House of Flame and Shadow: The INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER third instalment in the Crescent City series
House of Flame and Shadow: Part 1 – Chapter 26

Ithan didn’t deserve to exist. To breathe.

And yet here he was, sitting in the back of a car as they approached the docks at Ionia. Here he was, praying the Hind hadn’t sold them out and that the ship would be waiting to bring them to Pangera.

Kin-slayer. Murderer. The thoughts echoed through his very bones.

Ithan had killed the one person who might have led the Valbaran wolves to a different future, an alternative to Sabine.

It didn’t matter that it had been accidental. He’d ripped out her throat. And decapitated her in the process of removing his fist.

To save his friends, he’d done this unspeakable, unforgivable thing. He was no better than the Hind.

Ithan caught a glimpse of his reflection in the car window, and hastily turned away.

Ataraxia had slain the Middengard Wyrm—but there was no indication the blade could also kill an Asteri. That anything, in any world, could do that except for Apollion.

“Get out of range—” Bryce warned Nesta, but the warrior snarled at Bryce, “She was keeping you talking until she got an opportunity to kill you with that cache of light, you fool.”

Black blood dribbled from Vesperus’s lips. “You are indeed a fool, girl.”

The power slipped from Bryce’s grip as Vesperus placed a hand at Ataraxia’s tip and shoved. The sword punched back through her chest. The movement was hard enough that Nesta stumbled, shock whitening her face.

Slowly, Vesperus turned. Smiled at Nesta. Then down at the gaping hole between her breasts, already healing. All that firstlight was grade A healing magic. Taken in such a big dose—

“Ataraxia didn’t work,” Nesta breathed, shock still stark on her face. “The Trove—”

“Do not summon the Trove,” Azriel ordered. “Don’t bring it near her.”

Nesta shook her head. “But—”

“Not even for our lives,” Azriel snarled.

“Oh, I’ll get the Trove soon enough,” Vesperus said, and peered at the hole above her coffin, the ruined chamber beyond.

For a heartbeat, Bryce wasn’t in the tomb, but back in Griffin Antiquities. A heartbeat, and she was in the library below the gallery, Micah held at bay, Lehabah begging her to go—

She’d found a way then. She’d killed a fucking Archangel.

There were two blades practically screaming for her to use them. Bryce again reached out a hand, her will, toward Azriel. And as surely as the Starsword had done, Truth-Teller flew from his grip. He tried to grab it, but even his swift lunge wasn’t fast enough to stop it. To stop Bryce as the knife soared for her fingers.

The dagger’s hilt landed in her palm, cool and heavy.

Her body began to hum. Like having one blade in each hand—the Starsword and Truth-Teller—electrified her.

Bryce stepped toward Vesperus. Vesperus swayed back slightly. Just as Bryce had suspected.

Behind her, Nesta and Azriel unleashed twin bolts of magic, one silver, one blue—arcing toward Vesperus from two directions. Splitting Vesperus’s attention for a heartbeat—

The heartbeat Bryce had used to kill Micah.

The heartbeat that she used now to spring at the Asteri, sword in one hand, dagger in the other.

Bone collided with metal, and Vesperus screeched in rage as Bryce plunged Truth-Teller and the Starsword into her chest.

Bryce threw her power into the Starsword, light ripping through the black blade, willing it to tear this fucking monster apart—

She willed it into Truth-Teller, and shadows flowed—

And where the two blades met, where Bryce’s light merged at their nexus, power met power.

Her ears hollowed out. Magic like lightning surged through her, from her. The chamber rippled, a muffled boom echoing through Bryce.

Her blood roared, a beast howling at the moon. She was vaguely aware of a glow, of radiating light that flowed through the Starsword, the dagger—

Vesperus thrashed, falling beyond Bryce’s grip, sinking to her knees.

The Asteri hunched over, hands grappling on the hilts of the blades. She hissed as her skin touched the black metal. “I shall kill you for this.”

But the words were slow … dragged out.

No, that was time slowing, rippling, as it had with Micah, as if the blades were killing the Asteri, a great world power—

A whip of blue magic shot through the world, a ribbon of cobalt piercing the starlight and darkness. She could see every loop and coil as it wrapped around Vesperus’s neck.

