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“It is in our history, Rhysand,” Amren said gravely. “But the Asteri were not known by that name. Here, they were called the Daglan.”
“The glowing letters inked on her back … they’re the same as those in the Book of Breathings.”
Then Azriel said in a soft, lethal voice, “Explain or you die.”
Well fuck quite the ultimatum
“Yes, but I believe Irithys might be … motivating for Athalar.”
Who????
“I have need of Irithys.” The mistress lifted her head, but her body remained stooped with age, so thin the knobs of her spine jutted from beneath her gauzy robe. “The queen has been sullen, Your Brilliance. I fear she will not be amenable to your requests.”
the queen????
Ruhn had called her a queen before she left. And for the first time in her life, as she walked through that sea of death … she might have lifted her chin a bit higher. Might have felt a mantle settle on her shoulders, a train of starlight in her wake. Might have felt something like a crown settle upon her head. Guiding her into the dark.
Lidia carried the crystal bubble containing the Queen of the Fire Sprites through the dim halls, Irithys’s flame splashing gold upon the marble floors and walls.
“What you were born to do—to accomplish the task for which your father brought you into existence,” Apollion said before fading into nothing, leaving Aidas standing alone before the prisoners. Shock reared up in Hunt, dampened by the weight of an old, unbidden hurt. “I have no father.” Aidas’s expression was sad as he stepped out of the shadows. “You spent too long asking the wrong questions.” “What the fuck does that mean?” 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.”
Showing a masked queen, a crown upon her head, bearing instruments in her hand and standing before an adoring crowd. Behind her, a great mountaintop palace rose toward the sky, winged horses soaring among the clouds.
???
Normally, they were full of life and action and movement. But this one was simple, clearly meant to be the sole focus. Something of great importance to whoever had carved it. An archway had been etched, stars glimmering around it. And in that archway stood a male figure, the image created with impressive depth. His hand was upraised in greeting.
the gate to midgard & the asteri waving in fake warm welcomr
She’d been dripping blood for it all this way, leaving a trail, constantly scraping off her scabs to reopen her wounds—ones she’d intentionally inflicted on herself by “falling” into the stream. If the Wyrm relied on scent to hunt, then she’d left a veritable neon sign leading right to them.
So thats why her hands didnt heal but why tempt the wyrm
“Why—why do any of this? Why do you care?” Nesta was quiet for a beat. Azriel didn’t say a word, a wall of silent menace at her back. Then Nesta said, “Because I’ve seen that star on your chest before.” “Yeah, you said that,” Bryce said. “Your tattoo—” “Not my tattoo.” “Then where?” Bryce breathed. If she could get answers— But Nesta strode ahead again into the darkness. “No place good.”
?????????
As they walked on, Nesta said, “When we stop again … can you show me how that contraption works?” “The phone?” The word couldn’t be translated into their language, and it sounded outright silly in their accent. But Nesta nodded, her eyes fixed on the tunnel ahead. “Trying to figure out what it does has been driving us all crazy.”
“This place is lethal,” Azriel insisted gravely. “The wards in there are sticky as tar.” “Yes,” Nesta admitted, “but we’ve come all this way, so let’s see why we’ve been dragged here.” “Why she’s been dragged here—by that star.” They both turned toward her at last, expressions taut. Bryce composed her own face into the portrait of innocence as she asked, “What is the Prison?” Nesta’s lips pursed for a heartbeat before she said, “A misty island off the coast of our lands.”
Is that the same isle where its always twilight that the asteri said her starborn ppl originally came from???
“Was there ever,” Bryce ventured, a sudden hunch taking form in her mind, “a Made object called the Horn?” “I don’t know,” Nesta said. “Why?” Bryce gazed at the eight-pointed star, the very heart of this chamber, of this map of the cosmos. “Someone put your Harp there for a reason.” “To keep it hidden,” Azriel said. “No,” Bryce said quietly, facing the star fully, her free hand drifting to touch the matching scar on her chest. It had led her all the way here. To this exact spot, where the Harp had been. “It was left for someone like me.”
Bryce stared at the eight-pointed star for a moment before she said, “To find the truth.” “Bryce,” Nesta cautioned, as if reading her thoughts. Bryce didn’t so much as look back as she stepped onto the star.
