House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Series)
House of Flame and Shadow: Part 1 – Chapter 22

Hunt could only watch in despair as the Bright Hand of the Asteri swept into the chamber, followed by Pollux and the Hawk. The Hawk noted the hand still dangling from the chains and laughed.

“Just like a rat,” the Hawk taunted, “gnawing off a limb when caught in a trap.”

“Get fucked,” Baxian spat, Ruhn’s blood coating his face, his neck, his chest.

“Language,” Rigelus chided, but didn’t interfere as Pollux snatched the iron poker from where Ruhn still clutched it between his feet. Ruhn, to his credit, tried to hold on to it, legs curling upward to tuck it close. But weakened and bleeding … there was nothing he could do. Pollux ripped it away, beating Ruhn’s back once with it—prompting a pained grunt from the prince—then used the poker to prod Ruhn’s severed hand from the shackle above.

It landed on the filthy ground with a sickening thump.

Smiling, the Hawk picked it up like it was a shiny new toy.

Observing the three of them, Rigelus said mildly, “If I’d known you were so bored down here, I would have sent Pollux back sooner. Here I was, thinking you’d had enough of pain.”

Pollux stalked to the lever, wings glowingly white. With a smirk, the Hammer pulled it and sent all three of them dropping heavily to the ground.

The agony that blasted through Hunt drowned out Ruhn’s scream as the prince landed on his severed wrist.

Hunt gave himself one breath, one moment on that filthy floor to sink down into the icy black of the Umbra Mortis. To fight past the pain, the guilt, to focus. To lift his head.

Rigelus stared down at them impassively. “I’m hoping that I will soon have further insight into where Miss Quinlan might have gone,” he crooned. “But perhaps you might feel inclined now to talk?”

Ruhn spat, “Fuck off.”

Behind Rigelus’s back, the Hawk folded the fingers of Ruhn’s severed hand until only the middle one remained upright.

Hunt snarled softly. The snarl of the Umbra Mortis.

Yet Rigelus stepped closer to Hunt, immaculate white jacket almost obscenely clean in this place. The golden rings on his fingers glimmered. “It brings me no joy to see you with the halo and slave brand again, Athalar.”

“Halo,” Hunt asked as solidly as he could, “or black crown?”

Rigelus blinked—the only sign of his surprise—but the term clearly landed with the Bright Hand.

“Been talking to shadows, have you?” Rigelus hissed.

“Umbra Mortis and all that,” Hunt said. “Makes sense for the Shadow of Death.”

Baxian chuckled.

Rigelus narrowed his eyes at the Helhound, then turned back to Hunt. “What lengths would the Umbra Mortis go to in order to keep these two pathetic specimens alive, I wonder?”

“What the fuck do you want?” Hunt growled. Pollux flashed him a warning look.

“A small task,” Rigelus said. “A favor. Unrelated to Miss Quinlan entirely.”

“Don’t fucking listen to him,” Baxian muttered, then cried out as a whip cracked, courtesy of the Hawk.

“I’d be willing to offer a … reprieve,” Rigelus said to Hunt, ignoring the Helhound entirely. “If you do something for me.”

That was what this had been about, then. His mystics would replace Bryce—he didn’t need the three of them for that. But the torture, the punishment … Hunt willed his foggy head to clear, to listen to every word. To cling to that Umbra Mortis he’d once been, what he’d been so happy to leave behind.

“Your lightning is a gift, Athalar,” Rigelus continued. “A rare one. Use it once, on my behalf, and perhaps we can replace you three more comfortable … arrangements.”

Ruhn spat, “To do what?”

“A side project of mine.”

Hunt snapped, “I’m not agreeing to shit.”

Rigelus smiled sadly. “I assumed that would be the case. Though I’m still disappointed to hear it.” He pulled a sliver of pale rock from his pocket—a crystal. Uncut and about the length of his palm. “It’ll be harder to extract it from you without your consent, but not impossible.”

Hunt’s stomach flipped. “Extract what?”

Rigelus stalked closer, crystal in hand. The Asteri halted steps from Hunt, fingers unfurling so he could examine the hunk of quartz in his palm. “A fine natural conduit,” the Bright Hand said thoughtfully. “And an excellent receptacle for power.” Then he lifted his gaze up to Hunt. “I’ll give you a choice: offer me a sliver of your lightning, and you and your friends will be spared the worst of your suffering.”

