Would it be enough to draw the Asteri’s attention away? Cormac had incinerated the jeep with his fire magic moments before they’d shot the doctor—surely that would warrant a message to the Asteri. And this shitshow unfolding …

  Cormac skidded to a stop, Tharion with him. Both of them fell silent.

  A familiar female, clad in black and armed with a rifle, stepped into their path.

  Pippa pointed the gun at Cormac. “I’ve been looking forward to this.” Her rifle cracked, and Cormac teleported, but too slowly. His powers were drained.

  Blood sprayed a moment before Cormac vanished—then appeared behind Pippa.

  The bullet had passed through his shoulder, and Tharion launched into movement as Pippa twisted toward the prince.

  Tharion was stopped by shaking ground, though. A glowing, electrified sword plunged into the floor in front of him.

  A mech-suit sword.

  Cormac shouted to Tharion, “Get out of here!” The prince faced off against Pippa as the woman fired again.

  Tharion knew that tone. Knew that look. And it was then that he understood.

  Cormac hadn’t just gone rogue. He’d never intended to get out of here alive.

  The door marked Dusk had been left unlocked. Bryce supposed she had Declan to thank for the dead electronic keypad.

  Braziers of firstlight glowed in the corners of the room, dimly illuminating the space. A round table occupied the middle. Seven seats around it.

  Her blood chilled.

  A small metal machine sat in the center of the table. A projection device. But Bryce’s attention snagged on the stone walls, covered in paper.

  Star-maps—of constellations and solar systems, marked up with scribbled notations and pinned with red dots. Her mouth dried out as she approached the one nearest. A solar system she didn’t recognize, with five planets orbiting a massive sun.

  One planet in the habitable zone had been pinned and labeled.

  Rentharr. Conq. A.E. 14000.

  A.E. She didn’t know that dating system. But she could guess what Conq. meant.

  Conquered … by the Asteri? She’d never heard of a planet called Rentharr. Scribbled beside it was a brief note: A bellicose, aquatic people. Primordial land life. Little supply. Terminated A.E. 14007.

  “Oh gods,” Bryce breathed, and went to the next star-map.

  Iphraxia. Conq. A.E. 680. Lost A.E. 720.

  She read the note beside it and her blood iced over. Denizens learned of our methods too quickly. We lost many to their unified front. Evacuated.

  Somewhere out in the cosmos, a planet had managed to kick out the Asteri.

  Map to map, Bryce read the notes. Names of places that weren’t known in Midgard. Worlds that the Asteri had conquered, with notations about their use of firstlight and how they either lost or controlled those worlds. Fed on them until there was nothing left.

  Fed on their power … like she had with the Gate. Was she no better than them?

  The rear wall of the chamber held a map of this world.

  Midgard, the map read. Conq. A.E. 17003.

  Whatever A.E. was, if they’d been on this planet for fifteen thousand years, then they’d existed in the cosmos for far, far longer than that.

  If they could feed off firstlight, generate it somehow on each planet … could they live forever? Truly immortal and undying? Six ruled this world, but there’d originally been a seventh. How many existed beyond them?

  Pages of notes on Midgard had been pinned to the wall, along with drawings of creatures.

  Ideal world located. Indigenous life not sustainable, but conditions prime for colonization. Have contacted others to share bounties.

  Bryce’s brow furrowed. What the Hel did that mean?

  She peered at a drawing of a mer beside a sketch of a wolf shifter. The aquatic shifters can hold a hybrid form far more easily than those on land.

  She read the next page, with a drawing of a Fae female. They did not see the old enemy who offered a hand through space and time. Like a fish to bait, they came, and they opened the gates to us willingly. They walked through them—to Midgard—at our invitation, leaving behind the world they knew.

  Bryce backed away from the wall, crashing into the table.

  The Asteri had lured them all into this world from other planets. Somehow, using the Northern and Southern Rifts, or whatever way they traveled between worlds, they’d … drawn them into this place. To farm them. Feed off them. Forever.

