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

by Sarah J. Maas

But this time, true to the princes’ word, the beasts stayed in line. As for the soldiers, Bryce didn’t look too closely at the faces beneath their armor. At the spiky wings poking above the lines, the taloned hands gripping spears. But they did not speak, did not snarl. Their breath curled from beneath the visors of their helmets with each step through the frigid air. Each step deeper into Midgard. All of Hel, ready to strike.

“I’m still a witch,” Hypaxia said, hands curling at her sides. “That can never be taken away from me.”

“In Hel, the Reapers fed on and ruled the vampyrs, and when the vampyrs defected to this world, the Reapers followed their food source. And found the other beings on Midgard to be a veritable feast. So they have left the vampyrs to themselves, feeding as they please on the rest of the populace.”

The Under-King’s milky eyes settled on Ithan. “I was birthed by the Void, but my people …” He smiled cruelly at Ithan. “They were not unknown to your own ancestors, wolf. I crept through when they charged so blindly into Midgard. This place is much better suited to my needs than the caves and barrows I was confined to.” Ithan reeled. “You came from the shifters’ world?” “You were not known as shifters then, boy.” “Then what—” “And she,” the Under-King went on, gesturing to that unusual depiction of Urd towering above him, “was not a goddess, but a force that governed worlds. A cauldron of life, brimming with the language of creation. Urd, they call her here—a bastardized version of her true name. Wyrd, we called her in that old world.”

Does the void equal the nowhere?

Enemy. The silent dead, the suffering—Ithan would stand for it no more. “Get out of my realm,” the Under-King said, and Ithan scented his fear. His surprise and dread. Like he knew Ithan for that ancient enemy as well.

No more Sailings. He’d never go to another. He’d single-handedly destroyed the Fendyr line. Why not destroy Death, too?

And the Under-King exploded into sparkling shards of ice.

when they stood before it did Connor speak again. “That bullet,” Connor said, nodding to where Ithan held it, “was made by us—the dead. For Bryce.” A soft, pained smile crossed his face at her name. “To use with the Godslayer Rifle.” “What’s so special about it?” Jesiba demanded. “Nothing yet. But it was crafted to hold us. Our secondlight.” As if in answer, the Gate began to glow. “We had planned to make contact with Jesiba—to ask her, through her role in Flame in Shadow, to get in touch with one of you.” Connor shrugged with one shoulder. “But when you appeared earlier, Ithan, with the Under-King distracted … Well, it was a little earlier than we’d planned, but everyone was ready. I think Urd made it so.” After all Ithan had heard and experienced, he didn’t doubt his brother’s claim. “So they began the exodus through this Gate. They were finishing when I was summoned to you.”

“I won’t forgive or forget what Ketos did to me and mine. But he’ll walk out of here today—I’ll allow that much.” Hypaxia gave her a look dripping with disdain. “You will walk out of here today. We will allow that much.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and led his wife into the gloom. It was all he could offer her.

“We’re here to show you that the Republic is not as all-powerful as you’ve been led to believe.” He lifted his chin. “Centuries ago, I led a legion—the Fallen—against the Archangels, against the Asteri. You know how it ended. That day on Mount Hermon, only one other group of Vanir came to our aid: the sprites. We all suffered for it, and those of us who survived are still punished to this day.”

“You’re my best friend, you know that?” He pulled away, staring down at her, and she couldn’t stop her star from flaring with light. “I mean, you’re my mate and wife—fuck, that still sounds weird—but you’re my best friend, too. I never thought I’d have one of those.”

She’d find him across galaxies, if need be.

“But you’re Prime,” she insisted. “You speak for all Valbaran wolves. Your choices are our choices. If you stand against the Asteri, we stand against the Asteri.”

“All Hel is going to break loose pretty damn soon.” “Literally,” Bryce said with unnerving cheer.

keep the Asteri distracted by unleashing Hel and the Fallen … while Athalar and I sneak into the palace and destroy that firstlight core.” “Don’t forget,” Hunt cut in wryly, “rescue Lidia’s sons, destroy Pollux, get close enough to the Asteri to eliminate them from the planet …” He ticked off the items on his fingers. “Yeah, yeah,” Bryce said, waving a hand. She winked at Lidia, flashing a grin that Hunt knew was designed to put the Hind at ease. “You ready to beat the shit out of these assholes?”

For the first time in his life, it seemed that Urd was listening as he and Bryce slipped past the doors into the empty throne room.

“You have no idea what powers you toy with, girl,” Rigelus said. “The Mask will curse your very soul—”

“So I sent three legions of my Asterian Guard to the Rift last night. I think they and their brimstone missiles will find Hel quite unguarded, with all its armies here.”

