She fired the Godslayer Rifle into the firstlight core.

  * * *

  The Asteri screamed, and time dripped by as the bullet fired from the rifle, slow enough that Bryce could see the writing on its side: Memento Mori.

  Powered by the souls of the dead, of Connor and the Pack of Devils and so many more … the dead sacrificing for the sake of the living. The dead, yielding eternity so Midgard might be free.

  The bullet spiraled downward, into the light, toward that final crystal barrier.

  Rigelus lunged for her, his hands incandescent with uncut power. Once he touched her, she’d be dead—

  And maybe this was what Danika had planned all along, in putting the Horn in her, wanting her to claim that other piece of Theia’s star from Avallen. Maybe this was what Urd had planned for her, had whispered she might do ever since she had accessed her power, or what Hel had imagined she and Hunt might one day do.

  She wished she’d had a bit more time with Hunt. With her parents and friends. A bit more time to savor the sun, and the sky, and the sea. To listen to music, all the music she could ever hear. To dance—just one more step or spin—

  Rigelus was still reaching for her arm with his bright hands; the bullet was still spiraling. And as that bullet of secondlight smashed through that final layer of crystal, as it tunneled down and down—

  Bryce wished she’d had more time.

  But she didn’t. And if this was the time that she had been given … she’d make it count.

  I believe it all happened for a reason. I believe it wasn’t for nothing.

  From far away, the words she’d spoken at the Gate the previous spring echoed.

  All that had happened had been for this. Not for her, but for Midgard. For the safety and future of all worlds.

  And as the bullet erupted in the firstlight core, as Rigelus’s hand wrapped around her wrist and pure acid burned her skin and bones where he touched her—

  Like the battery she was, she grabbed his power. Sucked it into herself.

  Light met light and yet—Rigelus’s starlight wasn’t light at all.

  It was power, yes. But it was firstlight. It was the power of Midgard. Of the people.

  It flowed into her, so much power that it nearly knocked the breath out of her lungs. Time slowed further, and still she seized more of Rigelus’s power.

  His power indicator on the wall plummeted.

  Rigelus reeled back, releasing her, either in pain or rage or fear, she didn’t know—

  His light was not his own. His light had been stolen from the people of Midgard. He was a living gate, storing that power, and just as she’d taken it from the Gates this spring, just as it had fueled her Ascent, fueled her own power to new levels … now it became hers.

  Without the firstlight, without the people of Midgard and every other planet they’d bled dry … without the power of the people, these Asteri fuckers were nothing.

  And with that knowledge, that undeniable truth, Bryce sent all that power through the Horn in her back.

  Right as the core ruptured.

  Midgard’s kill switch flipped on. Mere feet away, the world began to cave in, sucking itself inward, obliterating everything—

  Bryce willed it, and the Horn obeyed.

  A portal opened—right in front of the core and the dark dot that was emerging from it, vacuuming in all life. Bryce sent the core, that lifeless, growing dot, through her portal.

  The Asteri screamed again, and didn’t stop. Like they knew she’d conjured her own kill switch.

  A thought, and Bryce widened her portal enough that it sucked in the Asteri, their screams vanishing as they went. Rigelus and his bright hands were now a dim glow, still reaching for Midgard, clinging to it as he was pulled in.

  Bryce had a heartbeat to take in what—where—she’d opened a portal to: a black, airless place, dotted with small, distant stars. A heartbeat, and then she was yanked in, too.

  Straight to deep space.

  97

  The Asteri’s crystal palace was collapsing.

  Near the city walls, a crack and boom hollowed out Ruhn’s ears, rocking through him. He looked back over a shoulder to see the palace’s towers begin to sway and topple.

  “Bryce,” he gasped out.

  Tharion, now awake and walking gingerly, halted, the twins—who’d been helping him along—pausing with him.

  The entire world halted as a shudder went through it. As light ruptured from below the palace. A great force, like a whirlpool sucking them in, in, in, began pulling at their edges.

