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September 23 - October 2, 2025
swear it upon Luna’s golden bow.”
Legend claimed that even the Asteri could not pierce the mists that shrouded Avallen,
It had never occurred to Lidia that the wall around the Rift would also keep Midgardians from getting out. Well, most Midgardians.
Magic and tech now blended with lethal efficiency, with minimal cost to military life. But those suits spelled death for any remaining rebels, and damned the rest of the rebellion.
The elevators did not descend to the catacombs, which could only be accessed by a winding crystal staircase. There, one thousand mystics slumbered. Each of whom were now focused on a single task: Find Bryce Quinlan.
“Quinlan and Athalar are mates. She will return to this world because of that bond.
“Ruhn and Bryce are Starborn,” Lidia said, heaving open the iron door to the large interrogation chamber beyond. Metal grated against stone, its shriek eerily similar to the sounds of torment all around them. “She will want to free him—as her brother and her ally.”
The prince’s striking blue eyes
Rhysand, he’d called himself. The one who looked so much like Ruhn.
That the star on her chest somehow acted as a beacon to the original world of the Starborn people.
Amren picked at an invisible speck on her silk blouse. “It’s murky. I went in before …” She shook her head. “But when I came out, there were rumors. That a great number of people had vanished, as if they had never been. Some said to another world, others said they’d moved on to distant lands, still others said they’d been chosen by the Cauldron and spirited away somewhere.”
Theia had brought two daughters with her into Midgard: Helena, who’d been forced to wed Pelias, and another, whose name had been lost to history. Much of the truth about Theia had been lost as well, either through time or the Asteri’s propaganda. Aidas, Prince of the Chasm, had loved her—that much Bryce knew. Theia had fought alongside Hel against the Asteri to free Midgard. Had been killed by Pelias in the end, her name nearly wiped from all memory. Bryce bore Theia’s light—Aidas had confirmed it. But beyond that, even the Asteri Archives had provided no information about the long-dead queen.
“It is in our history, Rhysand,” Amren said gravely. “But the Asteri were not known by that name. Here, they were called the Daglan.”
“The glowing letters inked on her back … they’re the same as those in the Book of Breathings.”
She knew it was a stupid thing to contemplate. That she had way bigger things to consider than an intergalactic garden.
He’d known not to trust Celestina with her whole new Governor, new rules bullshit. He’d let her win him over, and the Archangel had fucking betrayed them. All that talk about being a friend of Shahar’s—he’d eaten it up. Let the memory of his long-dead lover cloud his instincts, as Celestina had surely gambled it would.
Like Baxian, the Hawk hailed from two peoples: angels, who had granted him his white wings, and hawk shifters, who’d granted him his ability to transform into a bird of prey.
The burns, the gorsian shackles his father had put him in to keep him from fighting back, keep him from healing—then, at least, he’d developed his own ways of surviving, of recovering.
Lidia had been here only once over her time with the Asteri. Accompanied by Rigelus then as well, along with her father.
A private tour of the palace, given by the Bright Hand himself to one of his most loyal subjects—and one of his wealthiest. And Lidia, young and still brimming with hate and disdain for the world, had been all too willing to join them.
The oppressive heat and humidity of this place hadn’t changed since that first visit.
The Sprite Queen was perhaps no bigger than Lidia’s hand, yet even in repose, she had a presence. Like she was the small sun around which this place orbited.
“Get up. Your master’s here to see you.”
She’d been kept down here more than a century. Had not seen daylight or left that crystal bubble in all that time.
If he had as much power as an Asteri … It was all a hunch, really, but if he could be manipulated into helping her, somehow coming back to Midgard with her and kicking ass—
An enormous worm, gleaming with water and mud. A mouth full of rows of teeth opened wide and snapped—
“What you were born to do—to accomplish the task for which your father brought you into existence,”
Apollion said before fading into nothing, leaving Aidas standing alone before the prisoners. Shock reared up in Hunt, dampened by the weight of an old, unbidden hurt. “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.”
