House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Series)
House of Flame and Shadow: Part 2 – Chapter 39

Bryce found the Autumn King in his study, his red hair aglow in the morning light. Contemplating the Starsword and Truth-Teller on his desk.

What she’d said the other night must have struck a nerve, then. Good.

“So close,” she purred as she shut the door and approached the desk, “but so far. So unworthy.”

Flames danced in his eyes. “What is it you want, girl?”

She swept around the desk to stand beside his chair, peering at the weapons from his angle. He frowned, as if her mere proximity was distasteful. “Did my mom ever tell you what happened that night she was trying to get me to safety? When your goons caught up to her and Randall?”

“I’d consider your words carefully,” he snarled.

Bryce smiled. “Randall hadn’t picked up a gun in years. Not since he’d gotten home from the front and vowed he’d never use one again. He was on the verge of swearing his vows to Solas when he got the request from the High Priest to go help a single mom and her three-year-old daughter get away from you. And that night your loser guards caught up with us … that was the first time Randall picked up a gun again. He put a bullet right through your chief security officer’s head. Randall hated every single fucking second of it. But he did it. Because in that moment, even after only three days on the run, he knew that he was already in love with my mom. And that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.”

The Autumn King’s nose crinkled with annoyance. “Is there a point to this story?”

“My point,” she said, leaning closer to her father, “is that I didn’t just learn about love from my mom. I learned about it from my dad, too. My true dad. My weak human dad who you’re so jealous of that you can’t stand it. He taught me to fight like Hel for the people I love.”

“I grow bored of this.” The Autumn King made to pull away, but Bryce grabbed his arm.

“Way ahead of you there. I grew bored of you the instant you opened your mouth.”

Stone clicked.

The Autumn King reeled back, but too late. The gorsian shackle had already clamped on his wrist.

“You little bitch,” he hissed, and Bryce let the shackle from her other wrist tumble to the ground. “You have no idea who you’re fucking with—”

“I do. A useless, pathetic loser.”

He lunged to his feet, but she’d already snatched up both Truth-Teller and the Starsword. He halted as she unsheathed the blades and pointed both at him.

Bryce said smoothly, the knife and sword steady in her hands, “Here’s the bargain: you don’t put up a fight, and I don’t impale you with these and experiment on how to open a portal to nowhere in your gut.”

Flame burned and then died out in his eyes as the shackle held him firm.

She smiled, inclining her head. “Thanks for that intel about the blades, by the way. I thought you might know something of use. It’s really too bad that you sent all the servants away, isn’t it? No one to hear you scream.”

His face whitened with rage. “You arrived here intentionally.”

“Guilty as charged,” she said, shaking her hair over a shoulder with a toss of her head. “I knew you’d been doing all this research for centuries. You’re the one person who’s obsessed with the Starsword and its secrets, sad Chosen One reject that you are. So I came here for answers. To learn what, exactly, a weapon like this could do. How to get rid of our little intergalactic friends.” She grinned. “And you assumed I landed here because …?”

He glowered.

“Oh right,” she said. “Because I’m your stupid, bumbling daughter. I landed here by accident—is that it?” She laughed, unable to help herself. “You probably even convinced yourself it was Luna sending you some sort of gift. That you were given the gods’ favor and this was destined by Urd.”

His silence was confirmation enough.

She made an exaggerated pout. “Tough luck. And really tough luck about the shackle. Though I guess it’s fitting that I used the key Ruhn kept in his room. He told me about it once, you know. That’s what he had to use when you’d bind him with these and burn him. You put these delightful things on him so he couldn’t fight back. And it happened often enough that he invested in a disarming key that he left in his desk so he could free himself when you sent him back to his room to suffer.”

Again, the Autumn King said nothing. The bastard wouldn’t deny it.

Bryce flashed her teeth, searing white rage creeping over her vision. But her voice was cold as ice as she said, “To be honest, I’d really like to kill you right now. For my mom, but also for Ruhn. And for me, too, I guess.” She nodded to the doorway. “But we do have a bargain, don’t we? And I’ve got a hot date today.”

Pure death loomed in his eyes. “The Asteri will kill you.”

“Maybe. But you’re not going to help them by telling them about this.” She extended the Starsword toward his face. He didn’t dare move as she bopped him on the nose with its tip. “It’s a real shame that you unplugged all your electronics and shut off your interweb. There’ll be no way to call for help from the basement closet.”

He choked on his outrage. “The—”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she drawled. “I put a bucket and some water in there for you. Probably enough to last until one of your meathead guards wonders what’s going on in here and comes to check.” She pretended to think. “They might have a bitch of a time getting through your wards, though.”

“As will you.”