  “Run,” Tharion breathed, sensing it, too.

  Nodding, Ruhn grabbed both boys by the hand. They raced the last few blocks to the city gates, Tharion struggling to keep up.

  Even as Ruhn felt that tug toward the collapsing palace, and knew there would be no escaping.

  * * *

  Bryce had left him.

  She had left him, and teleported down to those monsters alone. Hunt hadn’t made it far, Holstrom on his heels, before that boom had rocked the palace, and the skies had opened up above somehow, and the palace was collapsing down, down, down—

  It was a choice between letting Holstrom die or keep trying to make it to Bryce.

  And because he knew his mate would never forgive him if he abandoned Ithan, Hunt grabbed the wolf and launched into the air, dodging falling blocks of crystal and stone and metal.

  He had no idea where they landed, only that it was on the rim of a giant crater that had not been there before. It reminded him of the news footage he’d seen of what remained of Asphodel Meadows—he could only wonder if Bryce had done so intentionally.

  But as Hunt shook the blood and dust from his eyes, he saw what lay at the crater’s heart: a gaping void. Stars beyond it.

  The force of the void yanked him inward, tugged him toward it—

  “Go,” he ordered Holstrom. “Get as many people as you can out of the way.”

  Because on the other side of the portal that Bryce had somehow opened into the stars, there was a wall of impenetrable darkness. Hunt could just make out the glowing figures being sucked toward it.

  Bryce had opened a black hole in the middle of Midgard.

  Had she done it with the blades? Or had the joining of the Starsword and Truth-Teller merely given her the idea of how she might capture all the Asteri at once, rather than picking them off individually?

  It didn’t matter.

  Nothing mattered, because there was a fucking black hole on the other side of that portal, and the force of it was so strong that this side of the portal was being sucked toward it, too—

  But that didn’t matter, either.

  Because there, among those glowing lights of the Asteri … that was Bryce’s starlight.

  And she was headed to that black hole as well.

  * * *

  Bryce knew she should be dead. There was no air here, no warmth.

  Maybe it was the Horn in her flesh, the Made essence of her, that kept her alive—just enough.

  It had been a gamble. But she’d seen what the Starsword and Truth-Teller had done to Polaris. They had created a void that had sucked the Asteri in—the only sort of prison that might destroy a being of light. The only force in the universe that ate light, so strong no light could ever escape it. A portal to nowhere.

  To a black hole.

  Wasn’t that the unholy power that Apollion possessed? The power of the Void. The antithesis of light.

  The only thing that could kill a planet in one bite. Destroy the Asteri, and Midgard with them.

  The Asteri knew it as well—they’d always known it, and employed it for their kill switch, to be activated upon destruction of the firstlight core.

  So she’d met their black hole with one of her own. A bigger one. A black hole—a void—to eat other black holes.

  Because Bryce couldn’t let that happen to Midgard. She’d opened her portal to her black hole only wide enough for those who were right next to the core to be sucked in with it.

  And now she was here, careening through space with the Asteri.

  Light poured from the glowing beings around her, their screams silenced from lack of air. Behind her, the only light snuck in through a sliver she’d left behind … a sliver she still needed to close. One small window to Midgard. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not yet.

  She let herself look at that sliver of light, of blue sky. The last trace of home.

  I believe it all happened for a reason. I believe it wasn’t for nothing.

  Ahead of the Asteri was the glowing mass that was the firstlight core, the black, growing hole in the heart of it …

  The light stretched and bent as it was pulled into the yawning maw of the larger black hole. And then was gone.

  Not one trace of it remained. No more kill switch, no more firstlight. Midgard was free of them.

  That sliver of light thinned further. It was now too far for her to reach. She had no way of getting back to the portal. No way of propelling herself there. There was just this, the slow drift toward the event horizon of the black hole. The inevitable, crushing end.

