There was no mer court in the river wending like a snake through the city. There was barely any life at all beyond bottom-feeders and skittering things that clung to the shadows.

  Above, the world was chaos. Armies and missiles and wings.

  Here, the sounds were muffled. The water whispered to him where to go, where to bring the bag of sealed antidotes. Flowed with him, guided his powerful tail, right to the grate in the riverbank. His gills flared as he hauled away the metal. As he swam into the dark, lightless tunnel and switched on the aquatic headlamp he’d had the good sense to bring.

  And with the water guiding him, Tharion swam like Hel for the Asteri’s palace.

  * * *

  Bombs ruptured, and it was so much worse than the past spring. Brimstone missiles rose from the city, from the Asterian Guard hidden within it, from the mech-suits stirring to life atop Mount Hermon—

  So much destruction. Hyperconcentrated angelic wrath.

  Atop one of the hills beyond the city, Bryce was gasping for breath, a bit dizzy, as she yanked the Mask from her face. Hunt ran for where the Prince of the Chasm stood overlooking the dark beasts swarming toward the city walls and said, “Phase Two starts now.”

  Bryce mastered herself enough to stagger up to Aidas and Hunt. The armies of Hel, both terrestrial and airborne, all hungry and raging, were no fucking joke.

  She knew it had been the only way. To stand a chance, unleashing Hel had been the only way. Even so, its army was petrifying, allies or not. She had to trust that Aidas and the other princes had them on tight leashes.

  “They’re almost close enough,” Aidas said, clad in black armor akin to Thanatos’s. Bryce could only assume that his brothers were either among the fray or overseeing their own divisions of the teeming black mass.

  There was nothing to do for a moment but watch the Asterian Guard decide they had the beasts on the run and begin advancing beyond the city walls.

  Wings fluttered nearby, and Isaiah and Naomi touched down beside Hunt.

  “Ready?” Isaiah asked, clad in the black battle-suit of the 33rd.

  “Soon,” Aidas said. The angels still maintained a healthy distance from him, but had at least lost their disbelieving, wary expressions in his presence.

  The Asterian Guard swept out into the hills and valleys below, their mech-suits marching among them, and where they struck, demons died.

  “Do you think,” Aidas mused, “that they have any idea what’s about to happen to them?”

  “No,” Hunt said, smiling darkly. “And neither does Rigelus.”

  Bryce slid the Mask back on, and its ungodly, leeching presence ate into her soul. But the star inside her seemed to hold the Mask at bay.

  “That’ll teach him to think he can outsmart us,” Naomi said.

  The Asterian Guard, white plumes of horsehair on their helmets shining bright in the daylight, advanced through the field of demons. The feet of the scores of mech-suits among them shook the earth.

  “I think the three legions he sent to Nena,” Naomi said, “will be in for quite a surprise when they find that half of Hel’s army is still there and waiting for them.”

  Isaiah said, with no small amount of satisfaction, “They should be getting word to the Asteri right about”—he checked his phone—“now.”

  “Perfect,” Aidas purred. “Then we’re ready.”

  “Messaging Declan,” Naomi said, typing into her phone. The Fae warrior was waiting in the van, the hacked imperial military network laid bare at his fingertips.

  The Asteri’s mech-suits halted mid-stride. The Asterian Guard paused, glancing at the fancy new machines that had malfunctioned all at once. The glowing eyes of the mech-suits faded and died out.

  “Magic and machines,” Isaiah said. “Never a good combination.”

  “It’s a go,” Naomi said, reading a message on her phone. “Do your thing, Quinlan.”

  They all looked to Bryce.

  Alive and not-alive. Dead and undead. Bryce reached out a hand toward the stilled metal army below. Cold, awful power went through her. But her will was their will. Her will was everything.

  Rise, Bryce said, blasting the thought out. Fight. Obey Isaiah Tiberian and Naomi Boreas. Hel is your ally—you fight beside them.

  Only she could see the twinkling souls of the Fallen, drifting toward those suits from the nearby hilltop, alighting on them one by one by one.

