House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City, #2)

by Sarah J. Maas

Braziers of firstlight glowed in the corners of the room, dimly illuminating the space. A round table occupied the middle. Seven seats around it. Her blood chilled. A small metal machine sat in the center of the table. A projection device. But Bryce’s attention snagged on the stone walls, covered in paper. Star-maps—of constellations and solar systems, marked up with scribbled notations and pinned with red dots. Her mouth dried out as she approached the one nearest. A solar system she didn’t recognize, with five planets orbiting a massive sun. One planet in the habitable zone had been pinned and labeled. Rentharr. Conq. A.E. 14000. A.E. She didn’t know that dating system. But she could guess what Conq. meant. Conquered … by the Asteri? She’d never heard of a planet called Rentharr. Scribbled beside it was a brief note: A bellicose, aquatic people. Primordial land life. Little supply. Terminated A.E. 14007. “Oh gods,” Bryce breathed, and went to the next star-map. Iphraxia. Conq. A.E. 680. Lost A.E. 720. She read the note beside it and her blood iced over. Denizens learned of our methods too quickly. We lost many to their unified front. Evacuated. Somewhere out in the cosmos, a planet had managed to kick out the Asteri. Map to map, Bryce read the notes. Names of places that weren’t known in Midgard. Worlds that the Asteri had conquered, with notations about their use of firstlight and how they either lost or controlled those worlds. Fed on them until there was nothing left....