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

by Sarah J. Maas

For a moment, all three of them glowed. Even Truth-Teller, in Silene’s hand, seemed to ripple, a dark countermelody to how Gwydion flashed in Theia’s hand, its light a heartbeat. She gave us what protection her magic could offer, transferring it from her body into our own using the Harp. Another secret she had learned from her long-ago masters: that the Harp could not only move its bearer through the world, but move things from one place to another—even move magic from her soul to ours.

The pegasuses in the tunnels’ carvings hadn’t been religious iconography, then. And they’d lived long enough in Midgard to grace early art, like the frieze at the Crescent City Ballet. They must have all died out, becoming nothing more than myth and a line of sparkly toys.

Helena lifted the Horn to her lips as Silene plucked a string on the Harp. A shuddering, shining light rippled in the archway, and then a stone room appeared beyond it, dim and empty. That was when the wolves found us.

She used the Harp to send me the last of the distance to the archway.

Helena didn’t look back as she charged down the mountain, away from the pass. Buying me time. But I took one moment to look. At her, at the wolves giving chase. And at our mother—farther down the mountain, now locked in combat with Pelias, her winged horse dead beside her. Power blasted from Pelias, power such as I had never seen from him.

At that moment, Silene said, I had only one thought in my mind. That this knowledge would die with me. This world would continue as if the Fae who had gone into Midgard had never been. They would become a story whispered around campfires about people who had vanished. It was the only thing I could think to do to protect this world. To atone.

My strength wanes, she said. I hope that my life has been spent wisely. Atoning for my mother’s crimes and foolishness and love—and trying to make it right. I carved these tunnels, the path here, so some record might exist of what we were, what we did. But first I had to erase all of it from recent memory.

Beneath another mountain, far to the south, I found a being of blood and rage and nightmares. Once a pet of the Asteri, it had long been in hiding, feeding off the unwitting. With the dagger and my power, I laid a trap for it. And when it came sniffing, I dragged it back here. Locked it in one of the cells. Warded the door. One after another, I hunted monsters—the remaining pets of the Daglan—until many of the lowest rooms were filled with them. Until my once-beautiful home became a prison. Until even the land was so disgusted by the evil I’d gathered here that the islands shriveled and the earth became barren. The winged horses who hadn’t gone with my mother to Midgard, who had once flown in the skies, playing in the surf … they were nearly gone. Not a single living soul remained, except for the monstrosities in the mountain.

will spare you the details of how I came to wed a High Lord’s son. Of the years before and after he became the High Lord of Night, and I his lady. He wanted me to be High Lady, as the other lords’ mates were, but I refused. I had seen what power had done to my mother, and I wanted none of it.

brought him to the Prison and keyed the wards into his blood. No one knew that the infant who sometimes glowed with starlight had inherited it from me. That it was the light of the evening star. The dusk star.

Our burden to carry forward, carved and recounted here so that if the original history becomes warped or parts of it lost to time … here it is, etched in stone.

To leave this account for one whose blood will summon it, child of my child, heir of my heir. To you—I leave my story, your story. To you, in this very stone, I leave the inheritance and the burden that my own mother passed to me.

“It brings me no joy to see you with the halo and slave brand again, Athalar.” “Halo,” Hunt asked as solidly as he could, “or black crown?”

His lightning sank back into him, but in Rigelus’s hands, the crystal now glowed, full of the lightning he’d wrenched from Hunt’s body. Like a firstlight battery—like the scrap of power extracted during the Drop.

And she needed Athalar and Baxian able to fly.

“Only after they opened it again—to escape. It was open because they wanted to run. And they left all those people behind. They could have held it open a little longer, could have saved them. But Silene chose herself. She’s a fucking disgrace.”

thought having Theia’s light was … good. Like she was somehow better than Pelias. But she wasn’t.”

It slammed into Azriel’s shadows, fracturing the darkness and revealing the warrior beneath. But not enough to stop his sprint—

To you, in this very stone, Silene had said, I leave the inheritance and the burden that my own mother passed to me.