  The eyes of the suits blazed again. Bryce saw the nearest mech-suit lift its metal arm in front of its face. Watch its fingers wriggle with something like wonder.

  Then it turned to the closest Asterian Guard and bashed the soldier’s head in.

  “Holy gods,” Naomi breathed as the mech-suits, one after another, began to march away from the Asterian Guard.

  The souls of the Fallen had waited for the moment the Asterian Guard and their mech-suits had begun to march toward the city below.

  And the remaining souls of the Fallen that didn’t have a mech-suit to slip into … Well, there were plenty of dead demons and Asterian Guards with bodies intact enough for occupying. Twitching, as if adjusting to the new limbs, those corpses lurched to their feet. Came to stand beside their Fallen brethren in their mech-suit hosts.

  “You’re up,” Hunt said to Isaiah and Naomi. “Time to get into the city.”

  The angels bowed their heads. And with a great thrust of their wings, they launched skyward. Isaiah’s voice boomed out. “Fallen, you are now Risen! To the gates!”

  Isaiah looked back at Hunt, his eyes brimming with pride and determination. The warrior touched his heart and flew off. Hunt lifted his arm in salute and farewell, as if beyond words.

  It was indeed a sight beyond words—beyond any description. An army of the undead, of machines and demons, marched for the city walls.

  “Incoming,” Hunt said. “Seems like that footage kept them distracted until now.”

  “Right on time,” Aidas confirmed, as the glowing figures approached the battlefield spread before the northern gates of the Eternal City, come to exterminate this threat themselves.

  The Asteri.

  And walking toward them, the armies parting before him, was the Prince of the Ravine, with the Prince of the Pit trailing close behind.

  90

  Hunt refrained from heaving a sigh of relief, even if his helmet would have masked the sound.

  Bryce had freed the souls of the Fallen from the throne room and placed them into those mech-suit bodies, but the hardest and most dangerous part of their plan started now. Hunt fought to keep his breathing steady, his focus on the unfolding battle and chaos. His helmet blared with alerts and assessments.

  Aidas unsheathed a shining silver blade that seemed to glow with bluish light. “My turn,” the demon prince said, the dry breeze whipping his pale blond hair. He asked Bryce, “A ride?”

  Hunt had only a moment to glimpse the worry, the fear in her eyes as she grabbed Aidas’s hand, then Hunt’s, and teleported them. With the power of Theia’s star, it barely took a moment. Barely seemed to drain her. But what arose around them as they reappeared on the battlefield was a scene straight from a nightmare.

  Kristallos demons, deathstalkers, hounds like the Shepherd, and worse … the pets of Thanatos, all racing past the Asteri and into the city itself. Hunt’s helmet turned them all into distant figures, the world awash in red and black.

  But the Asteri had bigger fish to fry: The three princes now before them. Especially Apollion, standing between his brothers.

  There was no sign of Rigelus. He’d sent the other five Asteri to do his dirty work.

  “You shall pay for marching on our city,” Polaris snapped at them.

  Hunt unfurled his power, lightning bright even from behind the visor of his helmet. Beside him, Bryce had already peeled off the Mask. And beyond them, around them, the Fallen—his Fallen, now in bodies of metal and nightmares, all still bound by the command to follow Isaiah and Naomi—engaged the Asterian Guard. Swarmed them.

  Miniature brimstone missiles launched from the mech-suits’ shoulder guns, fired at the Asterian Guard. Floating feathers and cinders were all that remained.

  It had been Hunt’s idea to play on Rigelus’s arrogance. He thought them reckless and stupid—thought they’d be dumb enough to believe that they could somehow smuggle an army down from Nena and launch a surprise attack on the Eternal City. That they’d be dumb enough to leave Hel open and vulnerable.

  So they’d let the Asteri split their Asterian Guard in two, sending half to Nena to conquer Hel … only to be slaughtered by a host of demons awaiting them there, under the command of one of Apollion’s captains.

  And this half of the guard, the most elite and trained of all angels …

  They wouldn’t stand a chance, either.

  Three Princes of Hel faced off against five Asteri in the dry scrub beyond the city walls, war exploding all around them.

