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

“No,” Azriel replied without an ounce of doubt. “Somewhere along the line … all this was forgotten, and never passed on.”

Bryce couldn’t bring herself to care. She knew the truth now, and all that mattered was getting home to Midgard to share it with others. With Hunt.

But to the rest of the world, Silene said, I ensured that my mother and her lands became a whisper. Then a legend. People wondered if Theia had ever existed. The old generation died off. I clung to life, even after my mate had passed. As an elder, I spun lies for my people and called them truth.

“No one knows what became of Theia and General Pelias,” I told countless generations. “They betrayed King Fionn, and Gwydion was forever lost, his dagger with it.” I lied with every breath.

“Theia and Fionn had two daughters. Unimportant and unimpressive.” That was the hardest, perhaps. Not that my own name was gone. But that I had to erase Helena’s, too.

Bryce glowered. Erasing her sister’s name was worse than butchering human families?

My son had sons, and I lived long enough to see my grandsons have sons of their own. And then I returned here. To the place that had once been full of light and music, and now housed only terrors.

To leave this account for one whose blood will summon it, child of my child, heir of my heir. To you—I leave my story, your story. To you, in this very stone, I leave the inheritance and the burden that my own mother passed to me.

The image blurred, and there she was again. That old, weary face.

I hope the Mother will forgive me, Silene said, and the hologram dissolved.

“Well, I fucking don’t,” Bryce spat, and flipped off the place where Silene had stood.





22


Hunt could only watch in despair as the Bright Hand of the Asteri swept into the chamber, followed by Pollux and the Hawk. The Hawk noted the hand still dangling from the chains and laughed.

“Just like a rat,” the Hawk taunted, “gnawing off a limb when caught in a trap.”

“Get fucked,” Baxian spat, Ruhn’s blood coating his face, his neck, his chest.

“Language,” Rigelus chided, but didn’t interfere as Pollux snatched the iron poker from where Ruhn still clutched it between his feet. Ruhn, to his credit, tried to hold on to it, legs curling upward to tuck it close. But weakened and bleeding … there was nothing he could do. Pollux ripped it away, beating Ruhn’s back once with it—prompting a pained grunt from the prince—then used the poker to prod Ruhn’s severed hand from the shackle above.

It landed on the filthy ground with a sickening thump.

Smiling, the Hawk picked it up like it was a shiny new toy.

Observing the three of them, Rigelus said mildly, “If I’d known you were so bored down here, I would have sent Pollux back sooner. Here I was, thinking you’d had enough of pain.”

Pollux stalked to the lever, wings glowingly white. With a smirk, the Hammer pulled it and sent all three of them dropping heavily to the ground.

The agony that blasted through Hunt drowned out Ruhn’s scream as the prince landed on his severed wrist.

Hunt gave himself one breath, one moment on that filthy floor to sink down into the icy black of the Umbra Mortis. To fight past the pain, the guilt, to focus. To lift his head.

Rigelus stared down at them impassively. “I’m hoping that I will soon have further insight into where Miss Quinlan might have gone,” he crooned. “But perhaps you might feel inclined now to talk?”

Ruhn spat, “Fuck off.”

Behind Rigelus’s back, the Hawk folded the fingers of Ruhn’s severed hand until only the middle one remained upright.

Hunt snarled softly. The snarl of the Umbra Mortis.

Yet Rigelus stepped closer to Hunt, immaculate white jacket almost obscenely clean in this place. The golden rings on his fingers glimmered. “It brings me no joy to see you with the halo and slave brand again, Athalar.”

“Halo,” Hunt asked as solidly as he could, “or black crown?”

Rigelus blinked—the only sign of his surprise—but the term clearly landed with the Bright Hand.

“Been talking to shadows, have you?” Rigelus hissed.

“Umbra Mortis and all that,” Hunt said. “Makes sense for the Shadow of Death.”

Baxian chuckled.

Rigelus narrowed his eyes at the Helhound, then turned back to Hunt. “What lengths would the Umbra Mortis go to in order to keep these two pathetic specimens alive, I wonder?”

“What the fuck do you want?” Hunt growled. Pollux flashed him a warning look.

“A small task,” Rigelus said. “A favor. Unrelated to Miss Quinlan entirely.”

“Don’t fucking listen to him,” Baxian muttered, then cried out as a whip cracked, courtesy of the Hawk.

“I’d be willing to offer a … reprieve,” Rigelus said to Hunt, ignoring the Helhound entirely. “If you do something for me.”

That was what this had been about, then. His mystics would find Bryce—he didn’t need the three of them for that. But the torture, the punishment … Hunt willed his foggy head to clear, to listen to every word. To cling to that Umbra Mortis he’d once been, what he’d been so happy to leave behind.

“Your lightning is a gift, Athalar,” Rigelus continued. “A rare one. Use it once, on my behalf, and perhaps we can find you three more comfortable … arrangements.”

Ruhn spat, “To do what?”

“A side project of mine.”

Hunt snapped, “I’m not agreeing to shit.”

Rigelus smiled sadly. “I assumed that would be the case. Though I’m still disappointed to hear it.” He pulled a sliver of pale rock from his pocket—a crystal. Uncut and about the length of his palm. “It’ll be harder to extract it from you without your consent, but not impossible.”

Hunt’s stomach flipped. “Extract what?”

Rigelus stalked closer, crystal in hand. The Asteri halted steps from Hunt, fingers unfurling so he could examine the hunk of quartz in his palm. “A fine natural conduit,” the Bright Hand said thoughtfully. “And an excellent receptacle for power.” Then he lifted his gaze up to Hunt. “I’ll give you a choice: offer me a sliver of your lightning, and you and your friends will be spared the worst of your suffering.”

“No.” The word rose from deep in Hunt’s gut.

Rigelus’s expression remained mild. “Then choose which one of your friends shall die.”

“Go to Hel.” The Umbra Mortis slipped away, too far to reach.

Rigelus sighed, bored and weary. “Choose, Athalar: Shall it be the Helhound or the Fae Prince?”

He couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

Pollux was grinning like a fiend, a long knife already in his hand. Whichever of Hunt’s friends was chosen, the Hammer would draw out their deaths excruciatingly.

“Well?” Rigelus asked.

He’d do it—the Bright Hand would do this, make him choose between his friends, or just kill both of them.

And Hunt had never hated himself more, but he reached inward, toward his lightning, suppressed and suffocated by the gorsian shackles, but still there, under the surface.

It was all Rigelus needed. He pressed the quartz against Hunt’s forearm, and the stone cut into his skin. Searing, acid-sharp lightning surged out of Hunt, ripped from his soul, twisted through the confines of the gorsian shackles, extracted inch by inch into the crystal. Hunt screamed, and he had a moment of brutal clarity: this was what his enemies felt when he flayed them alive, what Sandriel had felt when he’d destroyed her, and oh gods, it burned—

And then it stopped.

Like a switch being flipped, only darkness filled him. His lightning sank back into him, but in Rigelus’s hands, the crystal now glowed, full of the lightning he’d wrenched from Hunt’s body. Like a firstlight battery—like the scrap of power extracted during the Drop.

“I think this will do for now,” Rigelus crooned, sliding the stone back into his pocket. It illuminated the dark material of his pants, and Hunt’s throat constricted, bile rising.

The Bright Hand turned away, and said to the Hammer and the Hawk without looking back, “I think two out of three will still be a good incentive for Miss Quinlan to return, don’t you? Executioner’s choice.”