House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3)

In the city, light sparked and boomed—brimstone missiles. Made and fired by the Asterian Guard on the rooftops, spearing toward the demons of Hel’s armies. Arcing, golden, the missiles slammed into the dark ranks atop Mount Hermon. Earth and rock shattered, light blooming upward.

“And like the rodents you are,” Rigelus said, “I knew you’d leave an escape route for yourselves and your allies. Right to Hel. I knew you’d leave the Rift open.”

Hunt grabbed Bryce’s hand, preparing to get them out.

“So I sent three legions of my Asterian Guard to the Rift last night. I think they and their brimstone missiles will find Hel quite unguarded, with all its armies here.”

“We have to warn Aidas,” Hunt said, squeezing her hand. Bryce looked at Rigelus once more—at his smirk of triumph at outwitting them—

And with a shove of her power, she teleported herself and Hunt out of the palace.

Right to the chaos of the hills beyond the city.



* * *



Ruhn and Lidia raced along the palace corridors, veiled in his shadows.

They’d found no sign of her sons. Nothing in the dungeons, the sight of which had given Ruhn such a jolt of pure terror he had nearly dropped their concealing shadows. And nothing in any of the holding cells. They’d made their way through the palace as quickly as they could while staying undetected. Dec had disabled many of the cameras, and Ruhn’s shadows took care of the rest. But after twenty minutes of fruitless searching, Ruhn grabbed Lidia’s arm before they could race down yet another hallway.

“We need to stop and reconsider where they might be,” Ruhn said, breathing hard.

“They’re here—he’s got them here,” Lidia snarled, struggling against his grip.

Ruhn held firm, though. “We can’t keep running around blindly. Think: Where would Pollux take them?”

She panted, eyes wide with panic, but took a breath. Another.

And that cold, Hind’s mask slid over her face. “I know how to find them,” she said. And Ruhn didn’t question her as she took off again, this time heading back down the stairs, down, down, down until—

The heat and humidity hit him first. Then the smell of salt.

The one thousand mystics of the Asteri slumbered in their sunken tubs, in regimented lines between the pillars of the seemingly endless hall.

“Traitor,” a withered, veiled female hissed from a desk in front of the doors, rising to her feet.

Lidia pulled out her handgun and sent a bullet through the female’s skull without hesitation. The blast rocked like thunder through the hall, but the mystics didn’t stir.

Ruhn stared at Lidia, at the place where the old female had been standing, at the blood now sprayed on the stones—

But Lidia was already heading for the nearest tank, for the controls beside it. She began typing. Then moved to the next mystic, then the next, and the next.

“We don’t have long until someone comes down here to investigate that gunshot,” Ruhn warned. But Lidia kept moving from tank to tank, and he peered at the first monitor to see the question she’d written. Where are Lidia Cervos’s sons?

She stopped typing at the seventh mystic, and stalked along the rows of tubs.

Ruhn moved to the doorway to keep watch, hiding himself in shadows as he monitored the hall, the stairs at their far end. They’d be lucky if it took even a minute for inquiring ears to get down here—

Lidia gasped. Ruhn whirled toward her, but she was already running.

“Pollux has got them under the palace,” she said as she reached the door and raced out, Ruhn running alongside her.

“Under?” Ruhn asked, trailing her down the stairs.

“In the hall with the firstlight core that your sister discovered—under the archives.”

“Lidia,” Ruhn said, grabbing her arm. “It has to be a trap. To have them at the core—”

She pointed the gun at his head. “I’m going. If it’s a trap, then it’s a trap. But I’m going.”

Ruhn held up his hands. “I know, and I’m going with you, but we have to think through the—”

She was already sprinting again, the gun back at her side. The castle had filled with sound now, a cacophony of shouting, scared people trying to get out as fast as possible. It masked the sound of their creeping about, but … Lidia was frantic—desperate. Which made for a dangerous ally, Hind or no. She’d get herself killed, and her sons, too.

He couldn’t let her jeopardize herself like that. If anyone was going to put themselves in that lethal danger …

It’d be him.

Ruhn vaulted down the stairs behind Lidia. And when he caught up to her, he clicked the safety off his gun.

Lidia heard that click and halted. Turned to him—slow, disbelieving. She didn’t glance at the gun. She already knew it was there. Her eyes were on his. Unreadable, cold. The eyes of the Hind.

Ruhn rasped, “I can’t let you get yourself killed.”

“I will never forgive you for this,” she said, voice like ice itself. “Never.”

“I know,” Ruhn said. And fired.

One shot, right to her thigh.

She shouted in pain as she crumpled, the bullet passing through the wound and ricocheting off the stairs behind her, the thunder of the gun and her scream spinning into a chorus that shredded his soul. A chorus that, thankfully, was muffled by the chaos unfolding levels above.

She pressed her palm to the open wound, which he’d inflicted far from any dangerous artery, and her eyes blazed with pure, flaming rage. “I will kill you—”

She reached for the gun at her other thigh, as if she really would blast his face off.

Ruhn bolted down the stairs before she could take aim. Holstering his own gun, he raced onward, leaving her to bleed behind him.



* * *



The waterways of the Eternal City were old, and strange, and unfriendly.

Tharion hated them. Especially with the amplified power in his veins, freed from its bonds. His body and soul recognized the very essence of his surroundings. They did not like what they encountered.

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.