House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Series)

Hunt shuddered with cold, teeth chattering, as he hauled himself onto a dark bank illuminated dimly by Bryce’s star.

After a rushing, disorienting downhill journey, the river had calmed and emptied into the pool around them, a small bank providing the lone path of escape. Tharion was already near Bryce, a shivering Sathia between them, and Baxian was just crawling onto the shore a few feet from Hunt, dark wings dragging on the rock beside him.

Hunt exploded at his mate, “What the fuck?”

“Later, Athalar,” Bryce murmured, turning from the pool and facing a natural archway of stone, with a tunnel beyond. Her star blazed bright—brighter than it had upriver.

“No, now,” he warned, scrambling to his feet, water sloshing from his boots, his waterlogged wings impossibly heavy. “You say we’re all in this together, making decisions together, and then you go and pull that shit?”

She whirled, teeth bared. “Well, someone has to lead.”

His temper flared. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that I’m not letting my fear and guilt swallow me whole.” The others stayed silent, several feet away. “It means that I’m putting all that shit aside and focusing on what needs to be done!”

“And I’m not?” He splayed his arms, motioning to the caves around them. Lightning flickered over his hands. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Do you even want to be?” Her voice echoed off the rocks. “Because it seems like your fear of the consequences outweighs your desire to defeat the Asteri.”

“It does,” he snarled, unable to stop the words from coming out. “It will be hard to enjoy freedom if we’re dead.”

“I’d rather die trying to bring them down than spend the rest of my life knowing the truth and doing nothing.”

He could barely hear above the roaring in his head. “Everyone we love will die, too. You’re willing to risk that? Your mom and dad? Cooper? Syrinx? Fury and June? You’re willing to let them be tortured and killed?”

She stiffened, shaking with anger.

Hunt took a deep breath, collecting himself, and shook the water out of his wings. “Look, I’m sorry.” He took another deep breath. “I know this isn’t the time to pick a fight. This whole thing might be a colossal fucking mistake, might get everyone we know killed, but … I’ll go along with it. I have your back. I promise.”

She blinked. Then blinked again. “That’s not good enough for me,” she said quietly. “That isn’t good enough for me—that you’ll just go along with it.”

“Well, get used to the feeling,” he said.

“Get over yourself, Umbra Mortis.” With that, she stormed into the misty gloom, star illuminating the way.

“Yeesh,” Tharion said lightly to Sathia and Baxian, but Hunt didn’t smile as they continued after Bryce, trailing water everywhere.

“How the fuck did you know to get out here, anyway?” Baxian asked Bryce, likely trying to lighten the tension now filling the caves as surely as the mist smothering them.

“Because I’ve been here before,” Bryce said, her voice still a little rough around the edges.

Even Hunt’s anger eased enough for him to wonder if she’d hit her head in the river. Especially as they approached a solid wall of rock.

Bryce pushed a hand against the wall. A wedge of an archway opened beneath her palm. Her starlight flared, lighting up the wall and the carving that surrounded the triangular doorway.

An eight-pointed star. Twin to the scar on her chest.

“These caves,” Bryce said, pointedly not looking at him, “are nearly identical to the ones I walked through in the original world of the Fae.” She took a step into the star’s doorway. “The river there flowed throughout them—provided shortcuts. The Wyrm used them to sneak up on us. But my star glowed brighter whenever it wanted me to go a certain way, like it does here. It guided me into one of the rivers in the Fae world. I listened to it, jumped in, and it led me down to a passage that took me exactly where I needed to be to learn Silene’s truth. Just now, my star was glowing brighter when I faced downriver. I figured this river might lead down to another passage. Maybe one that’s got another bit of truth. Anything to help against the Asteri.”

“That was an insane leap of logic,” Tharion said. “And what about Flynn and Dec? The Autumn King and Morven and the Murder Twins still have them, those fucking ghouls still have them—”

“That confrontation will come.” Bryce walked calmly into the waiting darkness and swirling mist, adjusting Truth-Teller at her side. “But not yet.”

They had no choice but to follow her. “What does it all mean?” Baxian asked Hunt, almost plaintively.

Hunt cast aside his lingering anger and kept his focus pinned on his mate. “I think we’re about to find out.”

Flynn and Dec still weren’t at breakfast the next morning. And Ruhn’s quick jog through the castle and its grounds revealed no sign of them. Or of the Murder Twins. Just some Fae nobles and servants, unsure what to make of him, whether to sneer or bow. He ignored them, and was hurrying back to his room when Lidia emerged from it.

She took one look at his face and asked, “What’s wrong?”

He didn’t wonder how she’d guessed it—she’d had to be excellent at reading people her whole adult life. Her survival had depended on it.

