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

by Sarah J. Maas

“How?” The question was hoarse, desperate. “How did you do it?” But Rhysand glanced warily to Amren. She had to be some sort of court historian or scholar if he kept consulting her about the past. He said to her, “Our history doesn’t include an event like that.” Bryce cut in, “Well, the Asteri remember your world. They’re still holding a grudge. Rigelus, their leader, told me it’s his personal mission to find this place and punish you all for kicking them to the curb. You’re basically public enemy number one.” “It is in our history, Rhysand,” Amren said gravely. “But the Asteri were not known by that name. Here, they were called the Daglan.” Bryce could have sworn Rhysand’s golden face paled slightly. Azriel shifted in his chair, wings rustling. Rhysand said firmly, “The Daglan were all killed.” Amren shuddered. The gesture seemed to spark more alarm in Rhysand’s expression. “Apparently not,” she said.

Bryce cut in, “Well, the Asteri remember your world. They’re still holding a grudge. Rigelus, their leader, told me it’s his personal mission to find this place and punish you all for kicking them to the curb. You’re basically public enemy number one.” “It is in our history, Rhysand,” Amren said gravely. “But the Asteri were not known by that name. Here, they were called the Daglan.” Bryce could have sworn Rhysand’s golden face paled slightly. Azriel shifted in his chair, wings rustling. Rhysand said firmly, “The Daglan were all killed.” Amren shuddered. The gesture seemed to spark more alarm in Rhysand’s expression. “Apparently not,” she said.

Azriel, without Rhysand to translate, watched in silence. Bryce could have sworn shadows wreathed him, like Ruhn’s, yet … wilder. The way Cormac’s had been.

Amren turned to Rhysand and said in that new, strange language—their language: “The glowing letters inked on her back … they’re the same as those in the Book of Breathings

“Hurry.” Nesta drew that plain-yet-remarkable sword. At the touch of her hand, silver flames skittered down the blade and— The breath whooshed out of Bryce. The sword pulsed, as if all the air around it had vanished. It was like the Starsword, somehow. A sword, but more. Just as Nesta was Fae but more.

“What a sorry state you’re in,” the Prince of the Pit purred. He remained hidden in the shifting shadows. The demon prince inhaled, as if tasting the air. “What delicious pain you feel.” “I’d be happy to share.”

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. She could dimly make out more scenes of violence and bloodshed covering the walls inside the tunnel.

Bryce shook off the last of her dread and translated the inscription. “Her name was Silene.”

It was fire but not fire. It was like ice turned into flame. It echoed in Nesta’s eyes as she laid her hand on the stone wall. Silver fire rippled over the carvings.

Showing a masked queen, a crown upon her head, bearing instruments in her hand and standing before an adoring crowd.

abilities than was wise. “You can’t, uh … winnow?” Bryce asked Nesta. “I’ve never tried,” Nesta admitted. “My powers are unusual amongst the High Fae.” “High Fae? As opposed to … normal Fae?” Nesta shrugged. “They use the High part to make themselves sound more important than they are.” Bryce’s mouth twitched upward. “Sounds like the Fae in my world.” She angled her head. “But you’re High Fae. You … talk about them like you’re not.” “I’m new to the Fae realms,” Nesta said, her focus again on the river. “I was born human and turned High Fae against my will.” She sighed. “It’s a long story. But I’ve only lived in the faerie lands for a handful of years now. Much of this is still strange to me.” “I know the feeling,” Bryce said. “My mother is human, my father Fae. I’ve lived between two worlds my entire life.”

Bryce peered over a shoulder at the male, trying to calm her shivers. “Those were your shadows against my light earlier?” “Yes,” Azriel said again. Nesta chuckled. “And he’s probably been put out about it ever since.” “Seeing you go into that freezing river helped,” Azriel said mildly, and Bryce could have sworn she caught a hint of a smile gracing his beautiful face.

Bryce had endured that wind before, in the Bone Quarter. A wind of death, of decay, of quiet. The hair on her arms rose. And her blood chilled to ice as Nesta opened her eyes to reveal only silver flame shining there. Whatever that mask was, whatever power it had … death lay within it. “Take it off,” Azriel snarled, but Nesta extended a hand into the darkness of the tunnel. Mortal, an ancient, bone-dry voice whispered in Bryce’s head. You are mortal, and you shall die. Memento mori. Memento mori, memento— Bone clicked in the darkness. The earth shook.

Hair drifting on a phantom breeze, Nesta glowed with silver fire. Still wearing her mask. A finger pointed toward the fight. Commanding that creature of bone and death to attack the Wyrm. Again. Again.

Bryce began to turn away, sensing that she was witnessing something deeply personal. But Nesta pulled back from Azriel. Steadied her feet before facing Bryce, Ataraxia still in one hand. She flicked the fingers of her other hand and the Mask instantly vanished, off to wherever she’d summoned it from. Bryce had so many words in her head that none of them came out.