  Everything was a lie. She’d known a lot of accepted history was bullshit, but this …

  She twisted to the projector device in the center of the table and stretched an arm to hit the button. A three-dimensional, round map of the cosmos erupted. Stars and planets and nebulas. Many marked with digital notes, as the papers on the walls had been.

  It was a digital orrery. Like the metal one she’d glimpsed as a kid in the Autumn King’s study. Like the one in the Astronomer’s chamber.

  Was this what Danika had learned in her studies on bloodlines? That they’d all come from elsewhere—but had been lured and trapped here? And then fed on by these immortal leeches?

  The map of the universe rotated above her. So many worlds. Bryce reached out to touch one. The digital note immediately appeared beside it.

  Urganis. Children were ideal nutrition. Adults incompatible.

  She swallowed against the dryness in her throat. That was it. All that remained of a distant world. A note about whether its people made for good eating and what the Asteri had done to its young.

  Was there a home planet? Some original world the Asteri had come from, bled so dry that they’d needed to go hunting in the wilds of space?

  She began flicking through planets, one after another after another, clawing past the stars and cosmic clouds of dust.

  Her heart stopped at one.

  Hel.

  The ground seemed to slide away from beneath her.

  Hel. Lost A.E. 17001.

  She had to sink into one of the chairs as she read the note. A dark, cold world with mighty creatures of night. They saw through our lures. Once warring factions, the royal armies of Hel united and marched against us. We were overwhelmed and abandoned their world, but they gave chase. Learned from our captured lieutenants how to slip between the cracks in realms.

  Bryce was dimly aware of her shaking body, her shallow breaths.

  They found us on Midgard in 17002. Tried to convince our lured prey of what we were, and some fell to their charms. We lost a third of our meals to them. War lasted until nearly the end of 17003. They were defeated and sent back to Hel. Far too dangerous to allow them access to this world again, though they might try. They developed attachments to the Midgard colonists.

  “Theia,” Bryce whispered hoarsely. Aidas had loved the Fae queen, and …

  Hel had come to help, exactly as Apollion had said. Hel had kicked the Asteri from their own world, but … Tears stung her eyes. The demon princes had felt a moral obligation to chase after the Asteri so they might never prey upon another world. To spare others.

  Bryce began sifting through planets again. So many worlds. So many people, their children with them.

  It had to be here—the Asteri’s home world. She’d find it and tell the Princes of Hel about it, and once they were done beating these assholes into dust here on Midgard, they’d go to that home world and they’d blow it the fuck up—

  She was sobbing through her teeth.

  This empire, this world … it was just one massive buffet for the six beings ruling it.

  Hel had tried to save them. For fifteen thousand years, Hel had never stopped trying to find a way back here. To free them from the Asteri.

  “Where the fuck did you come from?” she seethed.

  Worlds ripped past her fingertips, along with the Asteri’s dispassionate notes. Most planets were not as lucky as Hel had been.

  They rose up. We left them in cinders.

  Firstlight tasted off. Terminated world.

  Denizens launched bombs at us that left planet and inhabitants too full of radiation to be viable food. Left to rot in their waste.

  Firstlight too weak. Terminated world but kept several citizens who produced good firstlight to sustain us on travels. Children proved hearty, but did not take to our travel method.

  These psychotic, soulless monsters—

  “You will not find our home world there,” a cold voice said through the intercom on the table. “Even we have forgotten where its ruins lie.”

  Bryce panted, only rage coursing through her as she said to Rigelus, “I am going to fucking kill you.”

  73

  Rigelus laughed. “I was under the impression that you were only here to access the information for which Sofie Renast and Danika Fendyr died. You’re going to kill me as well?”

  Bryce squeezed shaking hands into fists. “Why? Why do any of this?”

