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The magic books here … they were supposed to be guardians of the library itself. At least, that’s what I enchanted them to do, centuries ago. To attack those who tried to steal the books, to defend them.”
“Quinlan knew when to keep her mouth shut, you know. She never asked why I have these books, why I have the Archesian amulets that the Parthos priestesses wore.” Ithan’s mouth dried out. He whispered, “What—who are you?”
“You … you were a priestess at Parthos?” She nodded. “Priestess, witch … and now sorceress.” “But if you were human, where’d your magic come from?” She’d said Apollion granted her long life, not power. Her gray eyes darkened like the stormy sea she’d sailed across long ago. “When Apollion found my ship, he was ripe with power. He’d just consumed Sirius. I don’t think he intended it, but when his magic … touched me, something transferred over.”
The Starsword and Truth-Teller could open a portal to nowhere, whatever that was. Now she just needed to learn how to make them do it.
The Autumn King growled as he backed into the closet, “I will kill you and your bitch mother for this.” She motioned him further inside. “I’ll pencil you in for tomorrow.”
She was pretty sure her light had been pure before, but now, with Silene’s power mixed in … there was darkness there, too. Hidden beneath. Et in Avallen ego. Did it make a difference to her power? To her? To now have that layer of darkness?
But what if light blasted from either prism, meeting in the middle? What would happen in the collision of all that magic?
But all that colliding power … it was the boost she needed.
Midgard has always had magic, as all nature has inherent magic.
“You’re my home, Hunt. Our love spans across stars and worlds, remember?” She smiled slightly. “I’ll always find you.”
The Autumn King suggested that the Avallen Archives have a trove of information about the blades.
A male who’d lost his mate. It was, rumor claimed, worse than losing one’s soul. Tharion couldn’t decide whether he pitied the male for the loss, or envied him for being lucky enough to have found his mate in the first place. He wondered what Baxian would have preferred: to have never known Danika, or this, to have had their centuries together cut so brutally short.
Morganthia Dragas and her coven have staged a coup in the name of what they consider the preservation of witchkind’s old ways. I am Queen of the Valbaran Witches no longer.” She touched her breast, where her usual golden pin of Cthona was broken in two. “To escape their executioners, I have sworn fealty to the House of Flame and Shadow.”
Jesiba was second in command of the House of Flame and Shadow?
Hypaxia added, “I’ll begin tomorrow. Today I have obligations. Oaths to swear.” Oaths to the Under-King, who’d been impressed enough by her skill at the Autumn Equinox that he’d told her he’d welcome her here. Even Morganthia Dragas would hesitate before tangling with the Under-King.
“Long before that. The witches have been in decline for generations. A magical and moral rot.” She leaned her head against the back of her chair. “Naïve girl,” Jesiba murmured to herself.
“I’ve paid the Astronomer for years now to look for a way to undo Apollion’s grip on my soul.” Disgust roiled through him. “So you pay him and he does your bidding?” “I pay him,” she said blandly, “but he also stands to benefit from any discovery.” “Why?” “He wants to find the answer so he might use it to become young himself. He is human—or used to be, before so much foul magic tainted his soul. He fears death more than anything.
it was the wolf packs who reached Parthos first. Who started the slaughter and burnings. It was the wolf packs, led by Asteri-bred bloodhounds, who hunted down my sisters. I’ve never forgotten that.” Ithan’s stomach churned at the shameful history of his people, but he asked, “Bred?” A wry smile. “The gift already existed amongst the wolves, but the Asteri encouraged it. Bred it into certain lines. They still do.” “Like Danika.” Jesiba’s fingers resumed their drumming. “The Fendyrs have been a … carefully cultivated line for the Asteri.”
“The Under-King told Hypaxia and me that Connor … that the Under-King had been given a command not to touch my brother. Why?” Jesiba’s face was unreadable. “I don’t know. In all likelihood, it’s because he was an asset in life, and remains so in death.” “To who?” “The Asteri. They know what Connor means to Quinlan, to you—that makes his soul very, very valuable.”
“They seem … naturally occurring, rather than spell-made. Even the Ocean Queen’s never given the order to attempt to breach the mists here. It’s like Midgard itself made these.” Bryce slid her chilled, wet hands into the pockets of her jacket. It did little to warm them. “Told you the mists are worth looking at.”
Lidia Cervos was slowly shaking her head—like she understood the gravity of what he’d done better than any of them. “Well,” he said as casually as he could, sitting down and crossing his legs, “not to invite myself to the party, but I’m coming with you guys as well.”
No skyscrapers. No highways. No cars. The lamps he could make out were flame, not firstlight.
The Murder Twins Ruhn had mentioned, capable of prying into minds as they saw fit.
“Sathia?” Declan said, gaping. “It seems,” Morven drawled as the Murder Twins dragged the Fae female forward, their grips white-knuckled on her arms, hard enough to bruise, “that your sister has landed in a heap of trouble, Tristan Flynn.”
Lidia seemed to grasp the general direction of her thoughts, because she said quietly, “I never had anyone to fight for me.” Well, that did it. Bryce opened her mouth, rallying power to her star, but Tharion spoke from behind them. “I’ll marry Sathia.”
There had to be something good here, if Cormac had come out of it. Ruhn just couldn’t for the life of him figure out what. The Fae don’t deserve to be united
“It seems weird that two Fae strongholds, both islands, were once archipelagos, and then both lost all but the central island in the wake of the arrival of … unpleasant forces.”
“So the early Fae did kill all of Theia’s pegasuses, then.”
“These carvings are like the ones in Silene’s caves. Different art, but the storytelling style is similar.” “It’d make sense,” Tharion said, running his fingers over a thrashing, drowning horse, “considering that the art’s from the same time period.”
