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September 3 - October 8, 2024
Still panting, blazing with fire, Lidia said, “An old bloodline,” and got to her feet.
Galathynius bloodline?!
It was Daybright, as Ruhn had seen her in his mind. She’d presented herself—her true self—to him all this time.
Im crying again
“You signed your death warrant when you touched my sons,” she said. And exhaled a breath. Flame rippled from her mouth into Pollux’s flesh. The angel screamed—or tried to.
Her sons got to their feet, shock stark on their battered faces. The knife in Ruhn’s boot helped him make quick work of prying open their gorsian shackles, but it was Actaeon who whispered to Lidia, “Mom?”
It confirmed what Lidia had long guessed. 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.
JWNFIWNWSNFKWKXN
Lidia turned Mordoc and the two snipers into ashes with a thought.
But before her flame could touch those war-machines, before the brimstone missiles could fire, the launch barrels melted. Iron dripped away, sizzling on the dry earth.
Three tiny white lights burned bright. Fire sprites. Simmering with power. Through the fire and smoke and drifting embers, Lidia recognized them. Sasa. Rithi. Malana.
SCREAMING
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. “We found her,” Sasa said to Lidia, breathless with adrenaline or hope or fear or all of them at once. “We told her what you and Bryce said.”
CRYING
And as one flame, one unified people, as Bryce Quinlan had promised, their fire struck the enemy line.
Ruhn exploded. Starlight, two beams of it straight to their eyes, blinded them. Just as Bryce had done to the Murder Twins. Twin whips of his shadows wrapped around their necks and squeezed.
Warm, bright magic answered. Healing magic, rising to the surface as if it had been dormant in his blood. He had no idea how to use it, how to do anything other than will it with a simple Save him. In answer, light poured from his hands, and he could feel Tharion’s flesh and bone knitting back together beneath his fingers, mending, healing …
“Stop,” called an exhausted male voice from down the hall. And though she’d leapt between worlds and ended Archangels and Asteri, nothing had prepared her to see Ithan Holstrom racing down the palace hallway with the Godslayer Rifle slung over his shoulder.
“Get out of the palace,” Bryce warned, and teleported. Alone. Taking the Godslayer Rifle with her, and leaving the Mask in Hunt’s hand.
She had one shot. Last time, Lehabah had bought her the two seconds it cost to line up that shot.
And this time, Connor and the rest of CC gave her the last shot
“You made the core a kill switch for this world,” Bryce breathed.
She fired the Godslayer Rifle into the firstlight core.
The Asteri screamed, and time dripped by as the bullet fired from the rifle, slow enough that Bryce could see the writing on its side: Memento Mori. Powered by the souls of the dead, of Connor and the Pack of Devils and so many more … the dead sacrificing for the sake of the living. The dead, yielding eternity so Midgard might be free. The bullet spiraled downward, into the light, toward that final crystal barrier.
I believe it all happened for a reason. I believe it wasn’t for nothing. From far away, the words she’d spoken at the Gate the previous spring echoed.
Like the battery she was, she grabbed his power. Sucked it into herself. Light met light and yet—Rigelus’s starlight wasn’t light at all. It was power, yes. But it was firstlight. It was the power of Midgard. Of the people.
A portal opened—right in front of the core and the dark dot that was emerging from it, vacuuming in all life. Bryce sent the core, that lifeless, growing dot, through her portal.
Okay but where did that portal lead to
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.
Oh, that's where
And now she was here, careening through space with the Asteri.
“I told her to choose to live,” Aidas murmured sadly, gazing toward the starry black expanse.
“She wouldn’t be Bryce if she had chosen herself,” Hunt said hoarsely.
“But she left the portal open,” Hunt said. “To Midgard.” Aidas turned those weary eyes to him. “I believe it shall shut when she and the Horn in her back are obliterated.” “She left it open to come home,” Hunt snarled. He studied the Mask in his hands. She’d left it with him … why? He’d have no ability to get it back to the Fae in their home world. Hel, he couldn’t even wield the damn thing. He wasn’t Made; he couldn’t command it.
No but fucking Isaiah can
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.
There was only one brimstone missile left in the suit.
He could have sworn a light, ghostly hand guided his to the release button. “She’ll get thrown in, too,” Hunt whispered to Shahar.