“Unfortunately for you, no, I won’t. You didn’t ward against teleporting. Such a rare gift here—you didn’t even think to spell against it, did you? Lucky me.”

“I would consider your next moves very carefully if—”

“Yeah, yeah.” She pointed with the sword to the door. “Let’s go. Your subterranean abode awaits.”

He didn’t try anything as she escorted him down, clearly wary of the power of the weapons she held.

Ever since Vesperus had writhed under the two blades, there had been a thought niggling at the back of Bryce’s mind. Remembering all Ruhn had told her about the Autumn King’s obsession with the Starsword, she’d gambled that he might know about the dagger, too.

It had been the hardest decision she’d ever made: to come here, to play this game, rather than to will the portal to take her right to Hunt. But Hunt, as she had feared, had still been in the dungeons, and to appear there would have been too risky. And this knowledge was too important.

But now she knew a little more. The Starsword and Truth-Teller could open a portal to nowhere, whatever that was. Now she just needed to learn how to make them do it.

Good thing he’d also told her where on Midgard to replace more information about the blades.

The Autumn King balked as Bryce pointed with the sword to the open closet in the basement. Like so much of the house, it was fireproof. The heavy steel door would likely take him a while to break out of, if he even managed to free himself from the gorsian shackle.

The Autumn King growled as he backed into the closet, “I will kill you and your bitch mother for this.”

She motioned him further inside. “I’ll pencil you in for tomorrow.”

With that, she slammed the door shut in his face and locked it. He barreled into it a second later, the door shuddering, but it held.

Whistling to herself, propping the Starsword on a shoulder, Bryce strode out of the basement.

There was so much more to do. Places to be. People to see.

And more to learn.

Five minutes later, Bryce pulled her phone out of the desk drawer in the Autumn King’s study. It was dead, and a quick search of his office showed no hint of charging cords to get it working again. She slipped it into the band of her leggings, then picked up the Starsword and Truth-Teller from where she’d placed them on the desk.

The Autumn King’s prism device sat where he’d left it. An idle beam of sunlight shone through the windows, catching in the prism and refracting a rainbow onto one of the golden planets of the orrery—on Midgard. Light pulled apart. Light stripped bare.

In the chaos of those final moments with Vesperus and these days with the Autumn King, she hadn’t yet had a chance to explore the magic she’d taken from Silene’s store.

She’d claimed the magic, she supposed, as Silene had surely left it there for future heirs to take. But why hadn’t they? Why hadn’t her son, who’d heard the truth directly from her mouth? Bryce knew she might never know the answer now. But she could try to learn something about the power she now held within her.

With a sharp inhale, Bryce rallied her magic. On the exhale, she sent a stream of her starlight into the prism, her power faster than ever before.

Starlight hit the prism, passed through it, and—

“Huh.”

It wasn’t a rainbow that emerged from the other side. Not even close.

It took her a moment to process what she was seeing: a gradient beam of starlight. Where the rainbow would have been full of color, this one began in shimmering white light and descended into shadow.

An anti-rainbow, as it were. Light falling into darkness, droplets of starlight raining from the highest beam into the shadowy band at the bottom, devoured by the darkness below.

Like the fading light of day—of dusk.

What did it mean? She was pretty sure her light had been pure before, but now, with Silene’s power mixed in … there was darkness there, too. Hidden beneath.

Et in Avallen ego.

Did it make a difference to her power? To her? To now have that layer of darkness?

Bryce buried the questions. She could think about it later. Right now …

She took the notebook on the desk and slid it into the inside pocket of her athletic jacket.

Then she nudged the prism on the desk a few inches to the side, angling it toward the device across the room. The one the Autumn King said might be able to recapture the light, possibly with more power added to it. But what if light blasted from either prism, meeting in the middle? What would happen in the collision of all that magic?

All that smashing light, those little bits of magic bashing into each other, would produce energy. And fuel her up like a battery.

She hoped.

“Only one way to replace out,” she muttered to herself.

With a prayer to Cthona, she sent twin beams of light arcing around the prisms, shooting straight into them.

Twin bursts of that light flared from either prism, gunning for each other. Bands of light falling into darkness, her power stripped to its most elemental, basic form. They shot for each other, and where they met, light and darkness and darkness and light slamming into each other—

Bryce stepped into the explosion in the heart of it.

Stepped into her power.

It lit her up from the inside, lit up her very blood. Her hair drifted above her head, pens and papers and other office detritus flowing upward with it.

Such light and darkness—the power lay in the meeting of the two of them. She understood it now, how the darkness shaped the light.

But all that colliding power … it was the boost she needed.

With a parting middle finger to the floor at her feet and the Autumn King sulking beneath it, she teleported out of the villa to the place she wanted to be the most.

Home. Wherever that was in Midgard.

