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

“After what you just pulled?”

“Remember that I’ll be trusting you not to blast a hole through my heart.” She tapped the star. “Aim right there.”

“I told you already: we don’t want to kill you.”

“Then aim carefully.”

Azriel and Nesta exchanged a glance.

Bryce added, “Look, I’d offer you something in return if I could. But you literally took everything of value from me.” She pointed to the sword at Azriel’s back.

Nesta angled her head. Then reached into her pocket. “What about this?”

Her phone.

Her phone. With Nesta’s movement, the lock screen came on, blaring bright in the gloom, with Hunt’s face right there. His beautiful, wonderful face, so full of joy—

Azriel and Nesta were blinking at the bright light, the photo, and then the phone was gone, stashed in Nesta’s pocket again.

“There’s a portrait hidden inside its encasing,” Nesta added. “Of you and three females.”

The photo of Bryce, Danika, June, and Fury. She’d forgotten she’d put it in there before heading to Pangera. But there, in Nesta’s pocket, shielded by those fancy-ass waterproofing spells she’d purchased, was her only link back to Midgard. To the people who mattered. And if she was stuck in this fucking world … that might very well be all she had left of her own.

“Were you waiting to dangle that in front of me?” Bryce asked.

A shrug from Nesta. “I guessed you might find it valuable.”

“Who’s to say I’m not playing you? Making you think it means something to me so I can leave you down here anyway?”

“Same reason you came running back to see if we were alive,” Azriel said coolly.

Fine. She’d exposed herself with that one. So she said to Azriel, “Hit the star.”

“How much power?”

Gods, this was potentially a really bad idea. Experimenting with power she didn’t know or understand—

“A little. Just make sure you don’t deep-fry me.”

After the shit with the Wyrm, he’d probably like nothing more than to do exactly that. But Azriel’s lips tugged upward. “I’ll try my best.”

Bryce braced herself, sucking in a deep breath—

Azriel struck before she could exhale. Searing, sharp power, a bolt of blue right into her star. Bryce bent over, coughing, breathing around the burn, the alien strangeness of the power.

“Are you all right?” Nesta asked with something like concern.

Was it his power? Or something about this world? Even Hunt’s hadn’t felt like this—so undiluted, like one-hundred-proof liquor.

Bryce closed her eyes and counted to ten, breathing hard. Letting it ease into her blood. Her bones. It tingled along her limbs.

Slowly, she straightened, opening her eyes. From the way the others’ faces were illuminated, she knew her gaze had turned incandescent.

They tensed, reaching for their weapons, bracing for her to flee or attack. But Bryce extended her hands—now glowing white—to them.

Nesta took one first. Then Azriel’s hand, battered and deeply scarred, slid around hers. Light leaked from where their skin met. She could have sworn his shadows hovered, watching like curious snakes.

Bryce pictured the tunnel mouth. She wanted to go there—

A blink, and it was done.

The raw power in her faded with the jump. Enough that the incandescence vanished and her skin returned to its normal state. Until only her star remained glowing once more.

But she found Azriel and Nesta observing her with different expressions than before. Wariness, yet something like respect, too.

“Let’s go,” Azriel said, and released her hand. Because the sword and dagger weren’t merely tugging now. They were singing, and all she had to do was reach out for them—

But before she could give in to temptation, Azriel stalked into the dark.

Staying a few feet behind him still wasn’t enough to block out the blades’ song. But Bryce tried to ignore it, well aware of Nesta’s watchful gaze. Tried to pretend that everything was totally fine.

Even if she knew that it wasn’t. Not even close. And she had a feeling that whatever waited at the end of these tunnels would be way worse.



* * *



“The Cauldron,” Nesta said hours later, pointing to yet another carving on the wall. It indeed showed a giant cauldron, perched atop what seemed to be a barren mountain peak with three stars above it.

Azriel halted, angling his head. “That’s Ramiel.” At Bryce’s questioning look, he explained, “A mountain sacred to the Illyrians.”

Bryce nodded to the carving. “What’s the big deal about a cauldron?”

“The Cauldron,” Azriel amended. Bryce shook her head, not understanding. “You don’t have stories of it in your world? The Fae didn’t bring that tradition with them?”

Bryce surveyed the giant cauldron. “No. We have five gods, but no cauldron. What does it do?”

“All life came and comes from it,” Azriel said with something like reverence. “The Mother poured it into this world, and from it, life blossomed.”

Nesta said quietly, “But it is also real—not a myth.” Her swallow was audible. “I was turned High Fae when an enemy shoved me into it. It’s raw power, but also … sentient.”

“Like that mask you put on earlier.”

Azriel folded his wings tightly, clearly wary of discussing such a powerful instrument with a potential enemy. But Nesta asked, “You detected a sentience in the Mask?”

Bryce nodded. “It didn’t, like, talk to me or anything. I could just … sense it.”

“What did it feel like?” Nesta asked quietly.

“Like death,” Bryce breathed. “Like death incarnate.”

Nesta’s eyes grew distant, grave. “That’s what the Mask can do. Give its wearer power over Death itself.”

Bryce’s blood chilled. “And this is a … normal type of weapon here?”

“No,” Azriel said from ahead, shoulders tense. “It is not.”

Nesta explained, “The Mask is one of three objects of catastrophic power, Made by the Cauldron itself. The Dread Trove, we call it.”

“And the Mask is … yours?”

“I was also Made by the Cauldron,” Nesta said, “which allows me to wield it.” She spoke with no pride or boasting. Merely cold resignation and responsibility.

“Made,” Bryce mused. “You said that my tattoo was Made.”

“It is a mystery to us,” Nesta said. “You’d need to have had the ink Made by the Cauldron, in this world, for it to be so.”

The Horn had come from here. Had been brought by Theia and Pelias into Midgard. Perhaps it, too, had been forged by the Cauldron.

Bryce tucked away the knowledge, the questions it raised. “We don’t have anything like the Cauldron on Midgard. Solas is our sun god, Cthona his mate and the earth goddess. Luna is his sister, the moon; Ogenas, Cthona’s jealous sister in the seas. And Urd guides all—she’s the weaver of fate, of destiny.” Bryce added after a moment, “I think she’s the reason I’m here.”

“Urd,” Nesta murmured. “The Fae say the Cauldron holds our fates. Maybe it became this Urd.”

“I don’t know,” Bryce said. “I always wondered what happened to the gods of the original worlds, when their people crossed into Midgard. Did they follow them? Did I bring Urd or Luna or any of them with me?” She gestured to the caves. “Are they here, or am I alone, stranded in your world with no gods to call my own?”

They began walking again, the questions hanging there unanswered.

Bryce asked, because some small part of her had to know after what she’d seen of the Mask, “When you die, where do your souls go?” Did they even believe in the concept of a soul? Maybe she should have led with that.

But Azriel said softly, “They return to the Mother, where they rest in joy within her heart until she finds another purpose for us. Another life or world to live in.” He glanced sidelong at her. “What about your world?”