Time resumed—sped up to its normal rate. “Stop!” Bryce shouted, but too late.

Vesperus lifted a hand to her neck as Azriel’s blue light dissolved into her skin. She let out a strangled laugh as blood leaked from her mouth. “Still so ignorant. Your power is and will always be mine.”

Blue magic appeared at her fingertips, absorbed from the Illyrian’s attack. She wrapped it around one hand like a glove and grasped the Starsword’s handle.

As if it provided the barrier she needed, allowing her to touch the blade, Vesperus yanked the Starsword free and let it clatter to the stones, coated with gore.

It … it hadn’t worked. The sword and dagger united hadn’t killed her.

Hand glowing blue, Vesperus studied the dagger still in her chest and then smiled at Bryce as she wrapped her fingers, still wreathed in lightning, around the hilt. “I’m going to carve you up with this, girl.”

Nesta rotated Ataraxia in her hand and swung upward. Azriel shouted at her, “Throw your power in the blade!”

“No!” Bryce screamed. The Starsword and Truth-Teller had clearly been weakening the Asteri. If she could figure out how to amplify their power, she’d know how to kill them all—

Vesperus had just yanked Truth-Teller from her chest in a smooth slide when Ataraxia severed flesh and bone, dark blood—or whatever ichor flowed in an Asteri’s veins—spraying.

Vesperus’s dark head tumbled to the stones.

Silver fire wreathed Ataraxia as Nesta plunged the blade into the Asteri’s fallen head. Again. And again. Ichor and light leaked from the broken body, and between one stab and the next, Nesta’s arm slowed, slowed, slowed—

That was time slowing again. Bryce could see every spark of silver flame coiling about the blade, see it reflected in Nesta’s eyes.

The sword descended into Vesperus’s head one last time. Inch by inch, shattering bone and spraying gore—

Time snapped back into movement, but Vesperus did not.

Vesperus, the only Asteri left on this world, lay dead.

There was a small boat waiting for them. That much had gone right.

Tharion couldn’t stand to look at Ithan. At any of his friends, even the sprites, who’d done so much for him.

The captain was waving to them, a silent order to hurry up while they still had the cover of darkness. Dawn was beginning to turn the sky gray.

They ditched the car at the end of the dock and walked quickly toward the small boat. Once they were on the Depth Charger, they’d be untraceable, even if the Viper Queen tracked the car here.

Tharion slid a hand into his pocket and fingered the white stone that would summon the ship. Dec, Flynn, and the sprites jumped into the boat, Dec quietly talking to the captain, but Holstrom had paused at the edge of the dock.

Silently, Tharion came up beside him.

The water was clear, even twenty feet above the bottom. Where he might have once jumped in, luxuriated in the crisp ocean water …

He didn’t dare send a ripple through the waters of the world announcing his presence. Coward.

Flynn called to them, “Get on, assholes!”

Tharion glanced to Ithan, but the wolf was staring at the eastern horizon. The rising sun.

“Ready?” Tharion asked.

“I have to go back,” Holstrom rasped.

“What?” Tharion faced him fully. “What do you mean?”

The wolf slowly turned to look at him, his eyes bleak. Tharion felt the weight of his guilt at what he’d done to this male, in having Holstrom fight for him.

“To Crescent City,” Ithan said, face like stone. “I have to go back.”

“Why?”

“Holstrom! Ketos!” Dec hollered as the boat’s engine churned.

Ithan just said quietly, “To make it right.”

A shudder of muscle and a ripple of light, and the human form became a massive wolf.

“Ithan—” Tharion started.

The wolf turned and sprinted down the dock, back toward the arid countryside, golden in the rising light.

Flynn bellowed, “Holstrom, what the fuck!”

But the wolf had already reached the shore. Then the main building of the marina. Then the alley beside it … and then he vanished.

Silence fell, interrupted only by the grumble and splash of the engine. Tharion turned back toward the boat, toward the two friends onboard, the sprites gleaming like three small stars between them.

“What the fuck happened?” Flynn demanded.

Tharion shook his head, at a loss for words, and stepped onto the boat.

His fault—all of it. He lifted his face to the sky as the boat peeled toward the open ocean, and wondered if he’d ever see Valbara again.

If he even deserved to.