We were slaves to the Daglan. For five thousand years, our people—the High Fae—knelt before them. They were cruel, powerful, cunning. Any attempt at rebellion was quashed before forces could be rallied. Generations of my ancestors tried. All failed.
The Daglan became arrogant as the millennia passed, sure of their unending dominion over our world. But their overconfidence eventually blinded them to the enemies amassing at their backs, a force like none that had been gathered before. Bryce’s breath remained caught in her throat, Nesta still as death at her side, as the scene shifted to show a golden-haired High Fae female standing a step behind the Asteri’s throne. Her chin was lifted, her face as cold as her mistress’s. My mother served at that monster’s side for a century, a slave to her every sick whim. Bryce knew who it was before
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But my mother, Theia, used the time she served the Daglan to learn all she could about their instruments of conquest. The Dread Trove, we called it in secret. The Mask, the Harp, the Crown, and the Horn.
My mother and father, Fionn, had kept their love a secret through the years, knowing the Daglan would find it amusing to tear them apart if they learned of the affair. But they were able to meet in secret—and to plan their uprising. “Fionn …,” Azriel murmured, awe lacing his voice, “was your ancestor.”
Who???
Bryce pointed to the hologram—to the golden-haired Fae male. “Who is he?” she asked quietly. There had never been any mention of Fionn in the histories of Midgard, the lore. “The first and last High King of these lands,” Azriel breathed.
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. Two other figures stood there, veiled in the thick snow, but Bryce hardly got a chance to wonder about them before Silene’s narration began anew. They fought the Daglan and won, she went on. Using the Daglan’s own weapons, they destroyed them. Yet my parents did not think to learn the Daglan’s other secrets—they were too weary, too eager to leave the past behind. “Wait,” Bryce cut in. “How did
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My father became High King, and my mother his queen, yet this island on which you stand, this place … my mother claimed it for herself. The very island where she had once served as a slave became her domain, her sanctuary. The Daglan female who’d ruled it before her had chosen it for its natural defensive location, the mists that kept it veiled from the others. So, too, did my mother. But more than that, she told me many times that she and her heirs were the only ones worthy of tending this island.
So bryce???
We returned to what we’d been before that time, too, creatures whose very magic was tied to this land. 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. It was, as she said, as if the island had a soul that now blossomed under her care, nurtured by the court she built here.
But Fionn did not consider my mother a worthy successor. The crown should go to the eldest child, he said—to my sister, Helena. It was time, he thought, for a new generation to lead. It did not sit well with my mother, or with many of those in her court—especially her general, Pelias. He agreed with my mother that Helena was too young to inherit our father’s throne. But my mother was still in her prime. Still ripe with power, and it was clear that she’d been blessed by the gods themselves, since she had been gifted children at long last. So it was just as it had been before: those behind the
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with two daughters and one throne … only entire worlds would do for us. For her legacy. Bryce shook her head again. She knew where this was going. Remembering the teachings of her former mistress, my mother knew she might wield the Horn and Harp to open a door. To bring the Fae to new heights, new wealth and prestige.
It was Pelias who told her where to cast her intention. Using old, notated star maps from their former masters, he’d selected a world for them.
A Daglan who had been using his army of mystics to scour galaxies for our world. The Daglan promised him every reward, if only he could nudge my mother toward this moment, to use the Dread Trove to open a portal to the world he indicated.
did not question how and why he knew that this island, our misty home, was the best place to do it. She simply gathered our people, all those willing to conquer and colonize—and opened the doorway. In a chamber—this chamber, if the eight-pointed star on the floor was any indication,
In the center of the chamber, a gate opened into a land of green and sunshine. And standing there among the greenery, waiting for them … “Oh fuck.” Bryce’s mouth dried out. “Rigelus.” The teenage Fae boy, appearing no older than Helena and Silene, smiled at Theia. Raised a hand in greeting.
Like i fucking said, a faked warm welcome from the asteri to get them to step through the gate to midgard
the strangers claimed to be Fae as well, long separated from our world by the Daglan, whom they too claimed to have overthrown. And they had waited all this time to reunite our people. With a few words from the Daglan, my mother’s doubts melted away, and our exodus into Midgard began.
