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

by Sarah J. Maas

She glanced at the star in her chest. Still glowing brightly. They are your champions, too,

Through love, all is possible. She called up the memory of Danika’s love and let it course through her, steady her as she lowered herself onto the ground. Into the beasts’ nest.

Ruhn had called her a queen before she left. And for the first time in her life, as she walked through that sea of death … she might have lifted her chin a bit higher. Might have felt a mantle settle on her shoulders, a train of starlight in her wake. Might have felt something like a crown settle upon her head. Guiding her into the dark.

Mortal, an ancient, bone-dry voice whispered in Bryce’s head. You are mortal, and you shall die. Memento mori. Memento mori, memento— Bone clicked in the darkness. The earth shook.

The Wyrm shrieked, but Nesta had reached the undead beast’s white skull. And then she was jumping, sword arcing above her, then down, down— Straight into the head of the Wyrm. A shudder of silver fire rushed down the Wyrm. That cold, dry wind shivered through the caves again, death in its wake. The Wyrm slumped to the ground.

Azriel said softly, voice tinged with pain, “She looks like Rhysand’s sister.”

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 Horn had been sister to the Mask, and the Harp Nesta had mentioned. It had come from here, and worse, was part of some deadly arsenal of the Asteri— And Theia.

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.

Theia embraced a handsome, broad-shouldered man amid the swirling snow. 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. “Fionn …,” Azriel murmured, awe lacing his voice, “was your ancestor.”

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.

Bryce couldn’t take her gaze off the wondrous sight, even as Silene continued. After centuries with an empty womb, my mother bore both my sister and me within a span of five years. My father was fading by then—he was centuries older than my mother. But Fionn did not consider my mother a worthy successor. The crown should go to the eldest child, he said—to my sister, Helena. It was time, he thought, for a new generation to lead. It did not sit well with my mother, or with many of those in her court—especially her general, Pelias. He agreed with my mother that Helena was too young to inherit our father’s throne. But my mother was still in her prime. Still ripe with power, and it was clear that she’d been blessed by the gods themselves, since she had been gifted children at long last. So it was just as it had been before: those behind the throne worked to upend it.

My parents often went hunting in the vast slice of land the Daglan had kept for their private game park, where they had crafted terrible monsters to serve as worthy prey. It was there that he met his death.

My father had never shown himself to be giving—long had he kept Gwydion and never once offered it to my mother. The dagger that had belonged to his dear friend, slain during the war, hung at his side, unused. But not for long.

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.

As if in answer, Silene said, Our people bowed—what other option did they have in the face of such power? And for a short span, she ruled. I cannot say whether the years were kind to my people—but there was no war. At least there was that.

My sister and I grew older. My mother educated us 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. Yet as we aged and grew into our power, it became clear that only one throne could be inherited.

My mother remembered the talk of the Daglan—their mention of other worlds. Places they had conquered. And with two daughters and one throne … only entire worlds would do for us. For her legacy.

Remembering the teachings of her former mistress, my mother knew she might wield the Horn and Harp to open a door. To bring the Fae to new heights, new wealth and prestige.

Yet when she announced her vision to her court, many of them refused. They had just overthrown their conquerors—now they would turn conqueror, too? They demanded that she shut the door and leave this madness behind her. But she would not be deterred. There were enough Fae throughout her lands, along with some of the fire-wielders from the south, who supported the idea, merchants who salivated at the thought of untapped riches in other worlds. And so she gathered a force. It was Pelias who told her where to cast her intention. Using old, notated star maps from their former masters, he’d selected a world for them.

Pelias told her it was a world the Daglan had long coveted but had not had the chance to conquer. An empty world, but one of plenty. She had no way of knowing that he had spent our era of peace learning ancient summoning magic and searching the cosmos for whatever remained of the Daglan on other worlds. What he wanted from them, I can only guess—perhaps he knew that to wrest the Trove from Theia and seize power for himself, he needed someone more powerful than he was.

And after all that searching, someone finally answered. A Daglan who had been using his army of mystics to scour galaxies for our world. The Daglan promised him every reward, if only he could nudge my mother toward this moment, to use the Dread Trove to open a portal to the world he indicated.

My mother did not question Pelias, her conspirator and ally, when he told her to will the Horn and Harp to open a doorway to this world. She did not question how and why he knew that this island, our misty home, was the best place to do it. She simply gathered our

people, all those willing to conquer and colonize—and opened the doorway.

My mother did not recognize the enemy when they wore a friendly face, beckoning her and the others through the portal. Had she any hesitations upon finding that the empty world she’d been promised was indeed populated, they were calmed when the strangers claimed to be Fae as well, long separated from our world by the Daglan, whom they too claimed to have overthrown. And they had waited all this time to reunite our people. With a few words from the Daglan, my mother’s doubts melted away, and our exodus into Midgard began.

By the grace of the Mother, she was paranoid enough about any new allies or companions that she hid the Horn and Harp. She created a pocket of nothingness, she told me, and stashed them there. Only she could access that pocket of nothingness—only she could retrieve the Horn and Harp from its depths. But she remained unaware that Pelias had already told the Daglan of their presence. She had no idea that she was allowed to live, if only for a time, so they might figure out where she’d concealed them. So Pelias, under their command, might squeeze their location out of her. Just as she had no idea that the gate she had left open into our home world … the Daglan had been waiting a long, long time for that, too. But they were patient. Content to let more and more of Theia’s forces come into the new world—thus leaving her own undefended. Content to wait to gain her trust, so she might hand over the Horn and Harp. It was a trap, to be played out over months or years. To get the instruments of power from Theia, to march back into our home world and claim it again … It was a long, elegant trap, to be sprung at the perfect moment.

And, distracted by the beauty of our new world, we did not consider that it all might be too easy. Too simple. Midgard was a land of plenty. Of green and light and beauty. Much like our own lands—with one enormous exception. The memory spanned to a view from a cliff of a distant plain full of creatures. Some winged, some not. We were not the only beings to come to this world hoping to claim it. We would learn too late that the other peoples had been lured by the Daglan under similarly friendly guises. And that they, too, had come armed and ready to fight for these lands. But before conflict could erupt between us all, we found that Midgard was already occupied.

We found cities in Midgard carved by human hands. This world had been mostly populated by humans, and only a handful of unusual creatures that had kept mostly to themselves. It was a blank slate, as far as worlds went. Little native magic to fight the Daglan’s power.