House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Series)

It took too long—way too fucking long—for the gates to yawn open, ice and snow cracking off and falling to the ground. Bryce wedged through them first, starfire blazing under her gloves.

“I don’t understand,” Ember was saying as she squeezed through behind Bryce, Randall hot on her tail. Hunt came last. “What is the Harpy doing out here?”

“She’s not the Harpy anymore,” Bryce said. “She’s like … some weird necromantically raised thing made by the Asteri thanks to whatever they managed to do with some of Hunt’s lightning. I don’t know, but we don’t want to meet whatever she is now.”

Bryce caught the worry and guilt on Hunt’s face. They didn’t have the time, though, for her to assure him that this wasn’t his fault. He’d had no choice but to give Rigelus his lightning. It had been used for some fucked-up shit, but that wasn’t on him.

Ember protested, “But the Harpy ate the guards—”

“Which is why we’re going to the Rift,” Bryce said, nodding to Hunt, whose eyes shone with steely determination. “Right fucking now.”

Hunt didn’t wait before lifting her mother in his arms and spreading his wings. Bryce grabbed Randall and said, “Surprise: I can teleport. Don’t barf.”

Thankfully, Randall didn’t vomit as she teleported them the twenty-four and a half miles to the center of the walled ring. But he did when they arrived.

They beat Hunt and her mother there, leaving Bryce with nothing to do but watch her dad puke his guts up in the snow as the dizziness of teleporting hit him again and again.

“That is …,” Randall said, and retched again. “Useful, but horrible.”

“I think that sums me up in a nutshell,” Bryce said.

Randall laughed, vomited again, then wiped his mouth and stood. “You’re not horrible, Bryce. Not by a long shot.”

“I guess. But this is,” she said, and gestured up at the structure before them. At the swirling mists.

A massive arch of clear quartz rose forty feet into the air, its uppermost part nearly hidden by the drifting mist. They could see straight through the archway, though, and nothing lay within it except what could only be described as a ripple in the world. Between worlds. And more mist on its other side.

“The Asteri must have built the archway around the Rift to try to contain it,” Bryce said. “Or try to control it, I guess.”

“I’ll say this once, and that’s it,” Randall said. Behind him, closing in, Hunt and Ember approached from above. “But is opening the Rift … the best idea?”

Bryce blew out a long, hot breath that faded into the mists wafting past. “No. But it’s the only idea I have.”

There wasn’t one black ribbon of mourning in the Den. No keening dirges offered up to Cthona, beseeching the goddess to guide the newly dead. In fact, somewhere in the compound, a stereo was blasting a thumping dance beat.

Trust Sabine to proceed as if nothing had changed. As if an atrocity hadn’t occurred in a neighboring district.

At this time of year, it was tradition for many of the Den families to scatter into the countryside to enjoy the changing of the leaves and the crisp autumn mountains, so only a skeleton crew of packs remained. Ithan knew which ones would be there—just as he knew that only Perry Ravenscroft, the Black Rose’s Omega and Amelie’s little sister, would be on guard duty at the gates.

A bronze rendering of the Embrace—the sun sinking or rising out of two mountains—was displayed in the window of the guard station. And it was because he knew Perry so well that he understood that this small decoration was her way of telling the city that there were some in the Den who mourned, who were praying to Cthona to comfort the dead.

Perry’s large emerald eyes widened at the sight of Ithan as he prowled up to the guard booth. To her, it must have seemed like he’d materialized out of thin air. In fact, his stealth was courtesy of his new speed and preternatural quiet—furthered by the fact that he’d traveled through the sewers, needing to remain out of sight until the last possible minute.

Perry lunged for the radio on the desk, long brown hair flashing in the afternoon sunlight, but Ithan held up a hand. She paused.

“I need to talk,” he said through the glass.

Those green eyes scanned his face, then drifted to a spot over his shoulder, to the sword he carried. Perry stared at him—then opened the door to the booth. Her cinnamon-and-strawberry scent hit him a heartbeat later.

This close, he could count the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The pale skin beneath them seemed to blanch further as she processed what he’d said.

“Sabine’s in a meeting—”

“Not Sabine. I need to talk to everyone else.” Ithan pushed, “You were the only one who checked in to see if I was alive after … everything.” She’d texted him occasionally—not much, but with Amelie as her Alpha and sister, he knew she didn’t dare risk more communication than that. “Please, Perry. Just let me into the courtyard.”

“Tell me what you want to talk to us about, and I’ll consider it.” Even as Omega, the lowest of the Black Rose Pack, she didn’t back down.