“No.” The word rose from deep in Hunt’s gut.

Rigelus’s expression remained mild. “Then choose which one of your friends shall die.”

“Go to Hel.” The Umbra Mortis slipped away, too far to reach.

Rigelus sighed, bored and weary. “Choose, Athalar: Shall it be the Helhound or the Fae Prince?”

He couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

Pollux was grinning like a fiend, a long knife already in his hand. Whichever of Hunt’s friends was chosen, the Hammer would draw out their deaths excruciatingly.

“Well?” Rigelus asked.

He’d do it—the Bright Hand would do this, make him choose between his friends, or just kill both of them.

And Hunt had never hated himself more, but he reached inward, toward his lightning, suppressed and suffocated by the gorsian shackles, but still there, under the surface.

It was all Rigelus needed. He pressed the quartz against Hunt’s forearm, and the stone cut into his skin. Searing, acid-sharp lightning surged out of Hunt, ripped from his soul, twisted through the confines of the gorsian shackles, extracted inch by inch into the crystal. Hunt screamed, and he had a moment of brutal clarity: this was what his enemies felt when he flayed them alive, what Sandriel had felt when he’d destroyed her, and oh gods, it burned—

And then it stopped.

Like a switch being flipped, only darkness filled him. His lightning sank back into him, but in Rigelus’s hands, the crystal now glowed, full of the lightning he’d wrenched from Hunt’s body. Like a firstlight battery—like the scrap of power extracted during the Drop.

“I think this will do for now,” Rigelus crooned, sliding the stone back into his pocket. It illuminated the dark material of his pants, and Hunt’s throat constricted, bile rising.

The Bright Hand turned away, and said to the Hammer and the Hawk without looking back, “I think two out of three will still be a good incentive for Miss Quinlan to return, don’t you? Executioner’s choice.”

“You bastard,” Hunt breathed. “I did what you asked.”

Rigelus strode for the stairs that led out of the chamber. “Had you agreed to give me your lightning from the start, both of your companions would have been spared. But since you made me go to all that effort … I think you need to learn the consequences of your defiance, however short-lived it was.”

Baxian seethed, “He’ll never stop defying you—and neither will we, asshole.”

It meant more than it should have that the Helhound spoke up for him. And also made it worse.

Last time he’d been here, he’d been alone. He’d had only the screams of soldiers to endure. His guilt had devoured him, but it was different than this. Than having to be here with two brothers and bear their suffering along with his own.

Being alone would have been better. So much better.

Rigelus knew it, too. It was why he’d waited this long to come down here, giving Hunt time to comprehend the bind he was in.

The Bright Hand ascended the steps with feline grace. “We shall see what Athalar is willing to give up when it really comes down to it. Where even the Umbra Mortis draws the line.”

Lidia’s time had run out. If she was to act, it had to be now. There was no margin for error. She needed the prisoners ready—in whatever way she could manage.

But she’d gotten no farther than two steps into the dungeon when the breath whooshed from her body at the sight of the stump where Ruhn’s hand should have been.

The prince hung, unconscious, from his chains. Athalar and Baxian were out, too. All three were caked in blood.

Pollux and the Hawk were panting, smiling like fiends. “You missed the fun, Lidia,” the Hawk said, and held up—

Held up—

That broad, tattooed hand—Ruhn’s hand—had touched her. On that mental plane, soul to soul, those hands had caressed her, gentle and loving.

“Well done,” she managed, though she screamed inside. Clawed at the walls of her being and shrieked with fury. “Which one of you claimed the prize?”

“Baxian, actually,” the Hammer said, chuckling. “Chewed it off like the dog he is in an attempt to get free.”

Lidia made herself turn. Look at the Helhound like she was impressed. Some small part of her was. But the pain Ruhn had endured …

She put a hand to her stomach, and her wince wasn’t entirely feigned.

“Lidia?” the Hawk asked, white wings rustling.

“Her cycle,” Pollux answered for her, disdain coating his voice.

“I’m fine,” she snapped, to make the show complete. The Hawk and Pollux swapped looks, as if to say, Females. She pulled a velvet case from an interior pocket of her uniform jacket. When she flicked it open, firstlight glowed from the two syringes strapped within.