Ruhn checked that his various blades were in place. “Flynn and Dec … I don’t think they’re here. And neither are my creep cousins. Or Morven.”

Her eyes sharpened with caution. “It might be unconnected.”

“It’s not. My friends don’t bail on me.” And he’d been so fucking distracted by her, by wanting her, that he hadn’t let himself think about it.

She put a hand on his arm. “Where do you think they went?”

Ruhn sucked in a breath. “Morven and the twins have to be involved. They must have taken Flynn and Dec to the Cave of Princes.”

“To make a move against Bryce?”

Ruhn’s stomach churned. “Maybe. But I think Morven took them as bait—for me. He expects me to follow.”

“If it’s a trap, then we shouldn’t rush in—”

“My friends rushed to save me from the Asteri dungeons,” he said, holding her beautiful gaze. “You found them, and they ran to help. I can’t leave them in Morven’s hands.”

“I wasn’t suggesting we leave them,” she said, striding to her own room. She left the door open so he could see her as she grabbed two guns off her night table and holstered them at her thighs. “I’m saying let’s think through a strategy before we go rescue them.”

Something burned in Ruhn’s chest, and he didn’t dare name it.

But he felt it all the same as they armed themselves and went to save his friends.

Hunt didn’t let his guard down, not for one second. Even with every word of his fight with Quinlan hanging in the air like the residue of fireworks. Lightning flickered in one fist; his sword was clenched in another. He didn’t put either aside as they entered a chamber at the other end of the tunnel.

He scanned its intricately carved walls of black stone, the exquisite landscapes depicted there, as they stepped in—

Stone grated against itself, and before Hunt could whirl, faster even than his lightning, the triangular door shut behind them. Tharion, a step ahead, let out a low whistle.

Baxian just swapped a look with Hunt that told him the Helhound suspected the same thing he did: only Bryce could get that door to open. It wasn’t a calming thought. Not as Hunt surveyed what lay ahead.

The lone object in the chamber was a sarcophagus carved from white marble, the hue striking against the deep black of the stone walls. A statue of an armored Fae male lay atop the sarcophagus, hands clasped around a missing object.

Bryce nodded to it. “That must be where the Starsword lies when not in use.” Her voice was flat, as if drained from their argument.

Sathia staggered a step closer. “Prince Pelias’s tomb,” she breathed.

“Ruhn told me his creepster descendants line the walls of the main passages in here,” Bryce said, pointing to the only other way out: another archway of stone across the chamber, barely visible through the mists. She adjusted the Starsword across her back, and a hand fidgeted with Truth-Teller at her side—like the blades were bothering her.

Hunt surveyed the domed space, examining the stories told on the walls: an archipelago nestled above a sea of starlight, an idyllic, serene land—all that the world believed Avallen to be. “I don’t see anything about the Starsword or Truth-Teller, let alone how to unify them,” Hunt admitted. “Or the mists. The islands are here, but nothing else.” Maybe this was a dead end for information.

“There could be something out in the main passage,” Tharion offered.

But Bryce approached the sarcophagus. Peered down at the perfectly carved, handsome face of the first Starborn Prince.

“Hello, you rapist fuck,” she said, her voice cold with fury.

Hunt barely breathed. He wondered if Urd were watching, if the heaviness in the room wasn’t the mists, but rather the goddess’s presence, having guided them here.

“You thought you won,” Bryce whispered to the sarcophagus. “But she got one over on you in the end. She got the last laugh.”

“Bryce?” Hunt ventured.

She looked up from Pelias’s carved rendering, and there was nothing of her human heart in those eyes. Only icy, Fae hatred for the long-dead male before her.

Offering a rope of neutral ground, Hunt said, “Can you, uh, fill us in?”

Yet it was Tharion who gestured to the empty death chamber. “Maybe Pelias built another chamber around here that’s actually got something about the sword and dagger and that portal to nowhere—”

“No,” Bryce said quietly. “We’re exactly where we need to be.” She pointed to the floor, the carving of rivers of stars winding throughout. “And this place wasn’t built by Pelias. He had nothing to do with these tunnels, the carvings.” She laid a hand on the floor. Her starlight flowed through the carvings in the stone, the walls, the ceiling—

What had looked like etched seas or rivers of stars now filled in with starlight, became … alive. Moving, cascading, coursing. A secret illustration, only for those with the gifts and vision to see it.

The rippling river of starlight flowed right to the sarcophagus in the center of the chamber. Swirled around it like an eddy.

Bryce threw herself against the coffin, legs straining as she pushed—

And the sarcophagus slid away. Revealing a small, secret staircase beneath.

Bryce panted for a moment, and then smiled grimly. “This place was built by Helena.”