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

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.