Bryce lay on the hard, cold ground and tried to pretend she was back in her bed, that a rock wasn’t poking into her hip bone, that her arm was the most comfortable pillow—
From Sathia’s tossing and turning nearby, she knew the female was having the same amount of success getting settled for the night.
Hunt had fallen asleep right away, his deep breathing now a gentle rhythm that she tried to focus on, to lure her to sleep. She supposed his warrior days had made him used to rougher conditions, but … no. She didn’t want to think about all the things Hunt had endured so that sleeping on this unforgiving surface was easy for him. Especially when the misplaced guilt from so many of those things was now clearly eating him alive.
It had been easier in the Fae world, as exhaustion had been riding her so hard that she’d had no choice but to pass out. But here, even well protected by Baxian on watch, sleep remained elusive.
Bryce flipped onto her back, her starlight shifting with her, broadcasting every one of her movements like a lighthouse beacon. Fuck, how she’d sleep with that blazing in her eyes—
She stared miserably up at the ceiling, carved here to resemble the branches of a forest. Beautiful, remarkable work that had never been documented, never been revealed to the world at large. Only to the few Fae royal males who’d sought the Starsword.
That blade was currently lying to her left, a thrumming, pulsing presence made worse by Truth-Teller on her right, which pulsed in a counter-beat. Like the blades were talking.
Just fucking great. It was a regular old sleepover here. Bryce ignored the chattering blades as best she could, focusing instead on the caves, the carvings.
Females had never been allowed in here. Now two Fae females had entered. She hoped all the long-dead princes buried in the caves were thrashing in their sarcophagi.
Such fear of females—such hatred. Why? Because of Theia? Pelias had been the one to found the Starborn line here on Midgard. Had all the bans and restrictions stemmed from his fear of someone like her rising again?
Bryce supposed scholars and activists had spent centuries researching and debating it, so the likelihood of finding an answer herself, even knowing the truth about Theia, was slim to none. It didn’t make it any easier to swallow, though.
So she curled on her side, gazing at the carved river of stars that her starlight illuminated. The river of her lineage, meant to last through the millennia. Her bloodline, in its literal, starry form. Her bloodline, running straight through these caves. An inheritance of cruelty and pain.
She wished Danika were with her. If there was one person who might have understood the complexity of such a fucked-up inheritance, of having the future of a people weighing on her, it would have been Danika.
Danika, who’d wanted more for this world, for Bryce.
Light it up.
But maybe the Fae and their bloodline didn’t deserve Bryce’s light. Maybe they deserved to fall forever into darkness.
Flynn and Dec, the bastards, didn’t show up to breakfast. Leaving Ruhn and Lidia to dine alone again.
Ruhn had lain awake most of the night, hard and aching—then fretting about what Bryce and the others were facing in the Cave of Princes. Maybe he should have gone with them. Maybe staying here had been cowardly, even if they did need information from the archives. Flynn and Dec could have found it.
The dining room doors opened as they were finishing their meal, and Ruhn braced himself for his asshole cousins. But a tall Fae male walked in, glancing about before quietly shutting the door behind him. As if he didn’t want to be seen.
“Lidia Cervos.” The male’s voice shook.
Ruhn reached a hand toward the knife in his boot as the male approached the table. Lidia watched him, expression unreadable. Ruhn tried and failed to control his thundering heart. He opened his mouth. To order the stranger to announce himself, to demand he leave—
“I came to thank you,” the male said, and reached for his pocket. Ruhn drew his knife, but the male only pulled out a piece of paper. A small portrait of a female and three young children. All Fae.
But Lidia didn’t look. Like she couldn’t bear to.
The male said, “Ten years ago, you saved my life.”
Ruhn didn’t know what to do with his body. Lidia just stared at the floor.
The male went on, “My unit was up in the base at Kelun. It was the middle of the night when you burst in, and I thought we were all dead. But you told us that the Hammer was coming—that we had to run. All seven of us are alive today, with our families, because of you.”
Lidia nodded, but it seemed like a thank you, please stop motion. Not from any humility or embarrassment—it was pain on her lowered face. Like she couldn’t endure listening.
He extended the portrait of his family again.
“I thought you might like to see what your choice that night achieved.”
Still, Lidia didn’t look up. Ruhn couldn’t move. Couldn’t get a breath down.
The male went on, “There are a few of us from my unit still here, in secret. Prince Cormac convinced us all to join the cause. But we never told him, or anyone, who saved us. We didn’t want to jeopardize whatever you were doing. But when we heard through the rumor mill that you—the Hind, I mean—had defied the Asteri, some of us contacted each other again.”
The male at last noticed Lidia’s discomfort and said, “Perhaps it is too soon for you to acknowledge all you have done, the lives you saved, but … I wanted to tell you that we are grateful. We owe you a debt.”