  It was Polaris who looked to Bryce. “You shall die for this impertinence,” she sneered, and launched a blinding blast of raw power for her. Apollion stepped forward, a hand raised. Pure, devouring darkness destroyed Polaris’s light.

  And satisfaction like Hunt had never known coursed through him at the way the Asteri halted. Stepped back.

  Apollion inclined his golden head to the Asteri. “It has been an age.”

  “Do not let him get any closer,” Polaris hissed to the others, and as one, the Asteri attacked.

  The ground ruptured, and light met dark met light—

  Hunt whirled to Bryce, a shield of pure lightning crackling between them and the fighting. His voice was partially muffled by his helmet. “We need to get out of here—”

  “No,” Bryce said, eyes on the Asteri.

  “That’s not the plan,” Hunt growled, reaching for her elbow, intending to fly them away from the battlefield if she wouldn’t teleport them. They needed to destroy the firstlight core, or else all this would be pointless. With it still functional, the Asteri could run back to the palace, regenerate their powers, their bodies. “Bryce,” Hunt warned.

  But Bryce drew the Starsword and Truth-Teller, starlight and darkness flowing down the black blades. She didn’t unite them, though. At least there was still time to stick to the plan—

  Polaris burst through the fray, eyes burning with white light fixed on Bryce. “You should have run when you had the chance,” the North Star snarled.

  The air seemed to pulse with the power from those blades, from Bryce. Like they knew the time to unite had come at last.

  No running, then. Only adapting.

  So Hunt rallied his own power, rising to meet his mate.

  Polaris launched herself toward them, and Hunt struck: a blast of pure lightning at her feet, warping the very stone there, opening a pit for her to trip into—

  Bryce teleported. Slowly enough that Hunt knew she was already tiring, despite the extra power from the star, but then she was there, in front of Polaris as the Asteri hit the ground, and only Hunt’s lightning shield kept the blast of power from frying Bryce as she lifted the sword and the dagger above her head.

  Polaris’s eyes widened as Bryce plunged the blades into her chest. And as those blades thrust through skin and bone, the star in Bryce’s own chest flared out to meet them.

  It collided with the blades, and both sword and knife blazed bright, as if white-hot. The light extended up through Bryce’s hands, her arms, her body, turning her incandescent—

  Into a star. A sun.

  Polaris screamed, her mouth opening unnaturally wide.

  The slowing of the world when a great power died was familiar to Hunt from Micah’s death, from Shahar’s, from Sandriel’s, but this was so much worse.

  With the helmet, Hunt could truly see everything: the particles of dust drifting by, the droplets of Polaris’s blood rising upward like a red rain as Bryce shoved her blades deeper and deeper—

  The demon princes were turning toward them, their Asteri opponents with them.

  Gone were the princes’ humanoid skins. Creatures of darkness and decay stood there, mouths full of sharp teeth, leathery wings splayed. A great black mass lay within Apollion’s yawning open mouth as he surged for Octartis—

  The Asteri male flung up a wall of light.

  The brimstone missiles from the shoulders and forearms of the mech-suit hybrids sparked again, ember by ember by ember, and Hunt could see with perfect clarity as the spiraling missiles launched into the world, toward the panicking Asterian Guard.

  A deathstalker raced past, one galloping step lasting an age, a lifetime, an eon as it seemed to balance on one foot mid-stride.

  And Bryce was still there, falling with Polaris, those two black blades meeting in the Asteri’s chest, Theia’s star uniting them in power and purpose—

  Debris skittered toward Bryce, toward Polaris. Like whatever was happening at that intersection of the blades was drawing the world in, in, in.

  To the portal to nowhere.

  A primal chill sang down Hunt’s spine. Theia had been right; Aidas was right. That portal to nowhere, opening somehow inside Polaris, was dangerous not just to the Asteri, but to anyone in its reach.

  He had to stop it. He had to shut it fast, or else he knew, instinctively, that all of them would perish—

  Time dripped by as Polaris contorted in pain. Bryce’s hair was sucked toward the Asteri, toward the blades and wherever they were opening to—

  Too slow. Whatever Theia’s star was summoning, the portal was opening too slowly, and every second that it yawned wider threatened to swallow Bryce, too.