She said quietly, “I’m doing what I can to help you.” Ruhn looked over a shoulder. She’d wrapped her arms around her middle. “I don’t give a fuck what you’re doing. I’m only here because other people’s lives might depend on it.” Hurt flashed in her eyes, and it was kindling to his temper. How dare she look that way, look like she was hurt, when it was his fucking heart— “You’re dead to me,” Ruhn hissed, and vanished.

Bryce braced herself, sucking in a deep breath— Azriel struck before she could exhale. 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. “Are you all right?” Nesta asked with something like concern. Was it his power? Or something about this world? Even Hunt’s hadn’t felt like this—so undiluted, like one-hundred-proof liquor. Bryce closed her eyes and counted to ten, breathing hard. Letting it ease into her blood. Her bones. It tingled along her limbs.

“All life came and comes from it,” Azriel said with something like reverence. “The Mother poured it into this world, and from it, life blossomed.” Nesta said quietly, “But it is also real—not a myth.” Her swallow was audible. “I was turned High Fae when an enemy shoved me into it. It’s raw power, but also … sentient.” “Like that mask you put on earlier.” Azriel folded his wings tightly, clearly wary of discussing such a powerful instrument with a potential enemy. But Nesta asked, “You detected a sentience in the Mask?” Bryce nodded. “It didn’t, like, talk to me or anything. I could just … sense it.” “What did it feel like?” Nesta asked quietly. “Like death,” Bryce breathed. “Like death incarnate.”

Nesta said quietly, “But it is also real—not a myth.” Her swallow was audible. “I was turned High Fae when an enemy shoved me into it. It’s raw power, but also … sentient.” “Like that mask you put on earlier.” Azriel folded his wings tightly, clearly wary of discussing such a powerful instrument with a potential enemy. But Nesta asked, “You detected a sentience in the Mask?” Bryce nodded. “It didn’t, like, talk to me or anything. I could just … sense it.” “What did it feel like?” Nesta asked quietly. “Like death,” Bryce breathed. “Like death incarnate.” Nesta’s eyes grew distant, grave. “That’s what the Mask can do. Give its wearer power over Death itself.”

The spikes of the star began to expand and contract, as if it were breathing. Metal clicked behind it, like gears shifting. Locks opening. And in the lowest spike of the star, a triangle of a door slid open.

Dusk court

The hair on her arms rose. “These are Midgard’s constellations.” Bryce pointed to a cluster. “That’s the Great Ladle. And that … that’s Orion. The hunter.” Hunt. Her Hunt. Her companions, the tunnels, the world faded away as she traced the stars, plotting their path. The Archesian amulet warmed against her skin, as if working to clear the wards around her. “The Archer,” she breathed. “The Scorpion and the Fish … This is a map of my cosmos.” Her boot knocked against a raised half-orb, a screaming face carved into it. “Siph.” The outermost planet. She went to the next, a similar mound with a grave male face. “Orestes.” “Orestes?” Azriel asked sharply, drawing her attention back to where he and Nesta still stood at the tunnel archway. “The warrior?” She blinked. “Yes.” “Interesting,” Nesta said, head angling. “Perhaps the name came from the same source.” Bryce indicated the next mound, the face of a bearded old man. “Oden.” The next, closer to the center of the room, was a young, laughing male. “Lakos.” Another mound rose on the other side of the star, massive and helmeted. “Thurr,” she said. Then she pointed to a mound with a female head. “Farya.” And beyond Farya, a large, raised mound with snaking tendrils. “Sol,” she whispered, indicating the sun-shaped thing.

Bryce knew that heart-shaped face. The long hair. “Silene,” Bryce murmured. “From the carving?” Nesta asked, and as Bryce glanced to her, the warrior stepped through the wards as if they were nothing. Like she could have done so all along. Azriel didn’t try to stop her, but remained standing inside the tunnel mouth. “At the beginning of the tunnels,” Nesta said, “there was that carving of a young female … you said her name was Silene.”

“Silene,” Bryce murmured. “From the carving?” Nesta asked, and as Bryce glanced to her, the warrior stepped through the wards as if they were nothing. Like she could have done so all along. Azriel didn’t try to stop her, but remained standing inside the tunnel mouth. “At the beginning of the tunnels,” Nesta said, “there was that carving of a young female … you said her name was Silene.” “The carving’s an exact likeness,” Bryce said, nodding. “But who is she?” Azriel said softly, voice tinged with pain, “She looks like Rhysand’s sister.”

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.

Another shift of memory, and Fionn pulled a long blade from the Cauldron, dripping water. A black blade, whose dark metal absorbed any trace of light around it. Bryce’s knees weakened. The Starsword.

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.

