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

“What are you?” Ace breathed.

Still panting, blazing with fire, Lidia said, “An old bloodline,” and got to her feet.

It was Daybright, as Ruhn had seen her in his mind. She’d presented herself—her true self—to him all this time.

“Get them out of here,” Lidia said to Ruhn, hair floating up in a golden halo, embers swirling around her head. “Get the mer to a healer.” It was a miracle that Tharion wasn’t already dead, given the hole blasted through him.

Pollux got to his feet. “You cunt,” he spat. “What the fuck is this?”

“Shifters, as they used to be,” Lidia said, fire rippling from her mouth. “As Danika Fendyr told me we were. Now free of the Asteri’s parasite.”

Ruhn gaped at her. She was free of the parasite? She must have gotten that antidote, somehow—from Tharion?

Lidia was glorious, wreathed in flame and blazing with fury.

Pollux’s power surged again. “I’ll kill you all the same, bitch.”

“You can try,” Lidia said, smiling.

Pollux ran at her, striking with his magic. The hallway shook, debris raining down—

A wall of blue fire leapt between them. Pollux collided with it, then stuck. A fly in a burning web.

Lidia stalked toward the angel as Pollux struggled against the flames.

“You signed your death warrant when you touched my sons,” she said. And exhaled a breath.

Flame rippled from her mouth into Pollux’s flesh. The angel screamed—or tried to.

Freed of any secrets, of any need to keep them, Lidia seemed to unleash all that she was. Ruhn could only watch as fire poured down Pollux’s throat. Into his body. Roasting him from the inside out until he was nothing but smoldering cinders, a pillar of brimstone standing mid-strike, mouth still open.

She’d incinerated him.

Lidia held out a finger. And poked the towering pillar that had once been Pollux.

It sent Pollux’s ash-statue crumbling to the ground.

Her sons got to their feet, shock stark on their battered faces. The knife in Ruhn’s boot helped him make quick work of prying open their gorsian shackles, but it was Actaeon who whispered to Lidia, “Mom?”

She looked over a shoulder to her son. Her lips curved upward—at what he’d called her, Ruhn guessed.

The palace shook again—whatever was going on outside, it had to be bad.

“Get the mer to Declan to be healed. Even after taking the antidote, I don’t think Ketos’s own body can save him,” Lidia ordered. “And that’s the last vial of the antidote in his bag. My sister figured it out. Don’t jostle it, though—it’s volatile.”

“Lidia,” Ruhn said, but her eyes blazed with true fire.

“I need to help the others.” She launched into a run for the stairs. “Get my sons to safety, and we’re even. Save them, and I forgive you for shooting me.”

She glanced back at her boys, and then vanished up into the palace. Into the battle-torn world beyond.



* * *



Lidia had known, even as a child, that she was pure power, and she’d kept that power buried in her veins.

Not witch-power. She knew her flames were … different. Her father didn’t have them, either.

She’d kept them secret, even from the Asteri. Especially from the Asteri. No other shifters had them, to her knowledge, and she knew what revealing them would mean: becoming an experiment to be pulled apart by the Asteri.

Then she had run into Danika Fendyr, who had somehow learned things about Lidia’s paternal bloodline, and wanted to know if Lidia had any strange gifts. Fae-like, elemental gifts.

She’d debated killing Danika then and there to keep the gift secret. And what else did Danika know—could she know about her sons?

The shifters were Fae from another world, Danika had explained. Blessed with a Fae form and a humanoid one, gifted with elemental powers.

It confirmed what Lidia had long guessed. Why she had named Brannon after the oldest legends from her family’s bloodline: of a Fae King from another world, fire in his veins, who had created stags with the power of flame to be his sacred guards.

Lidia hadn’t mentioned any of that as Danika had filled her in on how they’d become shifters, and the Asteri’s experimentation with them on Midgard, which had eventually erased their pointed ears. She’d been glad when Danika had died, all her questions with her.

No longer.

After ingesting the antidote that her brilliant, brave sister had made, the fire had surged so close to the surface that she couldn’t deny it. Didn’t want to deny it.

Flame rippled from Lidia as she raced out of the palace, through the city, and onto the battlefield beyond. Untethered, unconquerable.

The dreadwolves scented her first, no doubt thanks to Mordoc’s keen bloodhound senses. Spotted her standing before the gates to the city. They knew her, even with the fire, and they raced for her in humanoid form, teeth bared. Mordoc led the pack, the hate practically radiating off him. Behind him, as always, ran Gedred and Vespasian, sniper rifles aimed.

It was time for Lidia to clean house.

“You—” Mordoc barked.

Lidia didn’t give him the chance to finish. No longer would this male, Danika Fendyr’s sire, spew his vitriol into the world. He was done inflicting pain upon Midgard.

Lidia turned Mordoc and the two snipers into ashes with a thought. Until all that remained of them was the molten silver from the darts in their collars, pooled on the ground. Another thought, and the pack of dreadwolves, now skidding to a halt in panic, met the same fate.

Angels in the Asterian Guard shot from the skies, power blasting.

Lidia obliterated them, too.

Demons paused, their long-dead Fallen allies with them, mech-suits going utterly still.

The Asterian Guard’s war-machines shifted directions and rumbled toward her, each mammoth tank armed with brimstone missiles. The angels manning them aimed their rifles at her and unleashed a barrage of bullets.

Her fire a song in her blood, Lidia walked across the battlefield. Bullets melted before they could reach her.

It was so much more natural than it had ever been. In the Cave of Princes, it had taken nearly all her concentration to douse the flames of the Autumn King around her companions. Only Morven had seemed to be surprised—the others hadn’t questioned how the flames had disappeared. There had been too much chaos for anyone to piece it together.

Now her fire flowed and flowed. Her truth was freed.

The war-machines halted. Angled their guns and bombers toward her. They’d wipe her from Midgard.

But she’d keep going until the end. She didn’t look behind her at the palace, where she could only pray that Ruhn—her mate—was getting her sons to safety.

For the first time in her miserable existence, she let the world see her for what she was. Let herself see all that she was.

The missile launchers turned white-hot. Lidia rallied her flames. Even if she intercepted the missiles in midair, the shrapnel alone could kill her allies—

There was one way to stop it. To get there first. Before the missiles launched. And take them all out, herself included.

She began running.

She wished she’d been able to say goodbye to her sons. To Ruhn. To tell him her answer to what he’d said.

I love you.

She cast the thought behind her, toward the Fae Prince she knew would keep her sons safe.

The war-machines followed her movements with their launchers. They’d try to blast her into Hel before she could reach them.

Emphasis on try.

It had been a short life, as far as Vanir were concerned, and a bad one, but there had been moments of joy. Moments that she now gathered and held close to her heart: cradling her newborn sons, smelling their baby-sweet scents. Talking with Ruhn for hours, when she knew him only as Night. Lying in his arms.

So few happy memories, but she wouldn’t have traded them for anything.

Would have done it all again, just for those memories.

Lidia dove deep, all the way into the simmering dregs of her power.