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

by Sarah J. Maas

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.

Caves like this one. Capable of moving people great distances in a matter of hours. Or an instant.

“The first and last High King of these lands,”

The snows around Ramiel parted, revealing a massive bowl of iron at the foot of the monolith. Even through the vision, its presence leaked into the world, a heavy, ominous thing. “The Cauldron,” Nesta said, dread lacing her voice.

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.

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.

Starlight flared from Theia as she snatched the sword and knife out of the air, the blades glowing with their own starlight. 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.

Theia sat, enthroned, the Harp and Horn beside her, the Mask in her lap, and the Crown atop her head.

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. I loved Helena more than anything. Should she have wanted the throne, it was hers. But she had as little interest in it as I did. It was not enough for my mother. Possessing all she had ever wanted was not enough.

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.

The teenage Fae boy, appearing no older than Helena and Silene, smiled at Theia. Raised a hand in greeting.

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.

Bryce’s breath caught. She’d spent years working in the company of the lost books of Parthos, knowing that a great human civilization had once flourished within its walls, but here, before her, was proof of the grandeur, the human skill that had existed on Midgard. And had been entirely wiped away.

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.

My mother had dealt with human uprisings before. She knew what to do.

City to city, we moved. Taking the land as we wished. Taking human slaves to build for us. But some humans resisted, their city-states uniting as we Fae had once united against our masters.

We were still waging our war on the humans when the door between worlds opened again. More Fae appeared—from another world this time.

They were Fae like us, but not. The ears, the grace, the strength were identical, but they were shape-shifters, all of them. Each capable of turning into an animal. And each, even in their humanoid body, equipped with elongated canine teeth.

There were two types of Fae. From two seemingly unconnected and distant worlds. These new Fae bore elemental magic, strong enough to make Pelias wary of them. They were more aggressive than the Fae we knew—wilder. And they answered directly to Rigelus. It seemed, in fact, like they’d known Rigelus a long while. My mother soon began to suspect that our host was not as benevolent as he claimed. But by the time she learned just how wrong she had been about him, it was too late. “No shit,” Nesta growled, disgust coating her voice, and Bryce could only manage a nod. My mother would trust only us. Pelias, she might have once included, but he had taken to the pleasures of this new world too eagerly, championed by Rigelus himself.

My mother eventually trusted only Helena and myself to seek the truth. She knew we could be of great use to her, because we bore the shadows as well as starlight.

We spent a month hidden in the enemy’s stronghold, no more than shadows ourselves. By the time we returned to our mother, we’d learned the truth: Rigelus and his companions were not Fae at all, but parasites who conquered world after world, feeding off the magic and lives of their citizens. The Daglan, now under their true name: the Asteri.

My mother had kept the star map that the Daglan had long ago annotated. And a world on it had caught her attention—a world, like ours, that had overthrown the Daglan.

Prince Aidas only asked my mother one thing when she opened the gate to his world: “Have you come to ask for Hel’s help, then?”

Using rare summoning salts that facilitated communication between worlds, his spies in Midgard had kept him well informed since the Asteri had failed to conquer his planet. Aidas had been assigned to hunt for the Asteri ever since. So their evil might never triumph again. On his world, or any other.

Long hours did my mother and Aidas speak through the portal, neither daring to cross into the other’s world. For many days afterward, in secret, they planned. It soon became clear that we needed more troops. Any Fae that were loyal to us … and humans. The very enemies my mother had slaughtered and enslaved, she now needed. Their final stronghold lay at Parthos, where all the scholars and thinkers of their day had holed up in the great library. And so it was to Parthos we next went, winnowing under cover of darkness. “Unbelievable,” Nesta seethed.

And when she had finished, the humans revealed their own discovery—one that showed us our doom. As a lone human woman stood from the crowd, Bryce reminded herself to keep breathing, to steady herself— The Asteri had infected the water we consumed with a parasite. They’d poisoned the lakes and streams and oceans. The parasites burrowed their way into our bodies, warping our magic.

The Asteri created a coming-of-age ritual for all magical creatures who had entered Midgard, and their descendants. A blast of magic would be released and then contained—and then fed to the Asteri. It was a greater, more concentrated dose than the seeds of power they’d sucked off us for years in the Tithe. They spun it into a near-religious experience, explained it away as a method to harness energy for fuel, and had been feeding off it ever since. “The Drop,” Bryce whispered, dismay rocking through her. She knew Nesta and Azriel were staring at her, but she couldn’t look away from the memory. Should anyone with power opt out of the ritual, the parasites would suck immortals dry until they withered away to nothing—like humans. It would be dismissed as old age. Lies were planted about the dangers of performing the ritual in any place other than one of the Asteri’s harvesting

sites, where the power could be contained and filtered to them, and to their citi...

The humans had learned this—the Asteri had been careless in spilling knowledge around them, because without magic, the humans were unaffected. And they’d watched in smug silence while we, their gleeful oppressors, had unwittingly become oppressed. With one sip of water from this world, we belonged to the Asteri. There was no undoing it.

But we convinced the humans to trust us. And my mother began reaching out to some of those Fae who had followed us into Midgard—those she hoped she could trust. In the end, my mother had ten thousand Fae willing to march, most hailing from our dusk-bound lands. And when my mother fully opened the doorway to Hel, Aidas and his brothers brought fifty thousand soldiers with them. I do not have the words for the war’s brutality. For the lives lost, the torment and fear. But my mother did not break.

The Asteri mounted their counteroffensive swiftly, and wisely put Pelias in charge of their forces. Pelias knew my mother and her tactics well. And though Hel’s armies fought valiantly, our people with them, it was not enough. I was never privy to the story of how my mother and Prince Aidas became lovers. I know only that even in the midst of war, I had never seen my mother so at peace. She told me once, when I marveled at our luck that the portal had opened to Aidas that day, that it was because they were mates—their souls had found each other across galaxies, linking them that fateful day, as if the mating bond between them was indeed some physical thing. That was how deeply they loved each other. And when this war was over, she promised me, we would go to Hel with Aidas. Not to rule, but to live. When this was over, she promised, she would spend the rest of her existence atoning. She did not get to fulfill that promise. “Too bad,” Nesta said pitilessly. But Bryce had moved beyond words. Beyond anything other than pure despair and dread. Word came from the enemy right before they attacked in the dead of night: Surrender, and we would be spared. Fight, and we would be slaughtered. Our camp had been erected high in the mountains, where we thought the winter snows would protect us from advancing enemies. Instead, we were cold and hungry, with barely any time to ready our forces. Aidas had returned to Hel to recruit more soldiers, so we were spending a rare night with our mo...

Hel did not have the chance to come to our aid. My mother did not even bother to try to open a portal to their world. Our forces on Midgard were already depleted—the new recruits wouldn’t be amassed for days. We begged her to open the portal anyway, to at least get the princes’ help, but my mother be...

bloodied Theia pressed the Horn into Helena’s hands, and urged Silene to take the Harp and the dagger. She kept the Starsword for herself.

“Play the Horn and Harp,” our mother ordered, pulling them out of that pocket of nothingness, “and get out of this world.”

She warned that Pelias was coming. For both of us. Rigelus had made him Prince of the Fae, and Pelias would use us to legitimize his reign. He meant to father children on us.

It split into three shimmering balls of light, one drifting into Silene’s chest and another to Helena’s before the final one, as if it were the mother from which the other two stars had been born, returned to Theia’s body.