  “Why do you drink water and eat food? We are higher beings. We are gods. You cannot blame us if our source of nutrition is inconvenient for you. We keep you healthy, and happy, and allow you to roam free on this planet. We have even let the humans live all this time, just to give you Vanir someone to rule over. In exchange, all we ask is a little of your power.”

  “You’re parasites.”

  “What are all creatures, feeding off their resources? You should see what the inhabitants of some worlds did to their planets—the rubbish, the pollution, the poisoned seas. Was it not fitting that we returned the favor?”

  “You don’t get to pretend that this is some savior story.”

  Rigelus chuckled, and the sound knocked her from her fury enough to remember Hunt and Ruhn, and, oh gods, if Rigelus knew she was here, he’d find them—

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “You left such a noble audiomail to your friend Juniper. Of course, once I heard it, I knew there was only one place you could be going. Here. To me. Precisely as I had hoped—and planned.”

  She shut away her questions, instead demanding, “Why do you want me here?”

  “To reopen the Rifts.”

  Her blood froze. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t you?” The cold voice slithered through the intercom. “You are Starborn, and have the Horn bound to your body and power. Your ancestors wielded the Horn and another Fae object that allowed them to enter this world. Stolen, of course, from their original masters—our people. Our people, who built fearsome warriors in that world to be their army. All of them prototypes for the angels in this one. And all of them traitors to their creators, joining the Fae to overthrow my brothers and sisters a thousand years before we arrived on Midgard. They slew my siblings.”

  Her head spun. “I don’t understand.”

  “Midgard is a base. We opened the doors to other worlds to lure their citizens here—so many powerful beings, all so eager to conquer new planets. Not realizing we were their conquerors. But we also opened the doors so we might conquer those other worlds as well. The Fae—Queen Theia and her two foolish daughters—realized that, though too late. Her people were already here, but she and the princesses discovered where my siblings had hidden the access points in their world.”

  Rage rippled through his every word. “Your Starborn ancestors shut the gates to stop us from invading their realm once more and reminding them who their true masters are. And in the process, they shut the gates to all other worlds, including those to Hel, their stalwart allies. And so we have been trapped here. Cut off from the cosmos. All that is left of our people, though our mystics beneath this palace have long sought to find any other survivors, any planets where they might be hiding.”

  Bryce shook. The Astronomer had been right about the host of mystics here. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Why do you think we allowed you to live this spring? You are the key to opening the doors between worlds again. You will undo the actions of one ignorant princess fifteen thousand years ago.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Are your mate and brother not here with you?”

  “No.”

  Rigelus laughed. “You’re so like Danika—a born liar.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She lifted her chin. “You knew she was onto you.”

  “Of course. Her quest for the truth began with her bloodhound gift. Not a gift of the body’s strength, but of magic, such as the shifters should not have. She could scent other shifters with strange powers.”

  Like Sofie. And Baxian. Danika had found him through researching his bloodline, but had she scented it, too?

  “It prompted her to investigate her own bloodline’s history, all the way back to the shifters’ arrival in this world, to learn where her gifts came from. And she eventually began to suspect the truth.”

  Bryce’s throat worked. “Look, I already did the whole villain monologuing thing with Micah this spring, so cut to the chase.”

  Rigelus chuckled again. “We shall get to that in a moment.” He went on, “Danika realized that the shifters are Fae.”

  Bryce blinked. “What?”

  “Not your kind of Fae, of course—your breed dwelled in a lovely, verdant land, rich with magic. If it’s of any interest to you, your Starborn bloodline specifically hailed from a small isle a few miles from the mainland. And while the mainland had all manner of climes, the isle existed in beautiful, near-permanent twilight. But only a select few in the entirety of your world could shift from their humanoid forms to animal ones. The Midgard shifters were Fae from a different planet. All the Fae in that world shared their form with an animal. The mer descended from them, too. Perhaps they once shared a world with your breed of Fae, but they had been alone on their planet for long enough to develop their own gifts.”

  “They don’t have pointed ears.”