Not firstlight, not as she knew it on Midgard—but raw Fae power from a time before the Drop.

With trembling hands, Bryce guided the star to the one gleaming on her chest. Into her body. White light erupted everywhere.

Power, uncut and ancient, scorched through her veins.

From far away, she could sense it: the things lurking within the mountain, her mountain. Twisted, wretched creatures. Some had been here since Silene had trapped them. Had been contemplating their escape and revenge all this time. She’d let them out if she restored the mountain to its former glory.

If she freed it, the land would rise from its slumber, and such wonders would spring again from its earth—

Though Irithys hadn’t fought in the failed rebellion, she’d been born into the consequences: heir to a damned people, a queen enslaved upon the moment of her crowning.

“He has begun the fight anew. And this spring, a sprite befriended him; she died to save his mate. Her name was Lehabah. She claimed to be a descendent of Queen Ranthia Drahl.”

swear on Luna’s golden bow that I shall not kill you.”

The power she’d siphoned from this place, from Silene herself, thrummed through her body, familiar and yet foreign. It was part of her now—not like a temporary charge from Hunt, but rather something that had stuck to her own power, bound itself there.

And they were. Bryce bore Theia’s light through Helena’s line. And this light … it was Theia’s light through Silene. Two sisters, united at last. But Silene’s light, now mixed with Bryce’s … It was light, but it wasn’t quite the same as the power she’d possessed before.

A sarcophagus made of clear quartz lay in the center of the space. And inside it, preserved in eternal youth and beauty, lay a dark-haired female.

Here lay the evil beneath.

Her slim chest rose and fell. Sleeping.

He must have had some sort of Starborn blood in him, then—a distant ancestor, maybe. Or maybe his possession of the knife somehow allowed him to also bear the Starsword.

the female in the coffin opened her eyes. They were a crushing blue—and they glowed.

“Ah. You are a mongrel. Both slave and the slave of our slaves. No wonder your manners are coarse.”

“I am your god. I am your master. Do you not know me?” “We don’t have any fucking master,” Bryce snarled.

“Kneel, soldier. Make the Tithe so I may regain my strength and leave this cage.” Bryce knew then. Knew what evil had been kept in this coffin all this time.

“You dare draw a weapon before me? Against those who crafted you, soldier, from night and pain?”

“Did Fionn send you, then? To slay me in my sleep? Or was it that traitor Enalius? I see that you bear his dagger—as his emissary? Or his assassin?”

“Theia was so charming that day. Told me I looked tired, and to replenish myself in the crystal here, above the well. But she sealed me within instead. To let me starve to death over the eons.” Teeth, white as snow, flashed. “And in my dreams, she danced upon the stones above me. Danced upon my grave while I starved beneath her feet.”

Like Hel would she face this thing unarmed. Bryce extended a hand toward Azriel, casting her will with it. The Starsword flew from his hand and into hers.

Her long black hair draped down her slim form, pooling on the stone beneath her like liquid night.

“You may call me Vesperus.”

“I am the Evening Star,” Vesperus seethed.

“We grew too populous. Wars broke out between the various beings on our world. Some of us saw the changes in the land beginning—rivers run dry, clouds so thick the sun could not pierce them—and left. Our brightest minds found ways to bend the fabric of worlds. To travel between them. Wayfarers, we called them. World-walkers.”

Too late, we realized that we had been dependent on our land’s inherent magic. The magic in other worlds was not potent enough.

We pooled our power, and imbued those gifts into the Cauldron so that it would work our will. We Made the Trove from it. And then bound the very essence of the Cauldron to the soul of this world.”

“So destroy the Cauldron …” “And you destroy this world. One cannot exist without the other.”

“It would have been a mercy to kill me. Theia did not understand the word. I raised her from childhood not to. She would come down here every now and then and stare at me—I slept, but I could sense her there. Gloating over me. Convinced of her triumph.”

“Typical of your kind. You want to play with our weapons, but have no concept of their true abilities. Your mind couldn’t hold all the possibilities at once.”