It was for that courage alone that Ithan told her his secret first. “A new future for the wolves.”

Ithan knew it was due to how loved and trusted Perry was within the Den that so many wolves arrived in the courtyard quickly, as soon as her message went out about a last-minute announcement.

He kept to the shadows of the pillars under the building’s north wing, watching the people he’d counted as friends, almost family, congregate in the grassy space. The red and gold trees of the small park behind them swayed in the crisp autumn breeze, the wind luckily keeping his scent hidden from the wolves.

When enough of a crowd had assembled—a hundred wolves, or so—Perry stepped out onto the few steps in front of the building doors and said, “So, uh … almost everyone’s here.”

People smiled at her, bemused yet indulgent. It’d always been that way for Perry, the resident artist of the Den, who at age four had painted her room every color of the rainbow despite her parents’ order to pick one hue.

Perry glanced toward him, eyes bright with fear. For him or for herself, he had no idea.

“Go ahead,” she said quietly, and stepped off the stairs and into the grass.

Make your brother proud.

Though those words had come from the Viper Queen, Ithan held them close to his heart as he stepped out of the shadows.

Snarls and growls and shouts of surprise rose. Ithan held up his hands. “I’m not here to start trouble.”

“Then get the fuck out!” someone—Gideon, Amelie’s third—shouted from the back. Amelie herself was striding through the crowd, fury twisting her face—

“Everything we are is a lie,” Ithan said before Amelie could reach him and start swinging.

Some people quieted. Ithan plunged on, because Amelie’s canines were lengthening, and he knew she’d be making the full shift soon.

“Danika Fendyr questioned this, too. She died before she could find the truth.”

The words had their desired effect. The crowd went silent. But Amelie still charged forward, shoving people out of the way now, Gideon a menacing, hulking mass close behind—

Ithan looked at Perry, standing at the front of the crowd, her green eyes trained on him. It was to her that he said, “The Asteri planted a parasite in our brains that repressed our inherent magic, reducing it to its most basic components: shifting and strength. Yet even those abilities have been cut off at the knees. All so we can remain their faithful enforcers, as we’ve been since the Northern Rift opened.”

Amelie was ten feet away, muscles tensing to jump onto the stairs, to pin him and shred him—

“Look,” Ithan said, and held out a hand. Ice swirled in his palm.

A gasp went through the crowd. Even Amelie stumbled in shock.

Ithan said, letting the ice crust his fingers, “Magic—elemental magic. It was lying there, dormant in my veins all this time.” He found Perry’s eyes again, noted the shock and something like yearning in them. “A friend of mine, a medwitch, made an antidote for me. I took it and discovered what I really am. Who I really am. What sleeps in the bloodline of all wolves, repressed by the Asteri for fifteen thousand years.”

“It’s a witch-trick,” Amelie spat, making to shove past her little sister. “Move,” she ordered Perry. Not as her sister, but as her Alpha.

But Perry, despite her slim frame, held firm. And said to Amelie, her voice carrying, “I want to hear what he has to say.”

Ithan spoke as quickly as he could, giving the wolves an overview of the parasite and what it did to their magic. And then, because they were still looking doubtful, he explained what really happened in the Bone Quarter: Secondlight. The meat grinder of souls.

When he was done, Ithan found Perry’s face again. She’d gone ghostly white.

“Queen Hypaxia Enador can verify all I’ve told you,” Ithan said.

“She’s not queen anymore!” a wolf called. “She’s been kicked out—like you, Holstrom.”

Ithan bared his teeth. “She’s brilliant. She figured out how to fix this thing in our brains, to give us this magic back. So don’t you take that fucking tone about her.”

And at the snarl in his voice, the order, the wolves in the crowd straightened. Not with anger or fear, but …

“What did you do?” Perry said, staggering forward a step. “Ithan, you’re—”

“There is another Fendyr,” Ithan said, plowing ahead, bracing himself.

The crowd stirred. Perry gaped at him. “What do you mean?” she asked. He couldn’t stand the confusion and hope in her voice, her bright eyes.

“Her name is Sigrid,” Ithan said, throat tightening painfully. “She … she’s the daughter of Sabine’s late brother. And she—”

“That is enough,” Amelie spat, shoving forward at last. “This insane rambling stops now.”

Ithan growled, low and deep, and even Amelie halted, one foot on the step.

He held her gaze, let her see everything in it.

“Why is this traitor still alive?” Sabine’s voice slithered over the courtyard.

Ithan pivoted, carefully keeping Amelie in his sights as he surveyed the approaching Prime Apparent.

A step behind her, emerging from the shadows, strode Sigrid and the Astronomer.