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January 31 - February 21, 2024
She might succeed in trapping the Asteri in another world only to damn this world to follow them right in.
Find that last piece of Theia’s power, use it on the blades, and open this portal to nowhere while praying we don’t all get locked in with the Asteri, too?”
“But there was one thing Theia and Helena did not anticipate: that you would bear the Horn, reborn, in your body. Another way to open doors between worlds.”
“Fully open the Northern Rift, of course.”
“Because no one knows what that is—where it is. The sword and knife are pinpointed to its location,
If someone like you, a world-walker, did come along and Avallen was somehow not accessible for you to claim Theia’s power, we still needed a way to … fuel you up, as it were.”
“My brother,” Aidas said, nodding to Thanatos, “has long excelled at crafting things.”
“A weapon.” He nodded to Bryce. “For her, whenever she might come along.”
The Asteri believed they had somehow, through their selective breeding of the malakim, finally achieved a flawless soldier to serve them. That it was their own brilliance that brought someone like Hunt Athalar into the world.”
“And he knew having a partner would help lift her from her poverty. He had every intention of staying. Of leaving behind his life and raising you in secret.”
“The mystics told Rigelus of your father’s connection to us. They didn’t discover everything—nothing about you or your mother. Only that he had been speaking to us. Rigelus had him brought in, tortured, and executed.”
“Hyrieus,” Aidas answered. “He was a good male, Hunt Athalar. As you
“They had trouble feeding off our magic,” Thanatos said, voice thick with disgust. “And found that our powers rivaled their own. They fled before we could kill them.”
“Apollion slew her with his Helfire when she attacked him—he pulled her burning heart from her chest and ate it.”
“It requires proximity,”
“No true son of Hel can be caged.”
“If you find that final piece of Theia’s power … if the cost of uniting the sword and knife is too much, Bryce Quinlan, then don’t do it. Choose life.”
“Choose each other. I have lived with the alternative for millennia—the loss never gets easier to bear.”
Tharion, Baxian, Sathia, Flynn, and Declan, all huddled close and ringed by fire.
Urd had sent her there to see, even in the small fraction of their world that she’d witnessed, that Fae existed who were kind and brave.
The Fae of Midgard were capable of more.
Bryce exploded—into the twins’s minds, their bodies. Flooding them with starfire.
Only melted flesh and bone remained.
It wasn’t Hunt’s lightning that shone through the Autumn King’s rib cage. It was the Starsword. And it was Ruhn wielding it, standing behind him.
The line will end with me, you fucking prick, Ruhn said into his father’s mind, because I yield my crown, my title, to the queen.
Even Morven’s shadows weren’t fast enough as Ruhn whipped the Starsword through the air again. And sliced clean through his father’s neck.
saw it, for a glimmering heartbeat. Not a world divided into Houses … but a world united.
The King of Avallen was still blazing with hate when Bryce slid Truth-Teller into his heart.
I think doing so drained all the land’s magic from its ley lines, and repurposed it to encage Theia’s power. It made the land wither. Just as you said Silene’s own lands withered around the Prison while it held her own share of power.”
She looked at the weapons in her hands: a small dagger, and a large sword. They’d fit right into the slits in the floor, like keys in a lock. Keys to unlock the power stored beneath. The last bit of power she needed to open the portal to nowhere.
“Since this place can hold out against the Asteri, we need to get as many people here as possible. Without tipping off imperial forces.”
“The Asteri organized a hit, led by Pollux and Mordoc, on every Ophion base. They wiped them off the map.”
“They wiped out everyone in their camps, too.”
“And they dispatched their Asterian Guard to Asphodel Meadows. They … they said it was a hotbed of rebel activity.”
“They unleashed ten brimstone missiles on the Meadows. On everyone living there.”
Apparently, Morven had told Jesiba they could have it—his late son had shipped it to his home, and the Fae King hadn’t yet bothered to have it tossed into the garbage.
“I think Urd wanted me to see and learn all that,” she went on, “and have to decide whether to stay, or leave this safety behind and fight. Urd wanted to tempt me.”
“For Urd to let the people you love be safe here—while you go kick some Asteri ass.”
“I need you to make an antidote for the Asteri’s parasite.”
The Snake, they called me, because I fucked over so many people. And Sandriel eventually heard about me and recruited me for her triarii—to be her spy-master and tracker. The Snake became the Helhound,
“We all did fucked-up shit for Sandriel,” Hunt said roughly.
From the gleam in the Reaper’s eyes, Ithan couldn’t help but wonder if he had turned Reaper not to elude true death, but to one day exact vengeance.
He didn’t have the parasite.”
I didn’t sense anything living inside him at all.”
“I compare what I detected in him to what I discovered in your blood. See what stands out. See if I can isolate where in you the parasite lies.”
It is half a life. Not true living. It seems sad to me.”
Fury had dealt in the shadows of the empire for years. She was well aware of the odds.
I think this will isolate the parasite and kill it the same way the synth antidote worked.”
had to use Athalar’s lightning to bind it together. I had to use all of it, I’m afraid.”
“The antidote is highly unstable—a little jostling, and it might go completely stale. If I had more time, I might find a way to stabilize it, but for right now …
