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

There were few stronger vows, short of the blood oath of the Fae. It seemed to do the trick for the hag, who bared her rotted teeth but said, “Fine.”

A wave of a gnarled hand and some chanted, guttural words, and the ink melted down Irithys’s fiery neck. Like black rain, it sluiced down her flaming blue body, dripping to the stones below.

And in its wake, as it cleared, the sprite began to blaze a blinding white.

Lidia lowered the gun from the hag’s head. “As promised.”

Hilde sneered, “What now? I leave, knowing you have some scheme afoot?”

Lidia slid her gaze to Irithys. “Your move, sprite.”

Irithys smiled, and crooked a small, white-hot finger.

Hilde burst into flames. The hag didn’t even have time to scream before she was ash on the floor. Amid the acrid smoke curling through the room, Irithys glowed like a newborn star.

“And now, Hind?” the Sprite Queen asked, bright as Solas himself.

Lidia held out her forearm. “Now you make it look like an accident.”

“What?”

“Burn me.” She nodded to Hilde’s ashes. “Not like that, but … enough. So it looks convincing when I tell the others you overpowered me and Hilde when I fetched you for more help torturing the prisoners, and then you got away.”

Irithys’s white flame again turned yellow. “Got away to do what, though?”

“Create a diversion.”

“It will hurt.”

Lidia held the sprite’s stare. “Good. In order to be real, it needs to hurt.”

She laid out her plan for the queen as quickly as she could, telling her how to navigate the path of disabled cameras to get out of the palace, where to hide, and when and where to strike. And if somehow, against all odds, she succeeded … she laid out what would be required of Irithys after that. As insane and unlikely as it was.

All of it relied on the queen. When Lidia had finished, Irithys was shaking her head—not with refusal, but with shock.

“Can I trust you?” Lidia asked the sprite.

Irithys began to glow white again—white-hot. “You don’t have any other choice now, do you?”

Lidia extended her arm once more. “Make it hurt, Your Majesty.”



* * *



Darkness and debris and dust. Coughs and groans.

From the sounds behind her, Bryce knew Nesta and Azriel were alive. What state they were in … Well, she didn’t particularly care at the moment.

The power she’d siphoned from this place, from Silene herself, thrummed through her body, familiar and yet foreign. It was part of her now—not like a temporary charge from Hunt, but rather something that had stuck to her own power, bound itself there.

Like called to like. As if her star had known this magic existed and drawn her toward it, as if they were sister powers—

And they were. Bryce bore Theia’s light through Helena’s line. And this light … it was Theia’s light through Silene. Two sisters, united at last. But Silene’s light, now mixed with Bryce’s …

It was light, but it wasn’t quite the same as the power she’d possessed before. She couldn’t figure it out, didn’t have the time to explore its nuances, as she got to her feet and beheld the faint shimmer filling the chamber they’d fallen into. The one that had been hidden a level below the star.

A sarcophagus made of clear quartz lay in the center of the space. And inside it, preserved in eternal youth and beauty, lay a dark-haired female.

Bryce’s mind sped through possibilities. This place had once been an Asteri palace before Theia had claimed it. And in the tunnel carvings, made by Silene to depict her mother’s teachings …

Evil always waited below them.

What if Silene had never realized what, exactly, Theia had meant? That it wasn’t just a metaphor?

That here, literally right under them, slumbering in that forgotten coffin …

Here lay the evil beneath.





24


Bryce’s breath came fast and shallow as she surveyed the crystal coffin in the center of the otherwise empty chamber.

There were no doors into the room. As far as she could discern, the only entrance was through the ceiling that had just collapsed beneath them.

In the crystal sarcophagus, the female lay preserved with unnerving detail.

No, not preserved. Her slim chest rose and fell. Sleeping.

The hair on the back of Bryce’s neck rose.

One of the inmates she’d been warned not to release from the Prison. Some ancient, strange being held down here, in a cell beneath their feet, so dangerous she’d been encased in crystal—

That crystal coffin revealed the features of the sleeping female: humanoid, pale-skinned, and slender. Her silky golden gown accentuated every delicate curve of her body.

Bryce had never seen skin that pale. It glowed like a full moon. Her dark hair … it was too dark, somehow. It didn’t reflect the light at all. It shouldn’t have existed in nature.

And—was she wearing lipstick? No one had lips that vibrantly red. Blow Job Red, Danika had once quipped about a similar shade Bryce had worn.

“What have you done?” Azriel rasped, and Bryce twisted to find him on his feet, wings tucked in, Nesta leaning against him as if wounded, Ataraxia dangling from her grip. The male now held the Starsword at the ready, Truth-Teller gripped in his other hand.

He must have had some sort of Starborn blood in him, then—a distant ancestor, maybe. Or maybe his possession of the knife somehow allowed him to also bear the Starsword.

As if in answer to Azriel’s question, the female in the coffin opened her eyes. They were a crushing blue—and they glowed.

Bryce tried to scramble away, but she remained frozen in place as the female’s gaze slid toward hers. As those red lips curved upward in a small smile that held no joy. As the female lifted a long, slender hand to the lid of the crystal sarcophagus and said, “Release me, slave.”

Even muffled by the crystal, the voice was cold, merciless.

“Have you lost your senses?” Nesta seethed at Bryce, hobbling a step closer.

“I didn’t mean to open a cell—” Bryce started.

“This isn’t one of the cells,” Azriel snarled. “We didn’t even know this chamber existed.”

The female in the coffin ignored their arguing. “How long have I slumbered?” Again, she pushed against the crystal of her sarcophagus.

Or had it been a cage?

Azriel growled at Bryce, “Did you know she was down here?”

Bryce didn’t take her eyes off the coffin and the monster within it. “No.”

The female in the coffin banged on the lid, its dull thump echoing off the dark stone walls. “Slave, do as you are told.”

“Get fucked,” Bryce snapped toward the coffin.

“You dare defy me?” Through the quartz, Bryce could only watch as the encased female’s nostrils flared. Sniffing. “Ah. You are a mongrel. Both slave and the slave of our slaves. No wonder your manners are coarse.”

Nesta rasped, hefting Ataraxia higher, “What are you?”

The female’s long nails scraped along the lid of the coffin. She didn’t look at them as she tested the lid for weaknesses. “I am your god. I am your master. Do you not know me?”

“We don’t have any fucking master,” Bryce snarled.

The female’s nails gouged deep lines into the crystal, but the lid held. She searched beyond Bryce, her gaze falling upon Azriel. Her lips curled. “A foot soldier. Excellent. Kill this insolent female and free me.” She pointed to Bryce.

Azriel didn’t move. The caged female hissed, “Kneel, soldier. Make the Tithe so I may regain my strength and leave this cage.”

Bryce knew then. Knew what evil had been kept in this coffin all this time.

Beside Azriel, Nesta steadied her stance. Like she’d figured it out, too. The motion drew the creature’s gaze—and her eyes flared in pure rage. She glanced between Nesta and Bryce, and her white teeth flashed as she asked the latter, “Was it Theia who stole the Horn for you? Who put it in your flesh?” Her gaze slid back to Nesta. “And you—you are linked to the other parts of the Trove. Did she give them to you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nesta said flatly.

The creature snickered, and drawled to Nesta, “I can smell them on you, girl. Do you not think a blacksmith knows their own creation?”