“There is no debt,” Lidia said, finally meeting the male’s eyes. “You should go.”
Ruhn blinked at the dismissal, but Lidia clarified to the stranger, “I assume you have kept your activities and associations secret from Morven. Don’t risk his wrath now.”
The male nodded, understanding. “Thank you,” he said again, and was gone.
In the silence that followed, Ruhn asked, “You let them see who you really were?”
“It was either risk my identity being revealed to the world, or let them die,” Lidia said quietly as they headed for the door. “I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d chosen the latter.”
Ruhn arched a brow. “Not to sound totally callous, but why? There were only seven of them. It wouldn’t have made a difference in the rebellion.”
“Maybe not for Ophion as a whole, but it would have made a difference for their families.” She didn’t look at him. “Partners, children, parents—all hoping for their safe return.”
“There had to be more to it than that,” he pushed. “There was way more than that on the line for you.”
She opened the door, and didn’t speak again until they’d stepped into the hallway. “I guess I hoped that … that if my sons were ever in a similar situation, someone would do the same for them.”
His heart twisted at the words, her truth. “Your path was difficult, Lidia—Hel, I don’t think I could have endured any of it. But what you did was incredible. Don’t lose sight of that.”
“I could have saved more,” she said softly, eyes on the floor as they strode down the empty hall. “I should have saved more.”
Lidia had no idea what to make of the encounter with the former rebel this morning.
Maybe Urd had sent him to her, to remind her that her choices and sacrifices had, in fact, made some difference in the world. Even if they had gutted her.
The Ocean Queen hadn’t given her a choice in leaving the ship, both all those years ago and now. But here, on this cheerless Fae island … here, at least, were some people who’d benefitted from that impossible position.
Flynn and Declan hadn’t yet arrived in the archives, and as the silence became unbearable while she and Ruhn started their search, the only scents the musty catalog cards and Ruhn’s inviting, reassuring smell, Lidia found herself calling down the line of the card catalog, “I’m going to go hunt for some coffee. Want to join me?”
Ruhn looked over, and gods, he was handsome. She’d never really let herself think about the sheer beauty of him. Even with his tattoos in ribbons, proof of what Pollux had done—
His blue eyes flickered, as if noting the direction of her thoughts. “Sure, let’s go.”
Even the way he spoke, the timbre of his voice … she could luxuriate in that all day. And when he’d touched her last night, licked her—
Did he have any idea how close she’d come to begging him to strip her naked, to lick her from head to toe and spend a long while between her legs?
“What’s that look about?” Ruhn asked, voice low, thick. She noted every shifting muscle in his shoulders, his arms, his powerful thighs as he walked toward her. The way the sunlight gleamed on his long dark hair, turning it into a silken cascade of night. That buzzed side of his head seemed to be begging for her fingers to slide over the velvet-soft hair while she nipped at his pointed ear—
She began walking as he reached her, because the alternative was to wrap herself around him. “Brain fog. I need a cup of coffee.”
She’d slept poorly again last night. At first, it had been thanks to the memory of what they’d done in the hallway, but then her thoughts had shifted to Brann and Actaeon, to that last conversation with them, and she’d wished that she could find herself on that mental bridge, her friend Night sitting in his armchair beside her.
Not just to have someone to talk to, but to have him to talk to. About … everything.
Ruhn fell into step beside her. “Who would have thought the Hind had a caffeine addiction?”
His half smile did something funny to her knees. But he said nothing more as they explored the back hallway of the archives, opening and closing doors. A closet crammed with half-rotted brooms and mops, another closest adorned with trays of various quartz crystals—no doubt some sort of scholarly recording device needed for this technology-free island—and a few empty cells with chipped desks that must have once been private studies.
“Morven really needs to invest in a new break room,” Ruhn said as they finally beheld the kitchen. “This can’t be good for employee morale.”
Lidia took in the dark, dusty space, the wooden counter against the wall littered with mouse droppings, the cobwebs spun under the row of cabinetry. “This is like some bad medieval cliché,” she said, approaching the filth-crusted cauldron in the darkened hearth. “Is this … gruel?”
Ruhn stepped up beside her, and his scent had her going molten between her legs. “I don’t know why everyone thought Avallen would be some fairy-tale paradise. I’ve been telling Bryce for years that it’s horrible here.”
Lidia turned from the days-old goop in the cauldron and began opening cabinets. A mouse had made a home in a box of stale crackers, but at least there was a sealed jar of tea bags. “I should have known there would be no coffee.” She peered around for a kettle and found Ruhn standing with one by the ancient sink, pumping water into it.
“Your sister,” Lidia said, “was right to wonder what was going on with this place. Do you think Morven’s hiding anything?”
“You’re the super spy-breaker,” Ruhn said, going to the hearth and tossing a few logs into the ashes. “You tell me.”
