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

So Lidia inclined her head mockingly at the queen. And with a wave of her hand, she activated the magic Rigelus had gifted her for the week. Like a ball of ice melting in reverse, the crystal orb formed around Irithys again.

“Then I have no need of you,” Lidia said, and picked up the crystal, stalking for the door.

Irithys said nothing, but her flame burned a bright, royal blue.

Lidia had just opened the metal door again when Hilde called from the table, “And what of me?”

Lidia threw the imperial hag a cool look. “I suggest you beg Rigelus for mercy.” She didn’t let the hag reply before slamming the door behind her.

Mercy. Lidia had held none in her heart two days ago, when she’d walked past Hilde in the upper corridors and slipped her own comm-crystal into the hag’s pocket. With Ruhn in the dungeons, no one was accessing the other end of the line, anyway. The crystal was, for all intents and purposes, dead. But in Hilde’s possession, when Mordoc had sniffed it out on Lidia’s suspicion … the crystal once again became invaluable.

She could think of no one, other than the Asteri themselves, that Irithys might hate more than the hag who had inked the tattoo on her burning throat. No one that Irithys might enjoy hurting more than Hilde.

And yet the Sprite Queen had refused.

The mistress was nowhere to be found when Lidia returned to the heat and humidity of the mystics’ hall, nor when Lidia set Irithys back on her stand in the center of it.

“What of the other prisoners?” Irithys demanded as Lidia stepped back.

Lidia paused, sliding her hands into her pockets. “Why should I waste my time trying to convince you to assist me with them?”

Indeed, time was running thin. She had places to be, and quickly.

“You went to an awful lot of trouble to get me out today. For nothing.”

Lidia shrugged, then began prowling for the exit. “I know when I’m losing a battle.” She tossed over a shoulder, “Enjoy your name and honor. I hope they’re good company in that crystal ball.”



* * *



Bryce and Nesta walked in fraught, heavy silence for ages.

Bryce’s feet had begun aching again, the soreness continuing all the way up her legs. Normally, she would have resorted to talking to distract herself from the discomfort, but Bryce knew better than to ask prying questions about this world, about Nesta’s people.

It would be too suspicious. If she sought to tell them as little as possible about herself and Midgard, then they probably wished to do the same regarding their home.

Without warning, Nesta stopped, holding up a fist.

Bryce halted beside her, glancing sidelong to find Nesta’s blue-gray eyes making a slow sweep over the tunnel ahead. Icy calm had settled on her face.

Bryce murmured, “What is it?”

Nesta’s eyes again flicked over the terrain.

As Bryce stepped forward, her star illuminated what had given the warrior pause: the tunnel widened into a large chamber, its ceiling so high even Bryce’s starlight didn’t reach it. And in the center of it … the path dropped away on either side, leaving only a sliver of a rocky bridge over what seemed to be an endless chasm.

Bryce knew it wasn’t endless only because far, far below, water roared. A large subterranean river, if the sound was this loud even up here. Bits of spray floated from the darkness, the damp air laced with a thick, metallic scent—iron. There must have been deposits of it down here.

Nesta said with equal quiet, “That bridge is the perfect place for an ambush.”

“From who?” Bryce hissed.

“I haven’t lived long enough to know every horror in this world, but I can tell you that dark places tend to breed dark things. Especially ones as old and forgotten as this.”

“Great. So how do we get across without attracting said dark things?”

“I don’t know—this tunnel is foreign to me.”

Bryce turned to her in surprise. “You’ve never been down this way?”

Nesta cut her a look. “No. No one has.”

Bryce snorted, surveying the chasm and bridge ahead. No movement, no sound other than the rushing water far below. “Who’d you piss off to get sent to retrieve me, anyway?”

She could have sworn Nesta’s lips curved into a smile. “On a good day, too many people to count. But today … I volunteered.”

Bryce arched a brow. “Why?”

That silvery flame flashed in Nesta’s eyes. A shiver slithered along Bryce’s spine. Fae and yet … not.

“Call it intuition,” Nesta said, and stepped onto the bridge.



* * *



They’d made it halfway across the narrow bridge—Bryce doing everything she could not to think about the lack of railings, the seemingly endless drop to that thundering river—when they heard it. A new noise, barely audible above the rapids’ roar.

Talons skittering over stone.

From above and below.

“Hurry.” Nesta drew that plain-yet-remarkable sword. At the touch of her hand, silver flames skittered down the blade and—

The breath whooshed out of Bryce. The sword pulsed, as if all the air around it had vanished. It was like the Starsword, somehow. A sword, but more. Just as Nesta was Fae but more.

“What is your sword—”

“Hurry,” Nesta repeated, stalking across the rest of the bridge.

Bryce mastered herself enough to obey, moving as fast as she dared given the plunge gaping on either side.

Leathery wings fluttered. Those talons scraped along the stone mere feet ahead—

Bryce damned caution to Hel and jogged toward the tunnel mouth beyond, where Nesta was waving at her to hurry the fuck up, sword gleaming faintly in her other hand.

Then Bryce’s star illuminated the rock framing the tunnel’s mouth.

She ran.

A teeming mass of things crusted the entrance, smaller than the beasts beneath the dungeon, but almost worse. Cruder, more leathery. Like some sort of primordial bat-lizard hybrid. Black tongues tasted the air between flesh-shredding, clear teeth. Like the kristallos, bred and raised for eons in darkness—

A few of the creatures leapt, swooping into the void below, off on the hunt—

The tunnel, the bridge, rumbled.

Bryce staggered, the drop looming sickeningly closer, and a white wave of panic blinded every sense—

Training and Fae grace caught her, and Bryce could have wept with relief that she hadn’t tumbled into that void. Especially as something massive and slimy lurched from below, the size of two city buses.

An enormous worm, gleaming with water and mud.

A mouth full of rows of teeth opened wide and snapped—

Bryce fell back on her ass as the worm caught three of the flying lizards between those teeth. Swallowed them all in one bite.

Her starlight flared, casting the whole cavern in light and shadow.

The creatures on the walls screeched—either at the worm or the light—flapping off their perches and right into the creature’s opening jaws. Another snapping bite, river water and metallic-reeking mud spraying with the movement, and more vanished down the worm’s throat.

Bryce could only stare.

One twist of its behemoth body and it’d be upon her. One bite and she’d be swallowed. Her starlight could do nothing against it. It had no eyes. It likely operated on smell, and there she was, a trembling treat offered up on that bridge—

A strong, slim hand grabbed Bryce under the shoulder and dragged her back.

Sensations pelted her: rock scraping beneath her as she was dragged, light and shadows and shrieking flying things, her back stinging as debris sliced her skin, the wet slap of the worm’s massive body as it surged from the depths again, snatching at the beasts—

She couldn’t stop shaking as Nesta dropped her a safe distance into the tunnel. The worm took a few more bites at the air, the cavern shuddering with each of its powerful thrusts upward. The iron smell grew stronger—blood. It misted the air alongside the river water.

Every snap of the worm’s jaws boomed through the rock, through Bryce’s bones.