Because her home was no longer just a physical place, but a person, too.

Silene had claimed as much when she spoke of Theia and Aidas—their souls had found each other across worlds, because they were mates. They were each other’s homes.

And for Bryce, home was—and always would be—Hunt.

Exhaustion weighed so heavily on Ruhn that despite his aching neck, he couldn’t be bothered to shift into a more comfortable position in the chair. Machines beeped endlessly, like metal crickets marking the passing of the night.

He had a vague sense of Declan replacing Flynn. Then Dec left and it was Flynn again.

He didn’t know what woke him. Whether it was some hitch in the machine or some shift in the cadence of her breathing, but … a stillness went through him. He cracked his eyes open, sore and gritty, and looked to the bed.

Lidia still lay unconscious. Ghastly pale.

Lidia.

No answer. Ruhn leaned over his knees and rubbed his face. Maybe he could crash on the tiled floor. It’d be better than contorting himself in the chair.

“Morning,” Flynn said. “Want some coffee?”

Ruhn grunted his assent. Flynn clapped him on the back and slipped out, the door hissing open and shut.

Gods, his whole body hurt. His hand … He examined the thin, strangely pale fingers, the lack of tattoos or scars. Still weak. Like it was still rebuilding the strength stored in his immortal blood on the day of his Drop.

He flexed his fingers, wincing, then slowly sat up and rolled his neck. He was on his third rotation when he looked at the bed and noticed Lidia staring at him.

He went wholly still.

Her golden eyes were hazy with pain and exhaustion, but they were open, and she was … she was …

Ruhn blinked, making sure he wasn’t dreaming.

Lidia rasped, “Am I dead or alive?”

His chest caved in. “Alive,” he whispered, hands beginning to shake.

Lidia’s lips curled faintly, like it took all her effort to do so. The weight of it hit him—of what she was and who she was and what she had done.

The Hind lay before him—the fucking Hind. How could he feel such relief about someone he hated so much? How could he hate someone whose life mattered more to him than his own?

Her glazed eyes shifted from his. Glanced around the windowless room, taking in the machines and her IV. Her nostrils flared, scenting the room beneath the antiseptics and various potions. Something sharpened in her stare. Something like recognition.

Then Lidia asked very quietly, “Where are we?”

The question surprised him. She’d planned this escape. Had her injury affected her mind? Gods, he hadn’t even thought about the potential damage from going without oxygen for so long. Ruhn said softly, “On the Depth Charger—”

She moved.

Tubing and monitors came flying off her, ripped from her arm so fast blood sprayed. Machines blared, and Ruhn couldn’t act quickly enough to stop her as she leapt out of the bed, feet slipping on the floor as she hurtled to the door.

The glass hissed open, revealing Flynn with two cups of coffee in hand. He dodged to the side with a “What the fuck!”

Lidia barreled out, hardly able to stand, and it was all Ruhn could do to race after her.

The few medwitches in the hall at this hour let out surprised cries at the deer shifter stumbling past in her pale blue medical gown, careening into the walls with the grace of a newborn colt. Her legs had been rebuilt—she’d never used these ones before.

“What the Hel,” Flynn said, a step behind Ruhn, smelling of the coffee that had spilled on him when he’d dived out of Lidia’s way.

Lidia hit the stairwell, and just before the door shut behind her, Ruhn saw her trip, falling to her knees on the steps, then surge up again.

“Lidia,” he panted, each step singeing his lungs. Fuck his still-healing body—

He slammed into the stairwell door, but she was already halfway up, long legs pale and thin against the gray tiles.

She charged up and up, around and around, either unaware or uncaring that Ruhn ran close behind. She threw open an unmarked door, then bolted down the hall. People in civilian clothes pressed back against the walls at the sight of her—then him. The walls here were covered with bright art and flyers.

Sharp inhales came from Lidia. She was sobbing, craning her neck to see through the windows of the rooms she passed. Ruhn read the words on each wooden door: Year Three. Year Seven. Year Five.

She skidded to a halt, gripping a doorjamb. Ruhn reached her side as she shoved her face up to the glass.

Year Nine.

A group of teenagers—most of them mer, with striped skin and various coloring—sat in rows of desks in the classroom. Lidia pressed a hand against the door. Tears rolled down her cheeks.

And then a boy, golden-haired and blue-eyed, looked away from his teacher and toward the window. The kid wasn’t mer.

The ground slid out from under Ruhn. The boy had Lidia’s face. Her coloring.

Another boy to his left, also not mer, had dark hair and golden eyes. Lidia’s eyes.

Behind them, Flynn grunted with surprise. “You’ve got brothers on this ship?”

“They’re not my brothers,” Lidia whispered. Her fingers curled on the glass. “They’re my sons.”