Holy fucking shit
paranoid enough about any new allies or companions that she hid the Horn and Harp. She created a pocket of nothingness, she told me, and stashed them there. Only she could access that pocket of nothingness—only she could retrieve the Horn and Harp from its depths. But she remained unaware that Pelias had already told the Daglan of their presence.
Just as she had no idea that the gate she had left open into our home world … the Daglan had been waiting a long, long time for that, too. But they were patient. Content to let more and more of Theia’s forces come into the new world—thus leaving her own undefended.
It was a long, elegant trap, to be sprung at the perfect moment. And, distracted by the beauty of our new world, we did not consider that it all might be too easy. Too simple. Midgard was a land of plenty. Of green and light and beauty. Much like our own lands—with one enormous exception.
But before conflict could erupt between us all, we found that Midgard was already occupied. Theia and Pelias, with Helena and Silene trailing, warriors ten deep behind them, stood atop the cliff, surveying the verdant land and the enormous walled city on the horizon. Bryce’s breath caught. She’d spent years working in the company of the lost books of Parthos, knowing that a great human civilization had once flourished within its walls, but here, before her, was proof of the grandeur, the human skill that had existed on Midgard.
This world had been mostly populated by humans, and only a handful of unusual creatures that had kept mostly to themselves. It was a blank slate, as far as worlds went.
Human does not equal blank slate asshole
Yet the humans were not pleased at our arrival.
Well no fucking shit. No one welcomes conquers with welcome arms.
Humans lay slaughtered, the sand beneath them bloody. Bryce trembled, jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. So many dead—both soldiers and civilians. Adults and … Gods, she couldn’t stand the sight of the smallest bodies. Azriel swore, low and dirty. Nesta was breathing jaggedly.
City to city, we moved. Taking the land as we wished. Taking human slaves to build for us. But some humans resisted, their city-states uniting as we Fae had once united against our masters.
She knew how this particular tale ended. Knew it would be wiped from official history. But had Aidas known what Theia—what Helena and Silene and the Fae—had done?
Considering she was erased from history but pelias wasnt is it possible she ended up going against them with hel & Adias' help to try to save midgard after all???
There would never be any atoning for what her ancestors had done. The thoughts sliced her heart like shards of glass, and Bryce might have walked out right then and there, might have told Silene’s memory to fuck off with her history lesson—but if this unbearable history could offer some hint about how to save Midgard’s future … Bryce kept listening.
Sigrid screamed, staggering back, collapsing to her knees. Ithan halted, panting hard. His face was empty as he walked toward the female clutching her bleeding stomach. It had been a hard blow—but not a fatal one. Claws glinted at his fingertips. Tharion couldn’t breathe as Ithan raised his hand to make the final blow.
We were still waging our war on the humans when the door between worlds opened again. More Fae appeared—from another world this time. Tall, beautiful
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.
These new Fae bore elemental magic, strong enough to make Pelias wary of them. They were more aggressive than the Fae we knew—wilder. And they answered directly to Rigelus. It seemed, in fact, like they’d known Rigelus a long while. My mother soon began to suspect that our host was not as benevolent as he claimed. But by the time she learned just how wrong she had been about him, it was too late.
“Humans tossed in dumpsters after the Vanir have tormented and killed them. It goes on every single day in Midgard, and it started with that fucker.” She pointed a shaking finger at the memory. “With him, and Theia, and all those monsters.”
trusted only Helena and myself to seek the truth. She knew we could be of great use to her, because we bore the shadows as well as starlight. Helena and Silene crept through the dimness of a mighty crystal palace. Down a winding crystal staircase.
Rigelus and his companions were not Fae at all, but parasites who conquered world after world, feeding off the magic and lives of their citizens. The Daglan, now under their true name: the Asteri. It was then that my mother told us, showed us, what had happened so long ago. All that she had done since. But she did not waste time apologizing for the past. If we had indeed walked into an enemy’s trap, she said, then we must defeat them.
And a world on it had caught her attention—a world, like ours, that had overthrown the Daglan.
Hel
A portal between worlds swirled. It solidified, an archway to nowhere. A handsome, golden-haired male stood before it, with eyes like blue opals. Bryce inhaled sharply. Prince Aidas only asked my mother one thing when she opened the gate to his world: “Have you come to ask for Hel’s help, then?”