  Ahead of her, the first two Asteri, Hesperus and Eosphoros, were nearing that line of no return. They were clawing at nothing, trying to find any sort of purchase in the emptiness of space to haul them away from the yawning mouth of the black hole—

  But their glowing fingers found nothing at all as they slid over that line and vanished.

  Time slowed for a heartbeat—only one, time dragging, dragging—and then resumed. Their deaths had been fast. A swift swallow.

  I believe it all happened for a reason. I believe it wasn’t for nothing.

  Rigelus and Austrus were next, but the two were clinging to each other.

  No, she saw all at once: it was Austrus who was clinging, frantic as a drowning person, and Rigelus was trying to pry himself free, blasting his fellow Asteri with remnants of power that Austrus absorbed—

  Perhaps if she hadn’t drained Rigelus to the dregs, he might have succeeded. The Bright Hand seemed to realize it, too. Decided on a different route to free himself, because he got his feet up between them and kicked.

  Austrus went tumbling back—straight for the event horizon. His screams made no sound.

  Time slowed and shuddered as the black hole devoured him, too.

  And then there was only Rigelus, still glowing—but weakly. That kick he’d given Austrus had propelled him toward Bryce. There was nothing she could do to escape him, no way to paddle out of his range—

  Rigelus’s expression revealed undiluted hate as he collided with her. As they spun out through space, with no meaning to up or down, and whatever protection the Horn gave her seemed to buckle in the Asteri’s presence.

  The Horn would bow to its maker, its master.

  She needed air. She needed air—

  Bryce shoved at him, freeing a bit of space between their bodies. Not severing contact, but enough that the Horn’s protection snapped back into place, and she could breathe.

  Rigelus was speaking, shouting in her face, but no words reached her. There was no sound in space. But loathing twisted his face, and she knew he beheld the same in hers as she sucked in a breath. Her last, she knew. She’d make it count, too.

  Bryce grabbed his scrawny torso and wrapped her arms, then her legs around it.

  Rigelus had a one-way ticket for that black hole—she’d make sure of it.

  Even if she went with him.

  98

  His Umbra Mortis helmet discarded in the rubble beside him, Hunt stared at the giant, dark thing that had appeared in the center of the city and was slowly devouring everything around it.

  Bryce was in that hole. A dark wind whipped at Hunt’s hair, and he knew without looking who had arrived at his side.

  “I told her to choose to live,” Aidas murmured sadly, gazing toward the starry black expanse.

  “She wouldn’t be Bryce if she had chosen herself,” Hunt said hoarsely. He wouldn’t love her this much if she wasn’t the sort of person who would have jumped in. “We have to help her,” he growled, wings braced against the tug of the black hole trying to pull all of Midgard in with it.

  “There’s nothing that can be done,” Aidas said, his voice full of sorrow.

  “I have to try.” Hunt’s knees bent, his wings spread, preparing himself for that leap into space. To Bryce. And that eternal wall of black beyond where his mate glowed.

  “You go in there, and you will die,” Aidas said. “There is no air to propel you, nothing for your wings to grasp onto to carry you forward to her. You will drift, and she will still wind up with Rigelus in the Void, and you will follow her in, helpless, a few minutes later.”

  “But she left the portal open,” Hunt said. “To Midgard.”

  Aidas turned those weary eyes to him. “I believe it shall shut when she and the Horn in her back are obliterated.”

  “She left it open to come home,” Hunt snarled. He studied the Mask in his hands. She’d left it with him … why? He’d have no ability to get it back to the Fae in their home world. Hel, he couldn’t even wield the damn thing. He wasn’t Made; he couldn’t command it.

  “She is likely already dead from lack of oxygen,” Aidas said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t accept that for one minute,” Hunt raged. “I refuse to accept that—”

  “Then go die with her,” Aidas said, not unkindly. “If that’s your wish, then do so now. She and Rigelus already approach the Void’s edge.”