“I think the three legions he sent to Nena,” Naomi said, “will be in for quite a surprise when they find that half of Hel’s army is still there and waiting for them.”

Aidas unsheathed a shining silver blade that seemed to glow with bluish light. “My turn,” the demon prince said, the dry breeze whipping his pale blond hair. He asked Bryce, “A ride?” Hunt had only a moment to glimpse the worry, the fear in her eyes as she grabbed Aidas’s hand, then Hunt’s, and teleported them. With the power of Theia’s star, it barely took a moment.

To the portal to nowhere. A primal chill sang down Hunt’s spine. Theia had been right; Aidas was right. That portal to nowhere, opening somehow inside Polaris, was dangerous not just to the Asteri, but to anyone in its reach.

But Bryce was staring down at the place where Polaris had been. At the blades in her hands, still wreathed in his Helfire and her starlight. A portal to nowhere. To a black hole. No wonder it had started to suck in Bryce as well. And the rest of the world. No wonder Theia had hesitated, if that was what she’d suspected would happen at the joining of the blades.

They’d teleported into a corridor full of deathstalkers. Thanatos had sent his pets into the palace to distract and occupy any Asteri who might have stayed away from the battlefield, but his grip on them must have been weak, or he simply did not care.

“Rigelus guessed you’d seek out his mystics, so he instructed them to feed the lie to you.

“Your lightning,” Bryce said quickly. “It warped stone earlier when you shot it at Polaris. Do you think it can warp crystal?”

The distraction cost him. Hunt’s Helfire slammed into the crystal floor. Bryce didn’t wait to see what happened, how Rigelus reacted, before teleporting them back to the center of the room, and Hunt’s Helfire boomed as it collided with the stone, which had indeed warped, and was now splintering under the monstrous heat. Crystal peeled away, melting. And beneath it, a tunnel to the core of firstlight began to form.

The Eternal City was a chaos of brimstone missiles, mech-suits, demons, the Asterian Guard, and every imaginable nightmare. Light and darkness warred across every inch of the city. But Ithan sprinted through the streets, heading toward the crystal palace. Toward the white light flashing from it like some massive strobe.

Bryce’s message hadn’t only been a distraction for the Asteri. It had been a rallying cry. For the people who had suffered most at the Asteri’s hands.

Ruhn snarled, saying the words he hadn’t dared voice until now, “She’s my mate, you fucker.” Lidia inhaled a sharp breath.

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.

Pollux got to his feet. “You cunt,” he spat. “What the fuck is this?” “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.”

The shifters were Fae from another world, Danika had explained. Blessed with a Fae form and a humanoid one, gifted with elemental powers. 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.

It was so much more natural than it had ever been. In the Cave of Princes, it had taken nearly all her concentration to douse the flames of the Autumn King around her companions. Only Morven had seemed to be surprised—the others hadn’t questioned how the flames had disappeared. There had been too much chaos for anyone to piece it together. Now her fire flowed and flowed. Her truth was freed.

The heat of it singed Lidia’s face, and amid the burning and billowing smoke— 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.

Where the machine had been, a fourth sprite glowed, a hot, intense blue. Irithys.

“We shall build a new world atop their ashes.”

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.

Another Asteri must be going down.

They just had to deactivate the core, and then she’d take the sword and knife and go after the Asteri. One by one.

“Don’t you want to know what you risk, before you act so recklessly?” Rigelus said smugly. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You destroy the firstlight core, and you destroy Midgard itself.”

“You made the core a kill switch for this world,” Bryce breathed.

Rigelus reeled back, releasing her, either in pain or rage or fear, she didn’t know— His light was not his own. His light had been stolen from the people of Midgard. He was a living gate, storing that power, and just as she’d taken it from the Gates this spring, just as it had fueled her Ascent, fueled her own power to new levels … now it became hers.

Bryce had opened a black hole in the middle of Midgard.

It had been a gamble. But she’d seen what the Starsword and Truth-Teller had done to Polaris. They had created a void that had sucked the Asteri in—the only sort of prison that might destroy a being of light.

To a black hole. Wasn’t that the unholy power that Apollion possessed? The power of the Void. The antithesis of light.

Rigelus had a one-way ticket for that black hole—she’d make sure of it. Even if she went with him.

The mech-suit held out a hand, and Hunt knew. 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. The mech-suit, the Archangel’s soul within it, inclined its head. Aidas took a step back, as if surprised.

Hunt did the only thing he could think to do. He slid the Mask onto his face. To escape death, he’d don its trappings. The Umbra Mortis in truth. The Mask ripped apart his soul.

But the portal was closing, getting smaller and smaller, and— A glowing, black figure filled it. Then another. Aidas and Apollion.