House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Series)
House of Flame and Shadow: Part 3 – Chapter 96

Bryce didn’t lower the Godslayer Rifle. She kept it aimed at the Asteri’s feet. At the hole just behind them. To get close enough, she’d have to teleport right to them, and fire straight into the hole.

“That core is tied to Midgard’s very soul,” Rigelus said. “You destroy it, and this entire planet will wink out of existence.”

Bryce’s blood chilled. She might have called bullshit had it not been for Vesperus’s claims about the Cauldron.

“You made the core a kill switch for this world,” Bryce breathed.

The Asteri to Rigelus’s left—Eosphoros, the Morning Star—sneered, “To prevent rodents like you from getting any ideas about destroying us.”

“Our fate,” Rigelus said to Bryce, folding his hands in front of him almost beatifically, “is tied to that of this planet. You kill our source of nourishment, and you doom every living soul on Midgard as well.”

“And if I call your bluff?” Bryce demanded, buying whatever time she could to sort out all she’d heard and witnessed and endured—

“Then a darkness like none you have ever known shall devour this planet, and you will all cease to exist,” said the Asteri to Rigelus’s right—Hesperus, the Evening Star.

“So you’d rather die,” Bryce said, “than see any of us freed from you?”

“If we are denied our food, then we shall die; there is no purpose to your existence, if not to sustain us. You are chattel.”

“You’re fucking delusional.” Bryce kept the rifle aimed at their feet. “How about I kill all of you, and leave the core here? How about that?”

“You’d have to get close enough with those blades to do so, girl,” Eosphoros sneered, death in her eyes as she glanced to the Starsword at Bryce’s back, to Truth-Teller sheathed at her side. “We shall not make Polaris’s mistake.”

They were right—Bryce knew that if she set down the gun, if she drew the blades … Well, they’d kill her so fast she probably wouldn’t be able to draw the weapons in time.

“Think very carefully, Bryce Quinlan,” Rigelus said, stepping forward with his hands raised. “One bullet from you into the core, and this world and all its innocents will be sucked into a void with no end.”

The same Void that Apollion had claimed allowed him to devour the Asteri? Polaris’s body had been sucked into nothing—

“You seemed so outraged in your little video,” Rigelus purred, “at the deaths of those innocents in Asphodel Meadows. But what are a few hundred children compared to the millions you damn by firing that bullet?”

A void with no end …

“Kill her, brother,” hissed the fourth Asteri, Austrus, glowing with power. “Kill her, and let us return to battle the princes before they replace us down here—”

“What will it be, Bryce Quinlan?” Rigelus asked, extending a hand. “You have my word that if you do not fire that bullet, you and yours shall go free. And remain so.”

The other Asteri whirled on him, outraged.

“I can teach you things you’ve never even dreamed of,” Rigelus promised. “The language inked on your back—it is our language. From our home world. I can teach you how to wield it. Any world might be open to you, Bryce Quinlan. Name the world, and it shall be yours.”

“I only want this world to be free of you,” Bryce said through her teeth. “Forever.”

One of the Asteri began, “How dare you speak to—” but Rigelus interrupted, attention only on Bryce, “That, too, might be possible. A Midgard of your imagining.” He smiled, so earnestly she almost believed him. “Yours will be a life of comfort. I shall set you up as a true queen—not only of the Fae, but of all Valbara. No more Governors. No more angelic hierarchies, if that is what you and Athalar wish. If you desire the dead to be freed, then we shall replace a way around death, too. They were always simply dessert to us.”

“Dessert,” Bryce said, hands shaking with anger. She gripped the rifle tighter.

“The secondlight shall be the dead’s to keep,” Rigelus went on.

But Bryce said, a familiar white haze of pure rage creeping over her vision, “They’re not dessert. They’re people. People the inhabitants of this planet knew and loved.”

“A poor choice of words,” Rigelus acknowledged, “and I apologize. But what you wish, you shall have. And if you desire to—”

“Enough of this catering to vermin,” Eosphoros snapped. “She dies.”

“I don’t think so,” Bryce said, and teleported directly to the Asteri. Right to the hole in the floor that Hunt had made. “I think it’s your turn for that.”

She fired the Godslayer Rifle into the firstlight core.

The Asteri screamed, and time dripped by as the bullet fired from the rifle, slow enough that Bryce could see the writing on its side: Memento Mori.

Powered by the souls of the dead, of Connor and the Pack of Devils and so many more … the dead sacrificing for the sake of the living. The dead, yielding eternity so Midgard might be free.

The bullet spiraled downward, into the light, toward that final crystal barrier.

Rigelus lunged for her, his hands incandescent with uncut power. Once he touched her, she’d be dead—

And maybe this was what Danika had planned all along, in putting the Horn in her, wanting her to claim that other piece of Theia’s star from Avallen. Maybe this was what Urd had planned for her, had whispered she might do ever since she had accessed her power, or what Hel had imagined she and Hunt might one day do.

She wished she’d had a bit more time with Hunt. With her parents and friends. A bit more time to savor the sun, and the sky, and the sea. To listen to music, all the music she could ever hear. To dance—just one more step or spin—

Rigelus was still reaching for her arm with his bright hands; the bullet was still spiraling. And as that bullet of secondlight smashed through that final layer of crystal, as it tunneled down and down—

Bryce wished she’d had more time.

But she didn’t. And if this was the time that she had been given … she’d make it count.

I believe it all happened for a reason. I believe it wasn’t for nothing.

From far away, the words she’d spoken at the Gate the previous spring echoed.

All that had happened had been for this. Not for her, but for Midgard. For the safety and future of all worlds.

And as the bullet erupted in the firstlight core, as Rigelus’s hand wrapped around her wrist and pure acid burned her skin and bones where he touched her—

Like the battery she was, she grabbed his power. Sucked it into herself.

Light met light and yet—Rigelus’s starlight wasn’t light at all.

It was power, yes. But it was firstlight. It was the power of Midgard. Of the people.

It flowed into her, so much power that it nearly knocked the breath out of her lungs. Time slowed further, and still she seized more of Rigelus’s power.

His power indicator on the wall plummeted.

Rigelus reeled back, releasing her, either in pain or rage or fear, she didn’t know—

His light was not his own. His light had been stolen from the people of Midgard. He was a living gate, storing that power, and just as she’d taken it from the Gates this spring, just as it had fueled her Ascent, fueled her own power to new levels … now it became hers.

Without the firstlight, without the people of Midgard and every other planet they’d bled dry … without the power of the people, these Asteri fuckers were nothing.

And with that knowledge, that undeniable truth, Bryce sent all that power through the Horn in her back.

Right as the core ruptured.

Midgard’s kill switch flipped on. Mere feet away, the world began to cave in, sucking itself inward, obliterating everything—

Bryce willed it, and the Horn obeyed.

A portal opened—right in front of the core and the dark dot that was emerging from it, vacuuming in all life. Bryce sent the core, that lifeless, growing dot, through her portal.

The Asteri screamed again, and didn’t stop. Like they knew she’d conjured her own kill switch.

A thought, and Bryce widened her portal enough that it sucked in the Asteri, their screams vanishing as they went. Rigelus and his bright hands were now a dim glow, still reaching for Midgard, clinging to it as he was pulled in.

Bryce had a heartbeat to take in what—where—she’d opened a portal to: a black, airless place, dotted with small, distant stars. A heartbeat, and then she was yanked in, too.

Straight to deep space.