“What’s that?” The Hawk stalked a step closer, peering at the needles.

Lidia made herself smirk at him, then at Pollux. “It seems a shame to me that Athalar and the Helhound’s wings are no longer able to be … targeted. I thought we’d bring them back into play.”

A shot of a medwitch healing potion, laced with firstlight, would regrow their wings within a day or two, even under the repressive power of the gorsian shackles. If she’d known about Ruhn’s hand, she would have brought three, but now there would be no way to casually explain the need for it, not without drawing too much attention.

And she needed Athalar and Baxian able to fly.

Pollux smiled. “Clever, Lidia.” He jerked his chin toward the unconscious angels. “Do it.”

She didn’t need the Hammer’s permission, but she didn’t protest. “Wait until they’re fully regrown,” she warned Pollux and the Hawk. “Let them savor the hope of having their wings again before you replace some interesting way to remove them anew.”

Athalar and Baxian were too deeply unconscious to even feel the prick of the needle at the center of their spines. Firstlight glowed along their backs, stretching like shining roots toward the stumps of their wings. The wounds in between healed over slowly, but she’d bade the medwitch who’d crafted the potion to weave a spell in it to target the wings specifically. If she’d healed them both completely, it would have been too suspicious.

Slowly, before her eyes, the stumps on their backs began to rebuild, flesh and sinew and bone creeping together, multiplying.

Lidia turned from the gruesome sight. She could only pray they’d be healed in time.

“I’ll take it from here,” she said to Pollux and the Hawk, striding to the rack.

“I thought you were here to heal them.” The Hawk glanced between her and the angels.

“Only the wings,” Lidia said. “Why not play with other parts while they mend?”

The Hammer smiled. “Can I watch?”

“No.”

Ruhn stirred, groaning softly, and it was all she could do to keep from pulling one of the long blades from the rack and plunging it through Pollux’s gut.

“You know how I like to watch,” Pollux purred, and the Hawk chuckled. What an utter waste of life. He’d stood by while the Hammer committed his bloody atrocities. Had delighted in watching during those years with Sandriel, too.

The Malleus’s eyes gleamed with naked lust. “Why don’t you put on a show for us?”

“Get out,” she said, unamused. Pollux might pretend he had control, but he knew who the Asteri favored. Her orders were not to be ignored. “I don’t need distractions.”

The Hawk snickered, but obeyed, stalking out. A true minion, through and through.

The Hammer, however, walked over to her. With a lover’s gentleness, he put a hand on the side of her neck. And then squeezed tight enough to bruise as he said against her mouth, “I’ll fuck that disrespect out of you, Lidia. Bloody cunt or not.”

Then he was striding up the steps, wings glowing with his wrath. He slammed the door behind him.

Lidia waited, listening. When she was convinced they were both gone, she pulled the lever that sent the prisoners crashing to the floor and rushed to where Ruhn lay sprawled.

“Get up.” She kept her voice hard, cold. But the prince opened his beautiful blue eyes.

She scanned his face. Ruhn. No one answered. As if pain had carved him up and hollowed him out. Ruhn, listen to me.

You’re dead to me, he’d said. It seemed he’d killed the connection between them, too. But Lidia still cast her thoughts toward his mind.

Ruhn, I don’t have much time. I managed to make contact with people who can help get you out of here, but the Harpy is somehow about to be resurrected, and once she is, the truth will come out. If my plan’s to go off without a hitch, if you are to survive, you need to listen—

Ruhn only closed his eyes and didn’t open them again.

Silence, heavy and unbearable, filled the chamber beneath the Prison. Bryce stared at the eight-pointed star, revulsion coursing through her in an oily slide.

“They were horrible,” she rasped. “Self-serving, reckless monsters.”

“Silene and Helena did shut the portal,” Nesta countered carefully.

Bryce’s gaze snapped to the female. “Only after they opened it again—to escape. It was open because they wanted to run. And they left all those people behind. They could have held it open a little longer, could have saved them. But Silene chose herself. She’s a fucking disgrace.”

“Surely their fate at Pelias’s hands,” Azriel said, “would explain some of their motivation in acting quickly.”

Bryce pointed to the place where Silene had stood. “That fucking bitch locked out children to save herself and then tried to justify it.”

It was no different than what the Valbaran Fae had done this spring in Crescent City—locking the innocents out of their villas while they cowered inside, protected by their wards.

