House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Series)

Bryce couldn’t move for a moment. Vesperus was dead.

Nesta slashed her hand and the creature’s body burned with that strange silver fire.

As the Asteri was reduced to ashes, Bryce grabbed the sword and dagger from the ground, both blades dripping with Vesperus’s blood.

She whirled on Nesta, on Azriel. “You shouldn’t have killed her. If we could have gotten her under control, the amount of information that we could have pried from her—”

“Do you have any idea what you almost did here?” Nesta raged, covered in Vesperus’s dark ichor. She still gripped Ataraxia in one hand, as if not yet decided whether she was done killing. “What you unleashed?”

“Trust me, I know better than you guys what the Asteri can do.”

“Then you have even less of an excuse for your actions,” Nesta snapped. Her sword rose.

Azriel extended a scarred hand to Bryce, panting hard. “Open the passage out of here. You’re coming back with us. Right now.”

To that cell under a different mountain. Where she had no doubt she’d be subjected to the interrogation Vesperus should have received.

Bryce snorted. “Like Hel I am.” Debris began floating around her. “You killed the one person here who might have given me the answer I needed.”

“You’re looking for ways to kill the Daglan. Well, I just killed that monster,” Nesta said. “Isn’t that answer enough?”

“No,” Bryce said. “You’ve only left me with more questions.”

She let her power flow outward from the star in her chest. From the Horn in her back.

“Don’t you dare,” Azriel warned with lethal softness.

But Bryce shoved out a slice of her power. Sharp and targeted, as Silene had used to carve the stones. As Azriel had focused his own power on her star earlier.

Light cut through stone and sizzled, a line literally drawn at Azriel’s feet.

Whatever had changed in her power with the addition of Silene’s magic … Fuck yeah. This would be useful.

“I won’t tell them about you,” Bryce said coolly, even as part of her marveled at the laser she’d created out of pure magic. The other part of her cringed from it—from the power that was eerily similar to what Rigelus had used against her before she jumped through the Gate in the Eternal Palace. “I swear it on my mate’s life. Even if Rigelus …” She shook her head. “I won’t breathe a word to them about this place.”

Azriel dared to put one foot over the line she’d blasted into the floor. “They’ll pry it from you. People like me, like them … we always get the information we need.” His gaze darkened with the promise of unending pain.

“I won’t let it come to that,” Bryce said, and sent her power searing through her star again—right into the crystal sarcophagus.

Crystal like the Gate that had opened the way to this world.

The sarcophagus glowed … and then darkened into a pit.

“Please,” Azriel said, his gaze now on her hands. On the Starsword—and on Truth-Teller. Something like panic filled his hazel eyes.

Shaking her head, Bryce backed toward the hole she’d made in the world. In the universe. She could only pray it would lead her to Midgard.

She met Nesta’s stare. Raging silver fire flickered there.

“You’re as much of a monster as they are,” Nesta accused.

Bryce knew. She’d always known. “Love will do that to you.”

Silver flames roared for her in a tidal wave, but Bryce was already leaping, sheathing the blades as she moved. Cold like nothing she’d known tore past her head, her spine—

And then the light from Nesta’s silver flame winked out as the gate shut above Bryce, nothing but darkness surrounding her as she plunged deeper and deeper into the pit.

Toward home.