“Flynn’s right: I don’t like it here.” She licked—fucking licked—the dark substance on her fingers and grimaced. “Nope. Not at all.” Sathia, still a few steps behind Bryce, shivered. “Can you feel it, then? How … dead it all seems? Like there’s something festering here.”
They didn’t tell the story that Silene’s carvings had narrated—there was no mention of a slumbering evil beneath their feet. Just a river of starlight, into which the long-ago Fae had apparently dragged those pegasuses and drowned them. Yeah, the Fae here had been no better than the ones in Nesta’s world.
“What do you do with the sword and knife? With the Horn? Let’s say your wildest hopes about the Asteri come true, and we find the knowledge here or in the archives to help defeat them. Once they’re gone, do you keep these objects, when you want nothing to do with our people?” “Are you saying I shouldn’t keep them?” “I’m asking you what you plan to do—with them, and yourself.” “I’m changing the motto of Team Caves,” Bryce announced. “It’s now Mind Your Own Business.”
Sathia’s gaze simmered. An unbroken female, despite the life she’d led. “I was hoping for a Fae Queen. Someone who might change things for the better.” “Well, you got me instead,” Bryce said, and continued into the dark, fingers curling at her sides.
Sathia let it drop. Hunt fell into step beside Bryce, putting a hand on her shoulder as if to offer his support, but she could have sworn that even her mate was disappointed in her.
Such fear of females—such hatred. Why? Because of Theia? Pelias had been the one to found the Starborn line here on Midgard. Had all the bans and restrictions stemmed from his fear of someone like her rising again?
“The catalog listed this scroll’s title as The Roots of Earthen Magic.” “And?” Her mouth quirked to the side. “I think it’s strange that both Flynn and Sathia can’t stand Avallen.” “What does that have to do with defeating the Asteri?” “I figured it might be worthwhile to pull out some of the earliest writings about earth magic—what role it played in the First Wars, or soon after. This scroll was the oldest I could find.”
“This doesn’t offer more than what we already know about the usual sort of earth magic the Fae possess, but it does mention that those with earth magic were sent ahead to scout lands, to sense where to build. Not only the best geographical locations, but magical ones, too. They could sense the ley lines—the channels of energy running throughout the land, throughout Midgard. They told the Asteri to build their cities where several of the lines met, at natural crossroads of power, and picked those places for the Fae to settle, too. But they selected Avallen just for the Fae. To be their
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Ruhn considered. “Okay, so if Flynn and Sathia say this place is dead and rotting …” “It doesn’t line up with the claims recorded here about Avallen.” “But why would the ancient Fae lie about there being ley lines here?” “I don’t think they lied,” Lidia said, and pointed to the maps on the other table, where Dec had discarded them. “I think the Avallen they first visited, with all those ley lines and magic … I think it existed. But then something changed.” “We knew that already, though,” Ruhn said carefully. “That something changed.” “Yes,” Lidia said, “but the mists haven’t. Could that be
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“What’s your point?” “That the right leader makes all the difference.”
Baxian cut her a look. “And you believe everything Rigelus says? Besides, why can’t it be both? They wanted to keep their secrets to themselves, yes, but also to destroy the kernel of hope Danika offered. Not only to the wolves, but all of Midgard. That things could be different. Better.” Bryce massaged her aching chest, the starlight unusually dim. “They definitely would have killed her for that, too.” Baxian’s face tightened with pain. “Then make her death count for something, Bryce.” He might as well have punched her in the face. “And what,” she demanded, “try to redeem the Fae? Get them
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Bryce glowered. But she loosed a long breath. “If we survive this shit with the Asteri, I’ll think about it.” “They might go hand in hand,” he said.
“I come from a long line of powerful stag shifters. We have rituals. Secret ones, old ones. We don’t necessarily worship the same gods that you do. I think our gods predate this world, but I’ve never confirmed it.”
But this wasn’t about sex. And as their breathing evened out, as they stared at each other in the near-dark, he’d never felt more seen. Eventually, her eyes closed. Her breathing deepened. But Ruhn lay awake, holding her tight, and did not let go until dawn.
“Helena used the same gifts to carve this place as her sister, Silene, used in their home world. But there’s one big difference. One reason why she chose this place for the caves.” She knelt, and rubbed her fingers through the debris she’d left on either side of the cut. Brought it up to Hunt’s face. “Do you recognize it?” Hunt studied the black, glittering dust on her fingers and paled. “That’s black salt.” Bryce nodded slowly. Baxian blew out a breath that sounded suspiciously like Oh fuck. “These caves are made entirely of black salt,” Bryce said. She’d seen it as soon as the ghoul had
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“Maybe the salt helped her mind-speak with Hel. Maybe someone in Hel can tell us how to kill the Asteri. Apollion himself ate Sirius … Maybe he’s had the answer all along.”
Bryce could only gape at her mate as he grabbed the drinking bowl and held it out to her. Ready to follow her into Hel.
Hunt was inclined to agree. But he said, “Apollion appeared to both me and to Bryce in dream states. Maybe he was using the same communication method he’d used with Helena.”
“Helena and Silene weren’t … good people,” Baxian warned. “No, but they hated the Asteri,” Bryce said. “They wanted to get rid of them as much as we do.”
Aidas was smiling faintly—joy and hope brightening his remarkable eyes. “It seems you got a little lost on your way to find me, Bryce Quinlan. But welcome to Hel.”
Tharion couldn’t stop the memory of Lesia from flashing bright in his mind. Red-haired and beautiful and alive. His chest ached, threatening to cave in on itself.
