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

She had no idea what Vesperus meant, but Bryce countered coolly, “You guys had a long fucking time to figure out every way to justify your actions, huh?”

“We are superior beings. We do not need to justify anything.”

“You’d fit right in on Midgard.”

“If Rigelus has held on to his power for so long, then your world is firmly in his grasp. He will not abandon it. He will have learned from the mistakes my companions and I made on this world and on others.”

Bryce’s hand curled into a fist. The force of holding her power at bay sang through her.

Vesperus’s gaze darted to Bryce’s glowing fist. “Is it time for us to battle, then?”

Power thrummed from the Asteri, a steady beat against Bryce’s skin.

Even depriving Vesperus of her magic sustenance for this long hadn’t killed her. What would taking out that massive core of firstlight under the Asteri’s palace in the Eternal City do, other than remove their source of nutrition? It wouldn’t be enough.

So Bryce let some of her power shimmer to the surface. She could have sworn her starlight was … heavier. Different, somehow, with the addition of what she’d claimed from Silene.

“I know you can die,” Bryce said, and felt the power glowing in her eyes. “The Fae killed you losers once, and on my world, Apollion ate one of you.”

“Ate?” Vesperus’s amusement banked.

Bryce smiled slowly. “They call him the Star-Eater. He ate Sirius. I have him on standby, waiting to come eat you, too.”

“You lie.”

“I wish I could show you the empty throne Rigelus still keeps for Sirius. It’s sort of sweet.”

“What manner of creature is this Apollion?”

“We call them demons, but you probably know them by some other name. Your kind tried to invade their world, Hel. It didn’t go well for you.”

“Then Hel and this Apollion shall pay for such sacrilege,” Vesperus hissed.

“Somehow, I don’t think you’ll be the one to make him.”

Vesperus’s fingers tapped her gold-clad knee. Her eyes guttered to midnight blue, promising death. She braced her hands on the ground and began to push upward—to stand.

“Don’t move,” Bryce warned, hand closing around the Starsword’s hilt. Azriel and Nesta pointed their blades at the Asteri.

But Vesperus completed the motion. Stood to her full height. Bryce had no choice but to shoot to her feet as well. Vesperus swayed, but remained upright.

The Asteri advanced a tentative, testing step. Bryce held her ground.

Vesperus took another step, steadier now, and smiled past Bryce. At Azriel, at Truth-Teller. “You don’t know how to use it, do you?”

Azriel pointed the dagger toward the advancing Asteri. “Pretty sure this end’s the one that’ll go through your gut.”

Vesperus chuckled, her dark hair swaying with each inching step closer. “Typical of your kind. You want to play with our weapons, but have no concept of their true abilities. Your mind couldn’t hold all the possibilities at once.”

Azriel snarled softly, wings flaring, “Try me.”

Vesperus took one more step, now barely a foot from Bryce. “I can smell it—how much of what we created here went unused. Ignorant fools.”

Bryce let her magic flow. A thought, and her hair drifted around her head, borne aloft once more by the currents of her power, still amplified by what she’d seized from this mountain. She angled the Starsword before her, light rippling along the blade.

Vesperus backed up a half step, hissing at the gleaming weapon. “We hid pockets of our power throughout the lands, in case the vermin should cause … problems. It seems our wisdom did not fail us.”

“There are no such places,” Azriel countered coldly.

“Are there not?” Vesperus grinned broadly, showing all of her too-white teeth. “Have you looked beneath every sacred mountain? At their very roots? The magic draws all sorts of creatures. I can sense them even now, slithering about, gnawing on the magic. My magic. They’re as much vermin as the rest of you.”

Bryce carefully didn’t glance at Nesta, who was creeping around the crystal coffin. Nesta had claimed earlier that the Middengard Wyrm had eaten her power—was that the sort of creature Vesperus meant?

And perhaps more importantly: Was Nesta still weakened? Or had her power returned?

Bryce clutched the Starsword tighter. Its power thudded into her palms like a heartbeat. “But why store your power here? It’s an island—not exactly an easy pit stop.”

“There are certain places, girl, that are better suited to hold power than others. Places where the veil between worlds is thin, and magic naturally abounds. Our light thrives in such environments, sustained by the regenerative magic of the land.” She gestured around them. “This island is a thin place—the mists around it declare it so.”

Bryce continued, buying Nesta more time to get closer to Vesperus, “We don’t have anything like that on Midgard.”

But didn’t they? The Bone Quarter, surrounded by impenetrable mists, held all that secondlight.

“Every world has at least one thin place,” Vesperus drawled. “And there are always certain people more suited to exploit it—to claim its powers, to travel through them to other worlds.”

The Northern Rift was wreathed in mist, too, Bryce realized. A tear between worlds—a thin place. And the riverbank where she’d landed in this world … it had been misty there, as well.

“Theia had the gift,” Vesperus said, “but did not understand how to claim the light. I made sure never to reveal how during her training—how she might light up entire worlds, if she wished, if she seized the power to amplify her own. But you, Light-Stealer … She must have passed the gift down to you. And it seems you have learned what she did not.”

Vesperus peered at her bare feet, the rock beneath. “Theia never learned how to access the power I cached beneath my palace. She had no choice but to leave it there, buried in the veins of this mountain. Her loss—and my gain.”

Oh gods. There was a fucking firstlight core here, far beneath their feet—

Vesperus smiled. “You really should have killed me when you had the chance.”

Light shot up the Asteri’s legs, into her body. A blinding flash, and then—

Vesperus’s red mouth opened in joy and triumph, but no sound came out. Only black blood.

Bryce blinked at the crunch. The wet spray. The glint of silver that appeared between Vesperus’s shining breasts.

The firstlight flowing up the Asteri’s body shivered—and vanished.

Nesta had plunged Ataraxia right through Vesperus’s chest.





26


Ithan didn’t deserve to exist. To breathe.

And yet here he was, sitting in the back of a car as they approached the docks at Ionia. Here he was, praying the Hind hadn’t sold them out and that the ship would be waiting to bring them to Pangera.

Kin-slayer. Murderer. The thoughts echoed through his very bones.

Ithan had killed the one person who might have led the Valbaran wolves to a different future, an alternative to Sabine.

It didn’t matter that it had been accidental. He’d ripped out her throat. And decapitated her in the process of removing his fist.

To save his friends, he’d done this unspeakable, unforgivable thing. He was no better than the Hind.

Ithan caught a glimpse of his reflection in the car window, and hastily turned away.



* * *



Ataraxia had slain the Middengard Wyrm—but there was no indication the blade could also kill an Asteri. That anything, in any world, could do that except for Apollion.

“Get out of range—” Bryce warned Nesta, but the warrior snarled at Bryce, “She was keeping you talking until she got an opportunity to kill you with that cache of light, you fool.”

Black blood dribbled from Vesperus’s lips. “You are indeed a fool, girl.”

The power slipped from Bryce’s grip as Vesperus placed a hand at Ataraxia’s tip and shoved. The sword punched back through her chest. The movement was hard enough that Nesta stumbled, shock whitening her face.