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

by Sarah J. Maas

The Hind knelt before her undying masters and contemplated how it would feel to tear out their throats.

But here she would kneel, until given leave to rise. As this world would kneel until the six enthroned Asteri drained it dry and left its carcass to rot in the emptiness of space.

She wasn’t even going to touch upon what happened after death. How the power that lingered in their souls was eventually harvested as well, forced by the Under-King into the Dead Gate and turned into secondlight to fuel the Asteri even more. Whatever reached them after the Under-King ate his fill.

Everyone knew Tharion had defected from the Blue Court. Everyone knew he’d defected and come here to serve the Meat Market’s depraved ruler. The River Queen and her daughter had made sure of it.

the venom only she could produce. And now, after that initial taste of it … His mouth filled with saliva. The scent of her skin, the blood and venom beneath it—he was helpless before her, a hungry fucking animal.

her venom was the best high an immortal could ever attain.

Prince Hunt Athalar Danaan. He would have hated the last name were it not for the fact that it was a marker of her ownership over his soul, his heart.

Hallucinations: Bad, because it meant he had some infection that even his immortal body couldn’t fight off. Good, because it meant he might quietly slip away into death’s embrace. Bad, because it meant the Asteri might turn their attention fully to Bryce. Good, because the pain would be gone. Bad, because he still held out some stupid, fool’s hope deep in his heart of seeing her again. Good, because Bryce wouldn’t come looking for him if he was dead.

Lidia, young and still brimming with hate and disdain for the world, had been all too willing to join them.

Danika, whose death Rigelus had engineered, manipulating Micah into killing her.

Rigelus had said the star reacted to people—those loyal to her, her chosen knights or whatever.

Bryce had no choice but to trust that star.

The creatures settled, as if her emotions were theirs. She willed herself to calm. To feel no fear. The creatures settled further. Some laid their heads down.

Her versus this female … decent odds, but the sword presented a problem.

Battling an opponent whose skills and powers were unknown, if not wholly alien, was probably unwise.

“I swore allegiance to Flame and Shadow because of your mother. Because she was weak and spineless and had no taste for punishment.”

“Honor, and my name. I will not sully or yield them. No matter what my enemy has done.

here he was. Watching a shadow watch him back. It stood beside the rack of devices Pollux and the Hawk had used on him.

“Apollion,” he grunted. Not Death at all, then. He tried not to let disappointment sink in his gut.

“Interesting that he would do it himself, rather than employ an imperial hag. Do you detect a difference?” Hunt’s chin dipped. “This one … stings. The hag’s halo felt like cold iron. This burns like acid.”

“I have no father.” Aidas’s expression was sad as he stepped out of the shadows. “You spent too long asking the wrong questions.” “What the fuck does that mean?” Aidas shook his head. “The black crown once again circling your brow is not a new torment from the Asteri. It has existed for millennia.” “Tell me the fucking truth for once—” “Stay alive, Athalar.”

“It only failed because Rigelus knew they were coming,” the Hind said, not unkindly. “Celestina sold them out.”

Even here, in paradise, death and evil remained.

taught,

She flicked the fingers of her other hand and the Mask instantly vanished, off to wherever she’d summoned it from.

It took Bryce hours to stop shaking. To chase that cold, deadly wind from her skin. To stop hearing the whispering of her death, the death of all things.

he knew who she was. Knew that while she might be Agent Daybright, she’d been the Hind for decades before she’d decided to turn rebel. Had committed plenty of despicable acts for Sandriel and the Asteri long before she’d killed the Harpy to save his life. Did changing sides erase the stain?

Solas is our sun god, Cthona his mate and the earth goddess. Luna is his sister, the moon; Ogenas, Cthona’s jealous sister in the seas. And Urd guides all—she’s the weaver of fate, of destiny.”

where do your souls go?”

“They return to the Mother, where they rest in joy within her heart until she finds another purpose for us. Another life or world to live in.”

He’d wanted so many things with her. A normal, happy life. Children.

“Rigelus and the others were able to fix the Harpy.”

We were slaves to the Daglan. For five thousand years, our people—the High Fae—knelt before them. They were cruel, powerful, cunning. Any attempt at rebellion was quashed before forces could be rallied. Generations of my ancestors tried. All failed.

The Daglan ruled over the High Fae. And we, in turn, ruled the humans, along with the lands the Daglan allowed us to govern. Yet it was an illusion of power. We knew who our true masters were. We were forced to make the Tithe to them once a year. To offer up kernels of our power in tribute. To fuel their own power—and to limit our own.

The Daglan became arrogant as the millennia passed, sure of their unending dominion over our world. But their overconfidence eventually blinded them to the enemies amassing at their backs, a force like none that had been gathered before.

My mother served at that monster’s side for a century, a slave to her every sick whim.

But my mother, Theia, used the time she served the Daglan to learn all she could about their instruments of conquest. The Dread Trove, we called it in secret. The Mask, the Harp, the Crown, and the Horn.

The Daglan, Silene went on, always quarreled over who should control the Trove, so more often than not, the Trove went unused. It was their downfall.

My mother and father, Fionn, had kept their love a secret through the years, knowing the Daglan would find it amusing to tear them apart if they learned of the affair. But they were able to meet in secret—and to plan their uprising.

But my mother and father knew they needed the most valuable of all the Daglan’s weapons.

The Cauldron was of our world, our heritage. But upon arriving here, the Daglan captured it and used their powers to warp it. To turn it from what it had been into something deadlier. No longer just a tool of creation, but of destruction. And the horrors it produced … those, too, my parents would turn to their advantage.

They fought the Daglan and won, she went on. Using the Daglan’s own weapons, they destroyed them. Yet my parents did not think to learn the Daglan’s other secrets—they were too weary, too eager to leave the past behind.

My father became High King, and my mother his queen, yet this island on which you stand, this place … my mother claimed it for herself. The very island where she had once served as a slave became her domain, her sanctuary. The Daglan female who’d ruled it before her had chosen it for its natural defensive location, the mists that kept it veiled from the others. So, too, did my mother. But more than that, she told me many times that she and her heirs were the only ones worthy of tending this island.

And with the Daglan gone, as the centuries passed, as the Tithe was no longer demanded of us or the land, our powers strengthened. The land strengthened. It returned to what it had been before the Daglan’s arrival millennia before. We returned to what we’d been before that time, too, creatures whose very magic was tied to this land. Thus the land’s powers became my mother’s. Dusk, twilight—that’s what the island was in its long-buried heart, what her power bloomed into, the lands rising with it. It was, as she said, as if the island had a soul that now blossomed under her care, nurtured by the court she built here.

The crown should go to the eldest child, he said—to my sister, Helena.

It did not sit well with my mother, or with many of those in her court

So it was just as it had been before: those behind the throne worked to upend it.

My mother returned that day with only Pelias and my father’s blades. As she had helped Make them, they answered to the call in her blood. To her very power.

And then she took the Trove for herself.

always reminding us that though the Daglan had been vanquished, evil lived on. Evil lurked beneath our very feet, always waiting to devour us. I believe she told us this in order to keep us honest and true, certainly more than she had ever been.