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

Pure death loomed in his eyes. “The Asteri will kill you.”

“Maybe. But you’re not going to help them by telling them about this.” She extended the Starsword toward his face. He didn’t dare move as she bopped him on the nose with its tip. “It’s a real shame that you unplugged all your electronics and shut off your interweb. There’ll be no way to call for help from the basement closet.”

He choked on his outrage. “The—”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she drawled. “I put a bucket and some water in there for you. Probably enough to last until one of your meathead guards wonders what’s going on in here and comes to check.” She pretended to think. “They might have a bitch of a time getting through your wards, though.”

“As will you.”

“Unfortunately for you, no, I won’t. You didn’t ward against teleporting. Such a rare gift here—you didn’t even think to spell against it, did you? Lucky me.”

“I would consider your next moves very carefully if—”

“Yeah, yeah.” She pointed with the sword to the door. “Let’s go. Your subterranean abode awaits.”

He didn’t try anything as she escorted him down, clearly wary of the power of the weapons she held.

Ever since Vesperus had writhed under the two blades, there had been a thought niggling at the back of Bryce’s mind. Remembering all Ruhn had told her about the Autumn King’s obsession with the Starsword, she’d gambled that he might know about the dagger, too.

It had been the hardest decision she’d ever made: to come here, to play this game, rather than to will the portal to take her right to Hunt. But Hunt, as she had feared, had still been in the dungeons, and to appear there would have been too risky. And this knowledge was too important.

But now she knew a little more. The Starsword and Truth-Teller could open a portal to nowhere, whatever that was. Now she just needed to learn how to make them do it.

Good thing he’d also told her where on Midgard to find more information about the blades.

The Autumn King balked as Bryce pointed with the sword to the open closet in the basement. Like so much of the house, it was fireproof. The heavy steel door would likely take him a while to break out of, if he even managed to free himself from the gorsian shackle.

The Autumn King growled as he backed into the closet, “I will kill you and your bitch mother for this.”

She motioned him further inside. “I’ll pencil you in for tomorrow.”

With that, she slammed the door shut in his face and locked it. He barreled into it a second later, the door shuddering, but it held.

Whistling to herself, propping the Starsword on a shoulder, Bryce strode out of the basement.

There was so much more to do. Places to be. People to see.

And more to learn.

Five minutes later, Bryce pulled her phone out of the desk drawer in the Autumn King’s study. It was dead, and a quick search of his office showed no hint of charging cords to get it working again. She slipped it into the band of her leggings, then picked up the Starsword and Truth-Teller from where she’d placed them on the desk.

The Autumn King’s prism device sat where he’d left it. An idle beam of sunlight shone through the windows, catching in the prism and refracting a rainbow onto one of the golden planets of the orrery—on Midgard. Light pulled apart. Light stripped bare.

In the chaos of those final moments with Vesperus and these days with the Autumn King, she hadn’t yet had a chance to explore the magic she’d taken from Silene’s store.

She’d claimed the magic, she supposed, as Silene had surely left it there for future heirs to take. But why hadn’t they? Why hadn’t her son, who’d heard the truth directly from her mouth? Bryce knew she might never know the answer now. But she could try to learn something about the power she now held within her.

With a sharp inhale, Bryce rallied her magic. On the exhale, she sent a stream of her starlight into the prism, her power faster than ever before.

Starlight hit the prism, passed through it, and—

“Huh.”

It wasn’t a rainbow that emerged from the other side. Not even close.

It took her a moment to process what she was seeing: a gradient beam of starlight. Where the rainbow would have been full of color, this one began in shimmering white light and descended into shadow.

An anti-rainbow, as it were. Light falling into darkness, droplets of starlight raining from the highest beam into the shadowy band at the bottom, devoured by the darkness below.

Like the fading light of day—of dusk.

What did it mean? She was pretty sure her light had been pure before, but now, with Silene’s power mixed in … there was darkness there, too. Hidden beneath.

Et in Avallen ego.

Did it make a difference to her power? To her? To now have that layer of darkness?

Bryce buried the questions. She could think about it later. Right now …

She took the notebook on the desk and slid it into the inside pocket of her athletic jacket.

Then she nudged the prism on the desk a few inches to the side, angling it toward the device across the room. The one the Autumn King said might be able to recapture the light, possibly with more power added to it. But what if light blasted from either prism, meeting in the middle? What would happen in the collision of all that magic?

All that smashing light, those little bits of magic bashing into each other, would produce energy. And fuel her up like a battery.

She hoped.

“Only one way to find out,” she muttered to herself.

With a prayer to Cthona, she sent twin beams of light arcing around the prisms, shooting straight into them.

Twin bursts of that light flared from either prism, gunning for each other. Bands of light falling into darkness, her power stripped to its most elemental, basic form. They shot for each other, and where they met, light and darkness and darkness and light slamming into each other—

Bryce stepped into the explosion in the heart of it.

Stepped into her power.

It lit her up from the inside, lit up her very blood. Her hair drifted above her head, pens and papers and other office detritus flowing upward with it.

Such light and darkness—the power lay in the meeting of the two of them. She understood it now, how the darkness shaped the light.

But all that colliding power … it was the boost she needed.

With a parting middle finger to the floor at her feet and the Autumn King sulking beneath it, she teleported out of the villa to the place she wanted to be the most.

Home. Wherever that was in Midgard.

Because her home was no longer just a physical place, but a person, too.

Silene had claimed as much when she spoke of Theia and Aidas—their souls had found each other across worlds, because they were mates. They were each other’s homes.

And for Bryce, home was—and always would be—Hunt.



* * *



Exhaustion weighed so heavily on Ruhn that despite his aching neck, he couldn’t be bothered to shift into a more comfortable position in the chair. Machines beeped endlessly, like metal crickets marking the passing of the night.

He had a vague sense of Declan replacing Flynn. Then Dec left and it was Flynn again.

He didn’t know what woke him. Whether it was some hitch in the machine or some shift in the cadence of her breathing, but … a stillness went through him. He cracked his eyes open, sore and gritty, and looked to the bed.

Lidia still lay unconscious. Ghastly pale.

Lidia.

No answer. Ruhn leaned over his knees and rubbed his face. Maybe he could crash on the tiled floor. It’d be better than contorting himself in the chair.

“Morning,” Flynn said. “Want some coffee?”

Ruhn grunted his assent. Flynn clapped him on the back and slipped out, the door hissing open and shut.

Gods, his whole body hurt. His hand … He examined the thin, strangely pale fingers, the lack of tattoos or scars. Still weak. Like it was still rebuilding the strength stored in his immortal blood on the day of his Drop.