The muscles in his forearm shifted as he grabbed some kindling and flint and lit the fire with a sort of efficiency that shouldn’t have made her mouth water. He glanced over a shoulder, those blazingly blue eyes curious, and she realized he’d asked her a question, and she’d just been … staring at him. At his arms.
She cleared her throat and went about hunting for two mugs. “Morven never gave the Asteri or me cause to look into this place. He always appeared when summoned, and offered his services without question. He was, as far as Rigelus was concerned, a perfect minion.”
“So there was never any discussion about these mists and Morven getting to hide behind them whenever he wanted?” The fire sparked to life, and Ruhn rose, stepping back to monitor it.
“No,” Lidia said. “I think Rigelus believes the mists to be some … charming quirk of Midgard and the Fae. Something that added a bit of personality to this world. And since Morven and his forefathers played nice, they were left alone.”
Ruhn slid his hands into the pockets of his black jeans. “I guess I’m surprised that after the truth about Cormac came out, the Asteri still didn’t come poking around Avallen to see what might have caused the prince to turn rebel.”
“Morven slithered right to the Eternal City,” Lidia said, clenching her jaw. “And disavowed his son immediately.”
“Right, with my dad in tow.”
She scanned his face, the pain and anger that he didn’t hide. “Yesterday, when I said you should act more like a prince …”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I know the kind of monsters you’re going up against.” She dipped her eyes to his forearms, where the childhood burn scars were now mostly gone, but a few shiny pink streaks remained, untouched even by Pollux’s ministrations.
“I can look after myself,” he said tightly, fitting the kettle onto the hook over the fire and swinging it above the flame.
“I know you can,” she tried, failing miserably at explaining. “I’m just … I see how good you are, Ruhn. You wear your emotions on your face because you feel in a way that Morven and the Autumn King do not. I don’t want them to use that against you. To figure out how to hurt you.”
He slowly faced her, those beautiful blue eyes wary, yet tender. “I think that’s a compliment?”
She huffed a laugh, and plopped two tea bags into the least dusty mugs she’d found. “It’s a compliment, Ruhn.” She met his gaze, and offered him a small smile. “Take it and move on.”
They found nothing new that day. Flynn and Dec seemed content to let them do the work, because they didn’t show up. Or perhaps they’d gone off on some important errand and couldn’t let them know, with no way to text or call.
“Listen to this,” Lidia said, and Ruhn stopped his endless browsing to walk over to where she’d opened an ancient scroll. He’d noticed the way she’d been looking at him earlier—the pure desire in her eyes, her scent. It had distracted him so much that he’d barely been able to light the fire in that sorry excuse for a kitchen.
But Ruhn reined in the urge to scent her, to bury his face in her neck and lick that soft skin. Lidia pointed at the unfurled scroll before her. “The catalog listed this scroll’s title as The Roots of Earthen Magic.”
Her mouth quirked to the side. “I think it’s strange that both Flynn and Sathia can’t stand Avallen.”
“What does that have to do with defeating the Asteri?”
“I figured it might be worthwhile to pull out some of the earliest writings about earth magic—what role it played in the First Wars, or soon after. This scroll was the oldest I could find.”
Flynn had picked a Hel of a time to not show up. “And …?”
“This doesn’t offer more than what we already know about the usual sort of earth magic the Fae possess, but it does mention that those with earth magic were sent ahead to scout lands, to sense where to build. Not only the best geographical locations, but magical ones, too. They could sense the ley lines—the channels of energy running throughout the land, throughout Midgard. They told the Asteri to build their cities where several of the lines met, at natural crossroads of power, and picked those places for the Fae to settle, too. But they selected Avallen just for the Fae. To be their personal, eternal stronghold.”
Ruhn considered. “Okay, so if Flynn and Sathia say this place is dead and rotting …”
“It doesn’t line up with the claims recorded here about Avallen.”
“But why would the ancient Fae lie about there being ley lines here?”
“I don’t think they lied,” Lidia said, and pointed to the maps on the other table, where Dec had discarded them. “I think the Avallen they first visited, with all those ley lines and magic … I think it existed. But then something changed.”
“We knew that already, though,” Ruhn said carefully. “That something changed.”
“Yes,” Lidia said, “but the mists haven’t. Could that be intentional? They left the mists intact, but the rest was altered—entire islands gone, the earth itself festering.”
“But that would only have hurt the Fae—and we all know they’re self-serving bastards. They’d never willingly part with any sort of power.”
“Maybe they weren’t willing,” Lidia mused. “Whatever happened, the mists kept it hidden from the Asteri.”
“What do you think they wanted to hide? Why rot their own land?”
Lidia gestured to the catalog behind them. “Maybe the answer’s in there somewhere.”
