her slender hands, again and again. Lost in thought.

  “You ever done anything like this?” Baxian asked, noting her unease.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not the adventurous sort.”

  “Have you gone through your Ordeal?” Baxian asked.

  She nodded shallowly. Not a good experience, then.

  Part of Tharion wanted to ask about it, but he said, “What happened with you and your brother to put such a divide between you?”

  Her eyes slashed to his. “What happened between you and the River Queen to put such a high bounty on your head?”

  He gave her an indolent smile. “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve pieced bits of it together. You upset her prissy daughter, and had to run. But what did you do to upset her in the first place?”

  Tharion drummed his fingers on the cold stone floor. “I wanted to call off our engagement. She didn’t.”

  Sathia straightened. “You were engaged? To the River Queen’s daughter?”

  “For ten years.”

  She set the bowl on the ground. “And she didn’t realize that after ten years, you didn’t want to marry her?”

  Tharion glanced to where Bryce and Hunt lay, deathly still. “I don’t really feel like talking about this.”

  Yet Sathia pushed, “So you called it off, but she … tried to keep it?”

  “And keep me. Beneath. Forever.”

  The dismay on her face set him laughing. Laughter was the sole alternative to crying. “Yeah.”

  “But you could have swum away.”

  “You can’t just swim away from the River Queen. She denies her daughter nothing. She’d have locked me in my humanoid form, to ensure I couldn’t swim out.”

  Again, that dismay on her face. “She’d do that to one of her own kind? Destroy your fins to confine you?”

  “She isn’t mer,” he said. “She’s an elemental. And yes, she does it to punish mer all the time.”

  “That’s barbaric.”

  “So is treating Fae females like broodmares and forcing them to marry.”

  Sathia only angled her head. “You ran away from marriage to the River Queen’s daughter … only to wind up married to a stranger.”

  He knew Baxian was listening closely, though the Helhound kept his focus on Bryce and Athalar. “It seemed like a better option.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  He sighed. And maybe because they were on some cursed island in the middle of the Haldren, maybe because they were hundreds of feet underground with only Cthona to witness it, he said, “My little sister. Lesia. She, ah, died last year.”

  Sathia seemed taken aback at the turn the conversation had taken. “I’m sorry, Tharion,” she said gently. She sounded sincere.

  Baxian murmured, “I didn’t know that. My condolences, Ketos.”

  Tharion couldn’t stop the memory of Lesia from flashing bright in his mind. Red-haired and beautiful and alive. His chest ached, threatening to cave in on itself.

  But it was better than the other memory of her—of the photographs her murderer had snapped of her body. What he’d done to her when Tharion hadn’t been there to protect her.

  Tharion went on, “I know you and Flynn have a … tense relationship. But you’re still his little sister. You were in trouble. And I knew that if Lesia had been in the same spot, I’d have wanted a decent male to help her out.”

  Sathia’s eyes softened. “Well, thank you. If we make it through all this”—she waved a hand to the caves, the world beyond—“I’ll see if there’s a way to liberate you from this … situation.”

  “Trust me, it’s in my best interest to stay married to you until the River Queen’s daughter moves on to some other poor bastard. If I’m single …”

  “She’ll come after you.”

  Tharion nodded. “It’s cowardly and pathetic, I know. And I mean, her mother will probably come after me and kill me anyway. But at least I won’t have to spend my life as a royal concubine.”

  “All right.” Sathia squared her shoulders. “Marriage it is, then.” She gave him a small smile. “For now.” Then she glanced to Bryce and Hunt. “You think they’re really in Hel?”

  “Part of me hopes yes, the other part hopes no,” Tharion answered.

  “They’re in Hel,” Baxian said quietly.

  Sathia twisted toward him. “How do you know?”

  Baxian pointed to their slumbering friends. “Look.”

  Bryce and Hunt lay peacefully on the black salt ground, hands entwined, their bodies covered in a thin layer of frost.

  * * *

  The black boat that Aidas led Bryce and Hunt into was a cross between the one that had brought them into Avallen and the ones that carried bodies to the Bone Quarter. But in lieu of a stag’s head, it was a stag’s skull at the prow, greenish flame dancing in its eyes as it sailed through the cave. The eerie green light illuminated black rock carved into pillars and buildings, walkways and temples.

  Ancient. And empty.

  Bryce had never seen a place so void of life. So … still. Even the Bone Quarter had a sense of being lived in, albeit by the dead. But here, nothing stirred.

  The river was wide, yet placid. The lap of water against the hull seemed to echo too loudly over the stones, over the ceiling so far above that it faded into the gloom.

  “It’s like a city of the dead,” Hunt murmured, draping a wing around Bryce.

  Aidas turned from where he stood at the prow, holding in his hands a long pole that he’d used to guide them. “That’s because it is.” He gestured with a pale hand to the buildings and temples and avenues. “This is where our beloved dead come to rest, with all the comforts of life around them.”

  “But we’re not … here-here,” Bryce said. “Right? We’re just dreaming?”

  “In a sense,” Aidas said. “Your physical body remains in your world.” He glanced over a shoulder. “In Helena’s cave.”

  “You knew about it this whole time,” Hunt accused.

  Aidas’s eyes gleamed. “Would you have believed me?”

  This close to Hunt, Bryce felt every muscle in his body tense. Her mate said, “The truth might have been a good start toward that.”

  Before Aidas could answer, the boat approached a small quay leading to what appeared to be a temple. A figure emerged from between the pillars of the temple and descended its front steps. Golden-haired, golden-skinned.

  Hunt’s lightning sparked, illuminating the whole city and river.

  Apollion lifted a hand. Pure, sizzling lightning danced around it, arcing out to meet Hunt’s.

  “Welcome, son,” said the Prince of the Pit.

  59

  Every word eddied from Hunt’s head. Apollion, Prince of the Pit, had called him—

  Bryce leapt out of the boat and onto the shore, chest blazing with starlight. “What the Hel did you just say?”

  No matter what tension or argument might lie between them, she’d go down swinging for him. Hunt jumped after her, wings steadying him as his boots hit the loose black stones. Apollion had called him son—

  The Prince of the Pit swept down the stairs, his every step seeming to echo through the vast cavern. Another male in dark armor followed him, his tightly curled hair almost hidden by his war helmet.

  “Thanatos,” Bryce said, drawing up short, pebbles skittering under her neon-pink sneakers.

  Hunt had enough sense left in him to get to his mate’s side, but Aidas was already there, lifting a hand. “We are here to talk. There will be no violence.”

  From within the ornate helm, Thanatos’s eyes blazed with murderous rage.

  “Do as he says,” Apollion ordered the Prince of the Ravine, halting at the base of the temple steps.

  Hunt’s lightning twined up his forearms, ready to strike as he growled at the Prince of the Pit, “What the fuck did you mean by—”

  He didn’t finish his words as Aidas reached to touch Bryce’s shoulder. Acting on instinct, Hunt lunged, intending to shove the Prince of the Chasm away from his mate.

  He went right through the demon prince.

  Hunt stumbled and lifted his hands. His fingers shimmered faintly with a pale, bluish light. Bryce had the same aura around her.

  They were ghosts here.

  Apollion let out a low chuckle as Hunt backed toward Bryce’s side once more. “You will find that you cannot harm us, nor we you, in such a state.” His deep voice pealed like thunder off the walls.