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

“How about this,” Bryce seethed, hating the gorsian shackles around her wrists more than ever. “You let me go right now, and I’ll toss your ass straight through a portal and into the original Fae world. Go pack your bags.”

He chuckled. “You’ll bring me to that Fae world whether I let you go or not.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I hear your mother and Randall have adopted a son. It’d be a shame if something happened to the boy.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t come crying to me when Mom and Randall kick your ass. They did it once—I’m sure they’ll be happy to remind you what they’re capable of.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be me darkening their doorstep.” He smirked, wholly confident. “A whisper to Rigelus, let’s say, of your parents harboring a rebel boy …”

Bryce rolled her eyes again. “Did you take some sort of class in school? Intro to Bad Guys? Get fucking serious. You’re not going to conquer any world.”

“If you should open a door between worlds at my behest, Rigelus may be grateful enough to me that he grants me a good chunk of it.”

Bryce eyed the shards of broken plate. Sharp enough to slit his throat.

He gave her a condescending smile, like he knew what she was contemplating.

Her father wasn’t for or against the Asteri. He was just an opportunist. If removing them got him more power, he’d fight them. If bowing to the Asteri proved more lucrative, he’d prostrate himself before their crystal thrones. For all his talk of helping the Fae, he believed in nothing except advancing himself.

She said tightly, “You’re already a king here.”

“Of a continent. What is that to an entire planet?”

“You know, you might not be the Starborn Chosen One, but I think out of all of us, you’ve got the most in common with Theia. She thought the same damn thing. But she learned too late that Rigelus doesn’t share.”

“With the knife you brought back in play, he might find himself willing to bargain.”

Bryce gave him a flat look. “What makes you think the blades will do anything to him?”

“Those blades, united, would end him.”

“Trust me: I tried it on an Asteri and it didn’t do anything.” At least, not before Nesta had interfered.

If he was shocked by her confession, he didn’t let on. “Did you order them to work?”

“Hard to order them, shithead, when I don’t know what they can even do.”

“Open a portal to nowhere,” the Autumn King said, the flame guttering in his eyes.

“What do you mean?” Bryce demanded.

“The Starsword is Made, as you called it.” He waved an idle hand, sparks at his fingertips. “The knife can Unmake things. Made and Unmade. Matter and antimatter. With the right influx of power—a command from the one destined to wield them—they can be merged. And they can create a place where no life, no light exists. A place that is nothing. Nowhere.”

Her knees wobbled. “That’s not … that’s not possible.”

“It is. I read about it in the Avallen Archives centuries ago.”

“Then how do I do it? Just say ‘merge into nowhere’ and that’s that?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “My research has not revealed the steps to merge the blades. Only what they could do.”

Bryce stared at the male before her for a long moment. Glanced down the steps to the lower level—toward his study. “I want to see this research myself.”

“It is on Avallen, and females are not allowed beyond the lobby of the archives.”

“Yeah, our periods would probably get all over the books.”

His lip curled. “Perhaps it is lucky you weaseled out of your engagement to Cormac. Your coarseness wouldn’t have been well tolerated in Avallen.”

“Oh, they’d warm up to me once they saw me swinging around the Starsword and remembered who and what I am.”

“That would be an affront all on its own. A female has never possessed the blade.”

“What?” She barked a laugh that echoed off the stone walls. “In fifteen thousand years, you mean to tell me only males have claimed it?”

“As females are not allowed in the Cave of Princes, they had no opportunity to attempt to claim it, even if they had the starlight in their veins.”

Bryce gaped at him. “Are you fucking kidding me? They banned females from the Cave of Princes to keep us from getting our hands on the sword?”

His silence was answer enough.

She snapped, “I’m pretty sure there are rules, even in this shitty empire, against treating females like that.”

“Avallen has long been left mostly to govern itself, its ways hidden from the modern world behind its mists.”

“But there’s information, somewhere on Avallen, about what these blades can do.”

“Yes, but you must be invited in order to cross the mists. And considering where you stand with Morven …”

She was never getting in. Certainly not without the assistance of the male before her.

Her head swam, and for a heartbeat, everything that she had done and still had to do weighed so heavily she could barely breathe.

“I need to go lie down,” she rasped.

The Autumn King didn’t stop her as she again turned toward her bedroom. Like he knew he’d won.

She strode in silence down the hall, steps muffled by the stone.

But not to her room. Instead, she walked all the way to Ruhn’s room, where she collapsed onto the bed. She didn’t move for a long while.





37


Ruhn’s life had become beeping machines and flickering monitors and an uncomfortable vinyl chair that served as both seat and bed.

He technically had a bed, but it was too far from this room. A few times, Flynn and Dec had come to sedate him and drag him there for a restorative treatment, as his hand was still recovering.

His fingers had formed again, but they were pale and weak. The medwitches had a small store of firstlight potions—a rarity on a ship where firstlight was banned and they relied on some sort of jacked-up bioluminescence to light everything—but Ruhn had refused them. Had demanded that they give every last drop to Lidia. His hand would heal the old-fashioned way. Whether he and Baxian would ever recover from the ordeal that had led to his hand being chewed off was another story.

But one he’d deal with later.

“Get some sleep,” Flynn said from the doorway, a cup of what smelled like coffee in hand. His friend nodded to the bed and wires and machines before Ruhn. “I can take watch.”

“I’m fine,” Ruhn rasped. He’d barely spoken since yesterday. Didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not even Flynn and Dec, though they’d come for him. Had saved him.

All because of this female before him.

While they’d been rebuilding what was left of her body, she’d flatlined twice. Even with the firstlight potion having healed the wounds to her heart. Both times, Ruhn had been sleeping in his own bed, halfway across the damned ship.

So he’d stopped leaving this room.

That there was anything left of Lidia at all was thanks to Tharion, whose cushioning plume of water had shielded her from the full impact of landing on the rocks—but the mer had still been far enough away that it hadn’t stopped her plunge entirely.

It didn’t matter though, because a hole as big as a fist had already been shot through her heart.

The hole was gone, healed now thanks to that rare, precious firstlight potion. And she had a functioning heart again, if the monitor marking every beat was any indication. Lungs: repaired. Ribs: rebuilt. Cracked skull: patched together. Brains stuffed back in.

Ruhn couldn’t stop seeing it. How Lidia had looked when Tharion had hauled her onto the Depth Charger. Her limp body. So … small. He’d never realized how much smaller she was than him.

Or what the world might be like without her living in it.

Because Lidia had been dead. When Tharion had carried her back from the coast, she’d been completely dead. Even her Vanir healing abilities had been overtaxed.

Something had broken in Ruhn at the sight of it. Something even Pollux and the Hawk and the Asteri’s dungeons hadn’t managed to reach.