  He’d been made by Hel to help her. To end this. Helfire and starfire: a potent combination, Bryce had said in Hel.

  It was pure instinct. Pure desperation, too. Hunt unleashed his lightning, directed it toward the nexus where those blades met. It flowed like a sizzling ribbon through the world, past the deathstalkers, past the Princes of Hel, past the mech-suits—

  Hunt watched it collide with the sword and dagger right where they crossed, where Theia’s star still glowed between them, binding them in unholy union. And where his Helfire met starfire, where lightning met blades, it bloomed with blinding light.

  Polaris’s face twisted with agony. And still the world kept slowing, slowing—

  Tendrils of Hunt’s Helfire twined down the blade, into Polaris herself. Lightning danced over Bryce’s teeth, over her shocked eyes.

  He expected an outward explosion, expected to see every last bit of Asteri bone and brain rupture, shard by shard.

  But instead, Polaris imploded. Her chest caved in, sucked into the blades as if by a powerful vacuum. Followed by her abdomen and shoulders, and Polaris was screaming and screaming—

  Until he saw it, just a flash, so fast that in real time he’d never have witnessed it: the tiny, inky dot the two blades had made, right where they met.

  The thing Polaris had been sucked into. A black dot.

  It was there and then gone as Bryce stumbled forward, and the blades separated, and time resumed, so fast Hunt lost his breath. He touched a button on the side of his helmet, raising his visor, offering him lungfuls of fresh air.

  One of the Asteri roared, and the world itself shook, the city walls with it.

  But Bryce was staring down at the place where Polaris had been. At the blades in her hands, still wreathed in his Helfire and her starlight.

  A portal to nowhere. To a black hole.

  No wonder it had started to suck in Bryce as well. And the rest of the world. No wonder Theia had hesitated, if that was what she’d suspected would happen at the joining of the blades.

  Hunt’s body was vibrating with power as Bryce lifted her face to his. Pure, savage delight lit her eyes. She’d seen it, too—she knew she’d sent Polaris straight into the nothingness of a black hole.

  And—there. A kernel of worry sparked. Like it was setting in how dangerous it would be to open another one, let alone five more. What they’d risk each time.

  Still, they stared at each other, just for a moment. They’d killed a gods-damned Asteri.

  Hunt’s power buzzed through him again, in his very bones—

  No. That wasn’t his power buzzing through him. It was his phone. The interior speakers on his helmet patched Ruhn through.

  “Danaan.”

  “You need to get to the hall with the firstlight core,” Ruhn said. “We’ve … We need help.” The line went dead.

  “Bryce—” Hunt began, but when he turned to her, he found that pure light had again filled her eyes.

  He’d seen that face only once before—the day she’d killed Micah. When she’d looked at the cameras and shown the world what lurked under the freckles and smile: the apex predator beneath. Wrath’s bruised heart.

  Whatever it took to end this … she’d do it. His blood pumped through him, sparking at that look, at what she had done—

  “Go,” shouted the thing Aidas had become, identifiable only by those blazing blue eyes as he faced Octartis beside Apollion.

  The princes looked like the worst of horrors, but Hunt knew their true nature now. They had come to help. And for a single heartbeat, pride at being a son of Hel threaded through him.

  Hunt looked back to Bryce, shutting the helmet’s visor over his eyes again. “We have to get to the hall with the firstlight core,” he said, but she was already reaching for him. Grabbing his hand, primal fury blazing on her face, the Starsword and Truth-Teller again sheathed.

  A blink, and they were gone.

  She was draining fast. They landed in a hallway three levels up, if the number on the nearby stairwell entrance was any indication.

  Blood leaked from her nose, and Hunt might have fretted had he not heard the snarls surrounding them. Had his helmet not blared with alerts.

  They’d teleported into a corridor full of deathstalkers.

  Thanatos had sent his pets into the palace to distract and occupy any Asteri who might have stayed away from the battlefield, but his grip on them must have been weak, or he simply did not care.