“What did you …,” Nesta began, a shade gently. “What was it that you expected to replace here?”

“I don’t know.” Bryce let out a bitter laugh. “I thought maybe … maybe they’d have some answer about how to kill the Asteri. But she glossed over that part. I thought that in the thousands of years since then, maybe the Fae of Midgard had evolved into the reprehensible shitheads they are. Not that they were reprehensible all along.”

She scrubbed at her face, eyes stinging. “I thought having Theia’s light was … good. Like she was somehow better than Pelias. But she wasn’t.” And Aidas had loved her? “I thought it’d somehow give me an edge in this shitshow. But it fucking doesn’t. It just means I’m the heir to a legacy of selfish, scheming assholes.”

And worse, that parasite in Midgard’s waters … what could even be done against that? Bryce sucked in a shuddering breath.

A gentle hand rested on her shoulder. Nesta.

“We need to tell Rhys,” Azriel said hoarsely. Like he was still reeling from all he’d heard. “Immediately.”

Bryce’s gaze snapped to his face. The concern and determination there. Everything he’d seen … it was a threat to this world, to the people in it.

Azriel asked her with terrifying calm, “What happened to the Horn?”

Bryce held his stare, seething, beyond trying to spin any bullshit.

But Nesta said, “She is the Horn, Azriel. It’s inked into her flesh.” She lowered her hand from Bryce’s shoulder and peered at her. “Isn’t that right? It’s the only thing that would have made your tattoo react that way earlier.”

Azriel’s hazel eyes flickered with predatory intent. He’d carve it out of her fucking back.

If she ran for the exit tunnel … They’d said something about a climb out of here, then a hike down a mountain.

But this court was an island. She wouldn’t be able to get away from them.

Azriel began circling her with an unhurried, calculating precision. Bryce turned with him, keeping him in sight, but doing so exposed her back to Nesta, who she suspected might be the apex predator in the room.

“That’s how you got to this world,” Nesta went on, backing up a step—no doubt to provide space to draw Ataraxia. “Why you, and no one else, can come. Why you said no one would be able to follow you here. Because only you have the Horn. Only you can move between worlds.”

“You got me,” Bryce said, throwing up her hands in mock surrender and taking a step out of Nesta’s range. “I’m a big, bad, world-jumping monster. Like my ancestors.”

“You’re a liability,” Nesta said flatly, eyes taking on that silvery sheen—that otherworldly fire.

“I told you guys a hundred times already: I didn’t even want to come here—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nesta said. “You did come here, to the place where the Daglan are still apparently dead set on returning.”

“The Asteri would need the Horn to open a portal. They might replace me, but they can’t get in.”

“But you want to go home,” Nesta said, “and for that you’ll have to open a door to Midgard. What if Rigelus is right there? Waiting to come through?”

Bryce turned to keep facing Azriel, but—

Only shadows surrounded her.

Nesta had distracted her, enough that her focus had slipped and Azriel had vanished. They’d worked in silent, perfect tandem.

Not to attack, she realized, as a shadow darker than the ones around it raced for the tunnel across the chamber. But to go get reinforcements.

“No!” Bryce threw out a hand, and light ruptured from her fingers. It slammed into Azriel’s shadows, fracturing the darkness and revealing the warrior beneath. But not enough to stop his sprint—

She needed more power.

The eight-pointed star at her feet glimmered. As if her magic had nudged something within it. Like embers flaring in stirred ashes. What if her star hadn’t been guiding her to the knowledge, but to something … different? Something tangible.

Like calls to like.

To you, in this very stone, Silene had said, I leave the inheritance and the burden that my own mother passed to me.

This place, this Prison and the court it had once been, was Bryce’s inheritance. Hers to command, as Silene had commanded it.

And that memory, of Silene lying next to the Harp in the center of this room, reaching for one of the carvings with a kernel of light forming at her finger …

In this very stone …

Silene had warped her former palace and home into this Prison. She must have imbued some magic in the rock to do it. Must have given over some part of her power to not only change the terrain, but to house the monsters in their cells.

Theia had shown her how to do it. In those last moments with her daughters, Theia had used the Harp to transfer magic from herself into Silene and Helena, to protect them. It had appeared as a star. Had Silene replicated that here?