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. Bryce knew that call. Had been hearing it since she arrived in this world. A chill rippled down her spine. 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. Unchecked, limitless power sat upon that throne. Bryce could barely get a breath down. The Theia who Aidas had spoken so highly of … she was a murdering tyrant? As if in answer, Silene said, 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. “Yeah,” Bryce seethed, more to Silene than the others, “at least you guys had that.”

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.

That star in her chest … it was the light of a butcher. Her ancestor.

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.

Erelia

Erelia

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.

I 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. Yet when my first son was born, when the babe screamed and the sound was full of night, I 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.

promised to tell his son, and his son after him. A secret shame, a secret history, a secret weapon—all hidden within our bloodline.

sprint— She needed more power. The eight-pointed star at her feet glimmered. As if her magic had nudged something within it. Like embers flaring in stirred ashes. What if her star hadn’t been guiding her to the knowledge, but to something … different? Something tangible. Like calls to like. To you, in this very stone, Silene had said, I leave the inheritance and the burden that my own mother passed to me.

One by one, rapid as shooting stars, the thoughts raced through Bryce. More on instinct than anything else, she dropped to her knees and slammed her hand atop the eight-pointed star. Bryce reached with her mind, through layers of rock and earth—and there it was. Slumbering beneath her. Not firstlight, not as she knew it on Midgard—but raw Fae power from a time before the Drop. The power ascended toward her through the stone, like a glimmering arrow fired into the dark— Azriel flapped his wings and was instantly airborne, swooping for the tunnel exit. Like a small sun emerging from the stone itself, a ball of light burst from the floor. A star, twin to the one in Bryce’s chest. Her starlight at last awoke again, as if reaching with shining fingers for that star hovering inches away. 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. The hair on her head rose. Debris floated upward. She was everywhere and nowhere. She was the evening star and the last rays of color before the dark.

Our brightest minds found ways to bend the fabric of worlds. To travel between them. Wayfarers, we called them. World-walkers.”

“Have you looked beneath every sacred mountain? At their very roots? The magic draws all sorts of creatures. I can sense them even now, slithering about, gnawing on the magic. My magic. They’re as much vermin as the rest of you.”

home.

So Bryce just takes Truth Teller and hops back home....if Azriel can weild TT then he's Starborn...and he and Rhys are related

And Hunt knew he’d treasure this moment forever: the moment when Lidia Cervos pulled out her gun and fired it right between the Hawk’s eyes.

sliding door open to reveal— “Where the fuck is your hand?” Tristan Flynn shouted to Ruhn over the gunfire, a rifle at his shoulder. He fired behind them, again and again, and Baxian pivoted the gunner to the rear, unloading bullets onto the pursuing enemy. Ruhn was well and truly crying then.

“Where the fuck is your hand?” Tristan Flynn shouted to Ruhn over the gunfire, a rifle at his shoulder. He fired behind them, again and again, and Baxian pivoted the gunner to the rear, unloading bullets onto the pursuing enemy. Ruhn was well and truly crying then.

The Hind had broken the Spine of Pangera with one fatal blow, ignited by the fire from the lost Sprite Queen. Ruhn couldn’t help but admire the symbolism of it, for the only race of Vanir who’d universally stood with Athalar during the Fallen rebellion to have lit this match. He caught a glimpse of Athalar’s face—the awe and grief and pride shining there.

“Cutting it a little close, don’t you think?” Hunt shouted to Lidia, and Ruhn opened his eyes to find that the gunner had been ripped clean off. Baxian was clinging for dear life to the back of the jeep, a manic grin on his face.

“You’re my home, Hunt. Our love spans across stars and worlds, remember?” She smiled slightly. “I’ll always find you.”

A male now seated before them, on a throne seemingly crafted from a single set of antlers. The beast who’d grown them had to have been colossal, the likes of which didn’t exist elsewhere on Midgard. Did stags that big roam around here? The thought was … not comforting.

Stag throne

“She should still have enough lightning lingering in her veins to bridge the gap between life and death. The thunderbirds were once able to aid necromancers, to use their lightning to hold the souls of the dead. They could even imbue their power into ordinary objects, like weapons, and give them magical properties—”

Hunt a thunderbird

It had been more than fucking, or sex, or lovemaking. Hunt stared down at her, starlight shimmering in his hair. Just as she knew lightning licked through her own. “It felt like my power went into you,” Hunt said, eyes tracking the lightning as it slithered down her body. “It’s … yours.” “As mine is yours,” she said, touching a fleck of starlight glittering between the sable locks of his hair. “I feel weird,” he admitted, but didn’t move. “I feel …” She sensed it, then. Understood it at last. What it had always been, what she’d learned to call it in that other world. “Made,” Bryce whispered with a shade of fear. “That’s what it feels like. Whatever power can flow between us … my Made power from the Horn can, too.” Hunt looked down at himself, at where their bodies remained joined. She had a pang of guilt, then, for not telling him all she knew yet about the other Made objects in the universe—about the Mask, the Trove. “I guess it flows both ways: my power into you, and yours into me.”