Bryce had dropped down between worlds. And yet when she landed, she collided sideways with a wall.
Apparently, magical interstellar travel didn’t care about physics.
Her head throbbed; her mouth was painfully dry. The rough fibers of a carpet scraped her cheek, muffling the sounds of an enclosed space. It was dry, vaguely musty. Familiar-smelling.
“Isn’t this interesting,” drawled a male voice in her own language. It was the most wonderful sound she’d ever heard.
Though she’d have wished, perhaps, for the words to have come from someone other than the Autumn King.
He loomed over her, his hands wreathed in flame. Above him, a golden orrery clicked and whirred. She’d landed in her father’s private study.
The Autumn King’s lips curled in that familiar cruel smile. “And where have you been, Bryce Quinlan?”
Bryce opened her mouth, power rallying—
And sputtering out.
“For an old bastard, you move fast,” she groaned, straining against the gorsian shackles on her wrists. No chains attached to them, at least—just the cuffs of the shackles. But it was enough. Bryce couldn’t so much as summon a flicker of starlight.
Her father knew it. He strolled to his giant wooden desk like he had all the time in the world.
In those initial seconds when she’d landed here, in the worst fucking place in the whole fucking world, he’d not only disabled her power with those shackles—he’d also disarmed her. The Starsword and Truth-Teller now lay behind him on his desk. Along with her phone.
Bryce lifted her chin, though she remained sitting on the ground. “Are Ruhn and Hunt alive?”
Something like distaste flashed in the Autumn King’s eyes. As if such mortal bonds should be the least of her concerns. “You show your hand, Bryce Quinlan.”
“I thought my name was Bryce Danaan now,” she seethed.
“To the detriment of the line, yes,” the Autumn King said, his eyes sparking. “Where have you been?”
“There was a sample sale at the mall,” Bryce said flatly. “Are Ruhn and Hunt still alive?”
The Autumn King’s head angled, gaze sweeping over her filthy T-shirt, her torn leggings. “I was informed that you were no longer on this planet. Where did you go?”
Bryce declined to answer.
Her father smiled slightly. “I can connect the dots. You arrive from off-world, bearing a knife that matches the Starsword. The dagger from the prophecy, no?” His eyes gleamed with greed. “Not seen since the First Wars. If I were to guess, you managed to reach a place I have long desired to go.” He glanced up at the orrery.
“You might want to reconsider before packing your bags,” Bryce said. “They don’t take kindly to assholes.”
“Your journey hasn’t impacted that smart mouth of yours, I see.”
She smiled with saccharine sweetness. “You’re still an absolute bastard, I see.”
The Autumn King pursed his lips. “I’d be careful if I were you.” He pushed off his desk and stalked toward her. “No one knows you’re here.”
“Taking your daughter hostage: excellent parenting.”
“You are my guest here until I see fit to release you.”
“Which will be when?” She batted her eyelashes with exaggerated innocence.
“When I have the reassurances I seek.”
Bryce made a show of tapping her chin in contemplation. “How about this: You let me go, and I don’t fucking kill you for delaying me?”
A soft, taunting laugh. How had her mother ever loved this cold-blooded reptile?
“I’ve already sealed off the wards around this villa, and sent away my servants and sentries.”
“You mean to tell me we’re going to do all our own cooking?”
The intensity on his face didn’t falter. “No one shall even know that you are back in this world until I see fit.”
“And then you’ll tell the Asteri?” Her heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t let that happen.
Her father smiled again. “That depends entirely on you.”
Ithan ran himself into the ground all the way back to the eastern gate of Crescent City, hundreds of miles from the dock in Ionia where he’d left Tharion and the others.
Make your brother proud.
He hadn’t been able to get on that boat. Ketos might be able to walk away from the consequences of his actions, but Ithan couldn’t.
Gilded by the setting sun, Crescent City bustled on as usual, unaware of what he’d done. How everything had changed.
He took the coward’s path through the city, cutting through FiRo rather than going right to the Istros through Moonwood. If he saw another wolf right now …
He didn’t want to know what he’d do. What he’d say.
He was no one in the hustle of rush hour, but he kept to the alleys and side streets. He didn’t spare a glance for the Heart Gate as he sprinted past it, nor did he let himself look eastward toward Bryce and Danika’s old apartment when he passed that, too.
He only looked ahead, toward the approaching river. Toward the Black Dock at the end of the street.
Despite the chaotic throngs of evening commuters in the rest of the city, the Black Dock was silent and empty, wreathed in mist. Down the quay, a few mourners wept on benches, but no one stood on the dock itself.
Ithan couldn’t bring himself to look deeper into the mists, toward the Bone Quarter. He prayed Connor wasn’t looking his way from across the river.
Ithan shifted into his humanoid form before walking a block westward along the quay. Ithan knew where the entrance was—everyone did.
No one ever went there, of course. No one dared.
The great black door sat in the middle of a matching black marble building—a facade. The building had been styled after an elaborate mausoleum. The door was the focus, the main reason for its existence: to lead one not into the building, but below it.
No one stood guard at the door. Ithan supposed nobody was needed. Anyone who wanted to rob this place would deserve all that they’d face inside.
Crude, ancient markings covered the black door. Like scratches carved by inhuman fingernails. At its center, an etching of a horned, humanoid skull engulfed in flames stared out at him.
Ithan knocked on its hateful face once. Twice. The metal thudded dully.
The door yawned open, silent as a grave. Only darkness waited beyond, and a long, straight staircase into the gloom.
It might as well have been Hel on Midgard.
Ithan felt nothing, was nothing, as he strode in. As the door shut behind him, sealing him in solid, unending night.
Locking him inside the House of Flame and Shadow.