Was it possible that the Harp, in that moment that Silene reached for it, power at the ready, had been able to transfer her magic to this place?

… I leave the inheritance and the burden that my own mother passed to me.

And precisely as Theia had gifted her own power to Silene … perhaps Silene had in turn left that same power here, to be claimed by a future scion.

One by one, rapid as shooting stars, the thoughts raced through Bryce. More on instinct than anything else, she dropped to her knees and slammed her hand atop the eight-pointed star. Bryce reached with her mind, through layers of rock and earth—and there it was. Slumbering beneath her.

Not firstlight, not as she knew it on Midgard—but raw Fae power from a time before the Drop. The power ascended toward her through the stone, like a glimmering arrow fired into the dark—

Azriel flapped his wings and was instantly airborne, swooping for the tunnel exit.

Like a small sun emerging from the stone itself, a ball of light burst from the floor. A star, twin to the one in Bryce’s chest. Her starlight at last awoke again, as if reaching with shining fingers for that star hovering inches away.

With trembling hands, Bryce guided the star to the one gleaming on her chest. Into her body.

White light erupted everywhere.

Power, uncut and ancient, scorched through her veins. The hair on her head rose. Debris floated upward. She was everywhere and nowhere. She was the evening star and the last rays of color before the dark.

Azriel had nearly reached the tunnel. Another flap of his wings and he’d be swallowed by its dark mouth.

But at a mere thought from Bryce, stalactites and stalagmites formed, closing in on him. The room became a wolf, its jaws snapping for the winged warrior—

The rock had moved for her, as it had for Silene.

“Stop him,” she said in a voice that was more like her father’s than anything she’d ever heard come out of her mouth.

Azriel swept for the tunnel archway—and slammed into a wall of stone. The exit had sealed.

Slowly, he turned, wings rustling. Blood trickled out of his nose from his face-first collision with the rock now in his path. He spread his wings, bracing for a fight.

The mountain shook, the chamber with it. Debris fell from the ceiling. Walls began shifting, rock groaning against rock. As if the place this had once been was fighting to emerge from the stone.

But Nesta raced at Bryce, Ataraxia drawn, silver flame wreathing the blade.

Bryce lifted a hand, and spike after spike of rock ruptured from the ground, blocking Nesta’s advance. The chamber shuddered again—

“Stop,” Azriel roared, something like panic in his voice. “The cells—”

From far away, she could sense it: the things lurking within the mountain, her mountain. Twisted, wretched creatures. Some had been here since Silene had trapped them. Had been contemplating their escape and revenge all this time. She’d let them out if she restored the mountain to its former glory.

And in that moment, the mountain—the island—spoke to her.

Alone. It was so alone—it had been waiting all this time. Cold and adrift in this thrashing gray sea. If she could reach out, if she could open her heart to it … it might sing again. Awaken. There was a beating, vibrant heart locked away, far beneath them. If she freed it, the land would rise from its slumber, and such wonders would spring again from its earth—

The mountain shook again. Nesta and Azriel had halted ten feet away, Ataraxia a blazing light, Truth-Teller enveloped by shadows. The Starsword remained sheathed at Azriel’s back—but she could have sworn it twitched. As if urging Azriel to draw it.

Nesta warned Bryce, her eyes on the shaking earth, “If you open those cells—”

“I don’t want to fight you,” Bryce said, voice oddly hollow, like the surge of magic she’d taken from Silene’s store had emptied out her soul. “I’m not your enemy.”

“Then let us bring you back to our High Lord,” Nesta snapped. Ataraxia flashed in answer.

“To do what? Lock me up? Cut the Horn out of my skin?”

“If that’s what’s necessary,” Nesta said coldly, knees bending, readying to strike. “If that’s what it takes to keep our world safe.”

Bryce bared her teeth in a feral grin. More spikes of rock shot up from the ground, angling toward Nesta and Azriel. “Then come and take it.”

With a flap of his wings, Azriel burst toward her, fast as a striking panther—

Bryce stomped her foot. Those spikes of stone stretched higher, blocking his way. Blue light flared from him, smashing through the stones.

Bryce stomped her foot again, summoning more lethal spears of rock—but there were none left. Only a vast, gaping void.

Bryce had only a second to realize there literally was a void below her feet, before the ground beneath them collapsed entirely.