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Apollion stepped forward, a hand raised. Pure, devouring darkness destroyed Polaris’s light.
Had learned his moves, his arrogance, his tricks. She hadn’t let him learn hers.
Ruhn snarled, saying the words he hadn’t dared voice until now, “She’s my mate, you fucker.” Lidia inhaled a sharp breath.
“Ruhn,” Lidia’s voice broke.
So he said to her, mind-to-mind, I love you. I fell in love with you in the depths of my soul, and it’s my soul that will find yours again in the next life.
Ruhn didn’t understand what he saw next: How Lidia reached Brann in time. How she threw herself over her son, knocking him to the ground as she burst into white-hot flames.
“Brannon.”
It was Daybright, as Ruhn had seen her in his mind. She’d presented herself—her true self—to him all this time.
“Shifters, as they used to be,” Lidia said, fire rippling from her mouth. “As Danika Fendyr told me we were. Now free of the Asteri’s parasite.”
Why she had named Brannon after the oldest legends from her family’s bloodline: of a Fae King from another world, fire in his veins, who had created stags with the power of flame to be his sacred guards.
She wished she’d been able to say goodbye to her sons. To Ruhn. To tell him her answer to what he’d said. I love you.
Three tiny white lights burned bright. Fire sprites. Simmering with power.
Where the machine had been, a fourth sprite glowed, a hot, intense blue. Irithys. She lifted a small hand in greeting. Lidia raised one back.
“With pleasure,” Irithys said, and even from a few feet away, Lidia’s skin seared with the heat of the queen’s flame. “We shall build a new world atop their ashes.”
And as one flame, one unified people, as Bryce Quinlan had promised, their fire struck the enemy line.
“If we are denied our food, then we shall die; there is no purpose to your existence, if not to sustain us. You are chattel.”
Bryce had a heartbeat to take in what—where—she’d opened a portal to: a black, airless place, dotted with small, distant stars. A heartbeat, and then she was yanked in, too. Straight to deep space.
He knew which of the Fallen controlled this suit, whose soul had come to offer a hand. To help him do the impossible. “Shahar,” he said, tears falling.
In the streets, the other suits halted. Fell to their knees, bowing. Hunt could feel them—the souls of the Fallen. Swarming around him, around the suit.
“Thank you,” he said to the Archangel, to the Fallen he now felt pressing around him.
A glowing, black figure filled it. Then another. Aidas and Apollion.
Hunt threw a desperate, raging, blazing-hot rope of lightning toward Apollion. The only being on Midgard who could handle his power. Apollion caught it, in that humanoid form once more, and pulled.
Aidas was sweating, panting as he fought to keep the portal open— And then Ruhn was there. Starlight flaring. Pushing back against the impossible. Lidia was beside him, crackling with fire. Tharion. Holstrom. Flynn and Dec. A fire sprite, her small body bright with flame. Isaiah and Naomi.
The friends they’d made were what mattered in the end. Not the enemies. Through love, all is possible.
“Bryce,” he ordered, voice cracking. This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening to him, not when they’d been so close—
Hunt looked down at his mate, so still and cold and lifeless. The scream that came out of him shook the very world.
“The Under-King is gone,” Hypaxia said. Ruhn’s knees wobbled. “Any bargains he made with the living or the dead are now null and void. Bryce’s soul is hers to do with as she wills.”
Hunt stared at the sorceress, but Roga was only gazing at Bryce. “Oh, Quinlan,” Roga said, and there were tears gathering on her lashes.
“It is for me to offer,” Jesiba said, and looked down again at Bryce. Tears covered the sorceress’s cheeks. Priestess, Apollion had called her. “To offer what?” Lidia asked. “My life,” Roga said. “My long, wicked life.”
Apollion snapped, “That curse is for the living.” “Then it is a good thing I have a way with the dead,” Hypaxia declared.
“That Archesian amulet isn’t merely for protection against my books or against demons. It’s a link to Midgard itself.”
At Bryce’s surprised expression, Jesiba said, “Come, Quinlan. I know how ridiculously soft-hearted you can be.” The words were dry, but her face was soft.
“You went into that portal today knowing you wouldn’t walk away, either. I can offer now what I couldn’t then, all those years ago. My family and friends are long gone, but I know they’d want to offer this to you, too. As our own thanks for freeing our world.”
“The books are yours,” Jesiba said again. “And so is the gallery’s collection. The paperwork’s done.” “But how did you know I’d wind up—” “You’ve got one of the worst self-sacrificing streaks I’ve ever encountered,” Jesiba said.
“Go home, Bryce. This will all be here when you’re ready.”
“The angel is waiting for you, Quinlan.”
“We’ll all be here when you’re ready.”
Bryce began crying, and it was pure joy and love that burst from her as she lifted a hand in greeting toward Danika.
And then there was a spark of light by Danika’s shoulder, and Bryce knew that fire … She blew a kiss to Lehabah.
So Bryce turned from Jesiba. From what awaited them, all of them, and walked back toward the archway. Toward life. Toward Hunt.
“Thanks,” he said quietly to the Fallen, even if their souls were now gone. Off to the place Bryce claimed they’d all go, in the end. “For having my back this one last time.”
Ember at last pulled away from Nesta. But she gently put a hand to the female’s cheek and whispered, “You’ll find your way,” before walking toward the portal.
And Cassian, like any good mate, sensed when he wasn’t wanted, and walked over to the fireplace to pretend to read some sort of old-looking manuscript.
“I think that eight-pointed star was tattooed on you for a reason. Take that sword and go figure out why.”
“I’ll be forever grateful,” Bryce said to the Prince of the Chasm, “for your kindness that day at the Oracle.”
“The bedroom over there’s got two beds in it,” he said, pointing across the great room. “For your boys.”
And thanks to Hunt, there had been a day straight of thunderstorms. Of course, he was fined by the city for illegal and improper weather manipulation, but He blew his magical load didn’t really seem to hold sway when Bryce tried to explain it to the authorities.
Sasa, Rithi, and Malana currently perched on a takeout container, watching an episode of Veiled Love on Hunt’s phone where he’d propped it up against his water bottle.
Danika would have been proud. Bryce had made sure to tell the Helhound that—and about seeing his mate in the afterworld. He’d been silent enough during that call that she knew he was crying, but all he had said to Bryce was “Thank you.”
“Yes,” Baxian said, his voice rising. “They’re flying around and trampling everything and eating all the crops and I think you might need to come here because they seem to be the sort of thing that might belong to a Super Magical Fancy Starborn Princess …”