Ruhn nodded. Even as he wondered if they’d be ready for whatever that answer might be.
Bryce stood with Baxian on the bank of a second river, surveying the path on its distant side, her star glowing dimly toward it. The river passageway was narrow enough that she would have to teleport them across. She kept her starlight blazing bright, the ghouls a whispering malice around them.
There had been nothing helpful in the carvings so far. Fae slaying dragons, Fae dancing in circles, Fae basking in their own glory. Nothing of use. All surface-level shit. Bryce ground her teeth.
“Danika was the same, you know,” Baxian said quietly so the others wouldn’t hear. “With the wolves. She hated what so many of them were, and wanted to understand how they had become that way.”
Bryce turned toward him, her starlight flaring a bit brighter as it illuminated the downward sweep of the river. It dimmed as she faced the Helhound fully. “The wolves are by and large way better than the Fae.”
“Maybe.” Baxian glanced to her. “But what of your brother? Or Flynn and Declan?” A nod to where Sathia, Tharion, and Hunt sat together. “What of her? Do you think they’re all a lost cause?”
“No,” Bryce admitted. Baxian waited. She let out a long breath. “And the Fae I met in the other world weren’t so bad, either. I might have even been friends with them if circumstances had been different.”
“So the Fae aren’t inherently bad.”
“Of course not,” Bryce hissed. “But most of the ones in this world—”
“You know every Fae on Midgard?”
“I can judge them by their collective actions,” Bryce snapped. “How they locked people out during the attack—”
“Yeah, that was fucked up. But until Holstrom defied orders, the wolves weren’t helping, either.”
“What’s your point?”
“That the right leader makes all the difference.”
Bryce recoiled at the words: the right leader. Baxian went on, “The Valbaran Fae might not be the most charitable people in our world, but think about who’s led them for the last five hundred years. And long before that. Same with the wolves. The Prime isn’t bad, but he’s only one decent guy in a string of brutal leaders. Danika was working to change that, and she was killed for it.”
“Rigelus told me they killed her to keep the information about their true nature contained,” Bryce said.
Baxian cut her a look. “And you believe everything Rigelus says? Besides, why can’t it be both? They wanted to keep their secrets to themselves, yes, but also to destroy the kernel of hope Danika offered. Not only to the wolves, but all of Midgard. That things could be different. Better.”
Bryce massaged her aching chest, the starlight unusually dim. “They definitely would have killed her for that, too.”
Baxian’s face tightened with pain. “Then make her death count for something, Bryce.”
He might as well have punched her in the face. “And what,” she demanded, “try to redeem the Fae? Get them some self-help books and make them sit in circles to talk about their feelings?”
His face was like stone. “If you think that would be effective, sure.”
Bryce glowered. But she loosed a long breath. “If we survive this shit with the Asteri, I’ll think about it.”
“They might go hand in hand,” he said.
“If you start spewing some bullshit about rallying a Fae army to take on the Asteri—”
“No. This isn’t some epic movie.” He cocked his head. “But if you think you could manage—”
Bryce, despite herself, laughed. “Sure. I’ll add it to my to-do list.”
Baxian smiled slightly. “I just wanted you to know that Danika was thinking about a lot of the same things.”
“I wish she’d talked to me about it.” Bryce sighed. “About a lot of stuff.”
“She wanted to,” he said gently. “And I think putting that Horn in your back was her way of perhaps … manipulating you onto a similar path.”
“Typical Danika.”
“She saw it in you—what you could mean for the Fae.” His voice grew unbearably sad. “She was good about seeing that kind of thing in people.”
Bryce touched his arm. “I’m glad she had you to talk to. I really am.”
He gave her a sorrowful smile. “I’m glad she had you, too. I couldn’t be there with her, couldn’t leave Sandriel, and I’m so fucking grateful that she had someone there who loved her unconditionally.”
Bryce’s throat closed up. She might have offered some platitude about them reuniting in the afterlife, but … the afterlife was a sham. And Danika’s soul was already gone.
“Guys,” Hunt said from where he and the others had risen to their feet. “We need to keep going.”
“Why?” Bryce asked, walking over. Her starlight dimmed, as if telling her she was headed in the wrong direction. I know, she told it silently.
“We shouldn’t linger, even with the Magical Starborn Princess watching over us,” Tharion said, winking. “I think it’s getting too tempting for the ghouls.” He jerked his head toward the writhing mass of shadows barely visible within the mists. Their hissing had risen to such a level that it reverberated against her bones.
“All right,” Bryce said, resisting the urge to plug her ears against the unholy din. “Let’s go.”
“That’s the first wise decision you’ve made,” drawled a deep male voice from the tunnel behind them.
And there was nowhere to run, nothing to do but stand and face the threat, as Morven stalked out of the mists. And behind him, flame simmering in his eyes, strode the Autumn King.