Around the natural archway, an array of stars and planets had been carved, crowned at its apex by a large setting or rising sun. Bryce’s star glowed brighter as she faced it, guiding her there.
Her name was Silene.”
Silver flame wreathed her fingers.
Fae kneeling before impossibly tall, robed humanoids, glowing bits of starlight in their upraised hands. Magic. An offering to the crowned creatures before them. One of the beings was reaching a hand toward the nearest Fae, her fingers stretching toward that offered light. Bryce’s stomach twisted as she noted that behind the supplicating Fae, chained humans lay prostrate on the earth, their crudely carved faces a sharp contrast to the otherworldly, pristine beauty of the Fae. Another bit of fucked-up artistry: Humans were little more than rock and dirt compared to the Fae and their godlike
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Showing a masked queen, a crown upon her head, bearing instruments in her hand and standing before an adoring crowd. Behind her, a great mountaintop palace rose toward the sky, winged horses soaring among the clouds.
One relief had been so similar to the frieze of the Fae male forging the sword at the Crescent City Ballet that Bryce had nearly gasped. The last carving before the river had been one of transition: a Fae King and Queen seated on thrones, a mountain—different from the one with the palace atop it—behind them with three stars rising above it. A different kingdom, then. Some ancient High Lord and Lady, Nesta had suggested before approaching the river. She hadn’t commented on the lower half of the carving, which depicted a Helscape beneath their thrones, some kind of underworld. Humanoid figures
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Even in Avallen, there am I.
They passed by more carvings—all disarmed well ahead of their approach by Nesta’s silver flame. These were more peaceful: They showed small children playing. Time passing with trees blooming, then barren, then blooming again. Pretty, perfect scenes at odds with the conversation at hand.
“Like calls to like,” Nesta mused. “Plenty of magical things react to one another.” “This was unique. It felt like … like an answer. My sword blazed with light. That dagger shone with darkness. Both of them are crafted of the same black metal. Iridium, right?” She jerked her chin to Azriel, to the dagger at his side. “Ore from a fallen meteorite?”
arms. On the desk itself sat a statuette of Cthona, carved from black stone. In one arm the goddess cradled an infant to her bare breast. In the other, she extended an orb—Midgard—out into the room. Cthona, birther of worlds.
She found herself face-to-face with a scene depicting a great battlefield before the high walls of a city, Fae and winged horrors and snarling beasts all at war, entrenched in pain and suffering. One of the Fae stood in the foreground, spearing a fellow Fae warrior in the mouth. Fae against Fae. It shouldn’t have bothered her. Shouldn’t have grabbed her as it did: the warrior-female’s merciless expression as she embedded her spear in the agonized face of the female soldier before her. It shouldn’t have unsettled something in Bryce to see it.
Searing, sharp power, a bolt of blue right into her star. Bryce bent over, coughing, breathing around the burn, the alien strangeness of the power.
The Horn had come from here. Had been brought by Theia and Pelias into Midgard. Perhaps it, too, had been forged by the Cauldron.
“There are caves and doors throughout the land,” Azriel said, “that open into distant places.
“These are Midgard’s constellations.” Bryce pointed to a cluster. “That’s the Great Ladle. And that … that’s Orion. The hunter.”
“We need you to be the Umbra Mortis. He’s a badass—he wouldn’t hesitate.” “A badass,” Hunt said, “not a cannibal.”
Azriel said softly, voice tinged with pain, “She looks like Rhysand’s sister.”
story begins before I was born.” The female’s voice was heavy—weary. Tired and sad. “During a time I know of only from my mother’s stories, my father’s memories.” She lifted a finger to the space between her brows. “Both of them showed me once, mind-to-mind. So I shall show you.”
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. Bryce knew who it was before Silene spoke again. Knew whose truth she’d been led here, across the stars, to learn at last. Theia.