That ghostly hand pressed—lightly, as if it was all she could manage—on his hand. On the button. As if to say, Fire.
She had brought joy, and laughter, and love, had pried him free of that cold, dark existence and pulled him into the light. Her light. He wouldn’t let it be extinguished.
So Hunt pushed the missile-launch button. One push, and it blasted from the shoulder panel on the mech-suit. And as it left the suit, spiraling through space, golden with all that angelic wrath … He felt Shahar leave with it.
The Fallen’s cause, ended at last with this final blow. Bryce and Rigelus halted their struggle at the glowing missile’s approach. And Hunt knew it was Shahar, it was every one of the Fallen, it was all who’d stood against the Asteri, who guided that missile for a direct hit into Rigelus’s face. It didn’t explode. It launched him away from Bryce, the Bright Hand now tumbling for the event horizon, the missile with him— And Bryce was free. Drifting.
Yup i am sobbing
A glowing, black figure filled it. Then another. Aidas and Apollion. Their power grabbed the edges of the portal and held it a little wider. Held it open a moment longer.
And with what little strength he had left, 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.
Apollion’s teeth flashing as he dragged Hunt by his lightning, inch by inch, closer and closer. 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. So many hands, so many powers, from almost every House. The friends they’d made were what mattered in the end. Not the enemies. Through love, all is possible.
The portal shut, sealing the black hole and all of space behind it. The Asteri were gone. Hunt was out of the mech-suit in a heartbeat, shattering the metal panel, swinging down to where Bryce lay on the ground. She wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing. And he finally let the Mask say the word he’d been ignoring since he’d grabbed her in the depths of space. Dead.
“Do something,” Hunt snarled up at Apollion and Aidas. “You’ve got a black hole in your fucking mouth—you’ve got all the power in the galaxy,” he spat at the Prince of the Pit. “Save her.” “I cannot,” Apollion said, and Hunt had never hated anything more than he hated the grief in the prince’s eyes. The tears on Aidas’s face. “We do not have such gifts.”
“He cannot save her, either,” Aidas said softly. “None of us can.” Hunt looked down at his mate, so still and cold and lifeless. The scream that came out of him shook the very world.
A gentle hand touched his shoulder. “I might be able to try something,” said a female voice. Hunt looked up to find Hypaxia Enador somehow standing beside him, the Bone Crown of the House of Flame and Shadow atop her shining black curls.
HYPAXIAAAAAAA
“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.” She raised her eyes to Apollion again. “That is not possible,” Apollion said. “You cursed me,” Jesiba said, and as puzzled as Hunt was, he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt. “You cursed me to immortality. Now I’m making it a gift: the gift of a Vanir’s long life. I give it freely to Bryce Quinlan, if she wants it.” Apollion snapped, “That curse is for the living.” “Then it is
...more
Jesiba smiled softly. “After fifteen thousand years, I’ve had my fill of Midgard.”
Hunt didn’t like that word one bit, so he said to Jesiba, “Thank you. I never knew that Quinlan … that she meant anything to you.” Jesiba’s brows rose, and a bit of the prickly sorceress he knew returned. “Of course she does. Do you know how hard it is to find a competent assistant?”
“That Archesian amulet isn’t merely for protection against my books or against demons. It’s a link to Midgard itself.”
“The Parthos books are yours now. Protect them, cherish them. Share them with the world.”
Far out, on a distant hill, stood seven figures. Bryce knew them by shape, knew them by their heights and the glow around them. She picked out Connor standing tall at the back. And standing at their front, a hand upraised … Bryce began crying, and it was pure joy and love that burst from her as she lifted a hand in greeting toward Danika. Danika, here—with everyone. Safe and loved. She heard the words on the wind, carried from her friend’s soul to hers. Light it up, Bryce. And Bryce was laughing, laughing and sobbing as she yelled back across the lush plain and hills, “Light it up, Danika!”
And then there was a spark of light by Danika’s shoulder, and Bryce knew that fire … She blew a kiss to Lehabah.
Bryce nodded, and hugged Jesiba, conveying all that was in her heart. Jesiba hugged her back—first awkwardly, then wholeheartedly. And as Bryce hugged her, she looked one more time toward the hill where Danika and Lehabah and Connor and the Pack of Devils had waved.
All of Danika’s work, fulfilled.
It was light and love and life.