  Hunt studied the Mask again.

  Bryce did nothing without a reason. She had left him with the Mask, knowing she was headed to her death. She’d left it with her mate … her mate, who had a little bit of her Made essence in him thanks to their lovemaking last night.

  Which might make him capable of wielding it. For just long enough.

  She had given everything for Midgard. For him.

  That day last spring, when all hope had been lost, she had made the Drop alone. To save him, and to save the city—and she had done it from pure love. She had done it without expecting to come back.

  Just as she must have jumped through this portal suspecting she’d never return.

  Demons were spilling into the streets, and the Asterian Guard was still fighting, unaware that their remaining masters were headed toward obliteration. The mech-suits of the Fallen and their enemies clashed.

  Bryce had gone into death itself for him that day in the spring.

  Hunt could do no less for her.

  “Athalar,” Aidas said as he gazed at the hole in the world. “It is done. Come—we must finish this. Even with the Asteri gone, there are other battles to fight before the day is won.”

  The words might have sunk in then—the Asteri gone—but the ground shook behind him.

  Hunt turned. A mech-suit stood there, towering over him. No pilot—this was one of the Fallen. The glowing green eyes shifted between him and the hole in the universe, the small bit of light drifting, drifting toward that infinite darkness.

  The mech-suit held out a hand, and Hunt knew.

  He knew which of the Fallen controlled this suit, whose soul had come to offer a hand. To help him do the impossible.

  “Shahar,” he said, tears falling.

  The mech-suit, the Archangel’s soul within it, inclined its head. Aidas took a step back, as if surprised.

  In the streets, the other suits halted. Fell to their knees, bowing. Hunt could feel them—the souls of the Fallen. Swarming around him, around the suit.

  But Shahar simply knelt before Hunt and opened the pilot’s door.

  His wings might not work in space, but the propulsion from the suit’s weapons would.

  Hunt didn’t hesitate. He climbed in, wings furled tight in the small interior, and yanked the metal door shut.

  “Thank you,” he said to the Archangel, to the Fallen he now felt pressing around him.

  He’d once been forced to take mech-suits apart on the battlefield to help Shahar’s sister destroy humans. Now this one would help him save a life. The life that mattered to him more than any other.

  Hunt didn’t look at Aidas, at the collapsed palace sending debris skittering toward the portal, the black hole so enormous its pull threatened to drag them all in. Hunt just stared directly at the void as he began running, suit thundering around him, straight for that portal.

  And leapt in after his mate.

  * * *

  It was too far.

  Not for the suit, whose blasts of power sent Hunt careening toward Bryce and Rigelus, but for the oxygen systems. They screamed at him on the screens, flashing red. Air became thin; his lungs ached—

  Hunt did the only thing he could think to do. He slid the Mask onto his face.

  To escape death, he’d don its trappings. The Umbra Mortis in truth.

  The Mask ripped apart his soul.

  Life and death—that was all that space, the universe, really was. But that chasm yawning wide, so close to Bryce and Rigelus … that was death incarnate.

  They were struggling. He could see that now. Light flaring between them, rippling into nothing, both trying to get away from the other, to blast away—

  There was only one brimstone missile left in the suit. Hunt took aim toward his mate and Rigelus. They were moving too swiftly, too closely. To shoot one would be to shoot the other.

  He could have sworn a light, ghostly hand guided his to the release button.

  “She’ll get thrown in, too,” Hunt whispered to Shahar.

  That ghostly hand pressed—lightly, as if it was all she could manage—on his hand. On the button.

  As if to say, Fire.

  And the gods had never done him any favors, Urd had certainly never helped him, yet …

  Maybe they had.

  Maybe that day he’d first met Bryce, the gods had sent him there. Not to be some instrument of Hel, but because Urd knew that there would be a female who would be kind and selfless and brave, who would give everything for her city, for her planet. And that she would need someone to give everything back to her.