  “Oh, we bred that out of them. It was gone within a few generations.”

  An isle of near-permanent twilight, the home world of her breed of Fae … A land of Dusk.

  “Dusk’s Truth,” Bryce breathed. It wasn’t just the name of this room that Danika had been talking about with Sofie.

  Rigelus didn’t answer, and she didn’t know what to make of it. But Bryce asked, “Why lie to everyone?”

  “Two breeds of Fae? Both rich in magic? They were ideal food. We couldn’t allow them to unify against us.”

  “So you turned them against each other. Made them two species at odds.”

  “Yes. The shifters easily and swiftly forgot what they had once been. They gladly gave themselves to us and did our bidding. Led our armies. And still do.”

  The Prime had said something similar. The wolves had lost what they had once been. Danika had known that. Danika had known the shifters had once been Fae. Were still Fae—but a different kind.

  “And Project Thurr? Why was Danika so interested in that?”

  “Thurr was the last time someone got as far as Danika did in learning about us. It didn’t end well for them. I suppose she wanted to learn from their mistakes before acting.”

  “She was going to tell everyone what you were.”

  “Perhaps, but she knew she had to do it slowly. She started with Ophion. But her research into the bloodlines and the origins of the shifters, her belief that they’d once been a different type of Fae, from a different Fae world, was important enough that they put her in touch with one of their most talented agents: Sofie Renast. From what I gather, Danika was very intrigued by Sofie and her powers. But Sofie, you see, had a theory, too. About energy. What her thunderbird gifts sensed while using firstlight. And even better for Danika: Sofie was an unknown. Danika would be noticed poking about, but Sofie, as a passing human working in the archives, was easily missed. So Danika sent her to learn more, to go undercover, as you call it.”

  She’d made an enormous mistake coming here.

  “We were eventually notified by one of our mystics here, who learned it from prying into the mind of one of Ophion’s Command. So we did a little tugging. Pointed Micah toward synth. Toward Danika.”

  “No.” The word was a whisper.

  “You think Micah acted alone? He was a brash, arrogant male. All it took was some nudging, and he killed her for us. Had no idea it was on our behalf, but it played out as we planned: he was eventually caught and killed for disturbing our peace. I thank you for that.”

  Bryce shot from her chair. They’d killed Danika—to keep all of this secret. She would rip them to shreds.

  “You can try to run,” Rigelus said. “If that will make you feel better.”

  Bryce didn’t give him a chance to say more before she teleported back to the alcove, Hunt’s power fading like a dimming flame inside her.

  No sign of Ruhn. But Hunt—

  He was on his knees, Umbra Mortis helmet discarded on the stone floor beside him. Hands behind his head, bound with gorsian manacles.

  His eyes turned wild, pleading, but there was nothing Bryce could do as freezing stone clamped around her wrists as well, and she found herself face-to-face with a grinning Harpy.

  74

  Tharion ran—or tried to. The mech-suit blocked his exit with a giant gun.

  The pilot inside grinned. “Time to fry, fish.”

  “Clever,” Tharion ground out, and leapt back as the cannon-gun fired. Only a smoking pile of rubble remained of the concrete where he’d stood.

  “Go!” Cormac yelled again, and Pippa’s rifle thundered.

  Tharion twisted to see the prince collapse to his knees, a gaping hole in his chest.

  He had to get him out. Couldn’t leave him like this, where recovery would likely be thwarted by a beheading. But if he stayed, if he wasn’t killed outright …

  He had four hours to reach water. The rebels would use that against him. And he might have sold his life away to the Viper Queen, but to live without his fins … He wasn’t ready to lose that piece of his soul.

  Cormac’s eyes rippled with fire as he met Tharion’s stare. Run, that gaze said.

  Tharion ran.

  The mech-suit behind him fired again, and he rolled between its massive legs. Shooting to his feet, he sped for the hole the mech-suit had made in the wall. Daylight poured in through the billowing smoke.