House of Flame and Shadow: The INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER third instalment in the Crescent City series
House of Flame and Shadow: Part 2 – Chapter 50

Ruhn had no idea how Bryce managed to not kill Morven. He honestly had no idea how he didn’t, either.

But they wasted no time getting to work. Though Bryce was apparently on Team Caves, she insisted on checking out the archives first.

The Avallen Archives were as imposing and massive as Ruhn remembered from his last and only visit to Avallen. Granted, he’d never been allowed inside, but from its looming gray exterior, the building rivaled the Depth Charger in sheer size. A city of learning, locked behind the lead doors.

Only for the royal bloodlines—the royal males—to access.

“We really have to work?” Flynn groused, rubbing his head. “Can’t we relax for a bit? This place gives me the creeps—I need to decompress.”

Athalar gave Flynn a look. “It gives all of us the creeps.”

“No,” Flynn said gravely, shaking his head. “I told you—my magic hates this place.”

“What do you mean?” Bryce asked, peering at him over a shoulder.

Flynn shrugged. “The earth feels … rotted. Like there’s nothing for my magic to grab on to, or identify with. It’s weird. It bothered me the first time we were here, too.”

“He whined about it the entire time,” Declan agreed, earning an elbow in the ribs from Flynn.

But Flynn jerked his chin at Sathia, standing by herself a few feet away. “You sense it, too, right?”

His sister twisted her rosebud mouth to the side, then admitted, “My magic is also uneasy on Avallen. My brother’s claims are not totally without merit.”

“Well,” Bryce said, “buck up, Flynn. I think a big, tough Fae male like you can power through. We’ll decompress tonight. Tomorrow we split into Team Archives and Team Caves and work as fast as we can.”

She lifted a hand to one of the lead doors, but didn’t touch it yet. “Trust me, though, I don’t want to stay on this miserable island for a moment more than necessary.”

“Agreed,” Athalar muttered, stepping up beside Bryce. “Let’s replace what we need and get the fuck out.”

“What are we looking for, exactly?” Sathia asked. “Everything you told me about the other Fae world and all you’ve learned … I’m sorry, but I need a bit more direction to go on when we get in there.”

Since we’re all known enemies of the Asteri, what’s another person who knows our shit? Bryce had asked when Flynn had demanded that Sathia stay behind.

And Sathia had refused to be left alone, even with the safety of her married status now granting her the right to move freely. I’m not going to be locked up in some room to rot, she’d said, and stomped after Bryce, who had begun explaining everything she’d learned about Theia and her daughters and the Fae history in and outside of Midgard. She hadn’t spoken a word to Tharion since they’d exchanged their vows—and the mer had seemed just fine about that, too.

It was all fucking nuts. But Ruhn had heard what Lidia had said to Bryce—about never having had anyone to fight for her. It hadn’t sat well.

Ruhn dared a look over at where Lidia stood, peering up at the towering entrance to the archives. He hadn’t failed to note Morven’s shock upon realizing she stood in his throne room. And as they’d departed, the Stag King had seemed poised to speak to Lidia, but the Hind had breezed past him before he could.

Her golden eyes slid to Ruhn’s, and he could have sworn pure fire pulsed through him—

He quickly looked away.

Sathia asked Bryce, “What if you don’t replace the answers you seek?”

“Then we’re fucked,” Bryce said plainly, and finally laid her palm flat against the doors to the archives. A shudder seemed to go through the metal.

On a groan, the doors swung inward, revealing nothing but sunlight-dappled gloom beyond. Ruhn swapped glances with Dec, whose brows were high at the display of submission from the building. But Bryce breezed through, Athalar and Baxian on her heels.

“So you really intend to go into the Cave of Princes?” Sathia asked Bryce as they entered the dim space.

“I know my female presence will probably cause the caves to collapse from sheer outrage,” Bryce said, voice echoing off the massive dome above them, “but yes.”

Ruhn snickered and peered up at the dome. It was a mosaic of onyx stones, interrupted by bits of opal and diamond—stars. A crescent moon of pure nacre occupied the apex of it, gleaming in the dimness. Eerily similar to the Ocean Queen’s sharp nails.

Sathia trailed Bryce and asked softly, “And—that’s really it? The knife?”

“Shocking, I know,” Bryce said. “Party girl bearing the prophesied—”

“No,” Sathia said. “I wasn’t thinking that.”

Bryce paused, turning, and Ruhn knew Athalar was monitoring every word, every move from Sathia as Flynn’s sister clarified, “I was thinking about what it means. Not just in regard to the Asteri and your conflict with them. But what it means for the Fae.”

“Whole lot of nothing,” Flynn snorted.

“We were told our people would be united with the return of that knife,” Sathia countered sharply. Her tone gentled as she asked Bryce, “Is that part of … whatever plan you have? To unite the Fae?”

Bryce surveyed the rows and rows of shelves and said coldly, “The Fae don’t deserve to be united.”

Even Ruhn froze. He’d never thought about what Bryce might do as leader, but …

“Come on, Quinlan,” Athalar said, slinging his arm around her shoulders and decisively changing the subject, “let’s get to exploring.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bryce muttered. “I suppose it’s too much to hope for a digital catalog here, so … I guess we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.” She pointed ahead, to the entire wall taken up by a card catalog. “Look for any mention of the sword and knife, anything about the mists guarding this place, Pelias and Helena … Maybe even stuff about the earliest days of Avallen, either during the First Wars or right after.”

“That is … a lot to look for,” Flynn said.

“Bet you’re wishing you’d learned to read,” Sathia trilled, striding for the catalog.

“I can read!” Flynn sulked. Then mumbled, “It’s just boring.”

Ruhn snorted, and the sound was echoed nearby—Lidia.

Again, that look between them. Ruhn said a shade awkwardly to her, “We should get cracking.”

A catalog that massive could take days to comb through. Especially since there was no librarian or scholar in sight. Come to think of it, the entire place had an air of neglect. Emptiness. The castle did, too, as well as the small city and surrounding lands.

It had all seemed so mysterious, so strange when he’d come here decades ago: the famed misty isle of Avallen. Now he could only think of Cormac, growing up in the gloom and quiet. All that fire, dampened by this place.

And yet he’d loved his people—wanted to do right by them. By everyone on Midgard, too.

There had to be something good here, if Cormac had come out of it. Ruhn just couldn’t for the life of him figure out what.

The Fae don’t deserve to be united.

Bryce’s words hung in the air, as if they still echoed off the dome above. And Ruhn didn’t know why, but as the words settled into the darkness … they made him sad.

After a few tense minutes, Declan declared, “Well, this is interesting.”

He stood at the nearest table, what looked like a stack of maps unrolled before him. A large one—of Midgard—was spread across the top.

Ruhn strode for his friend, grateful for the break. “What is?” The others followed suit, gathering around the table.

Dec pointed at Avallen on the map, the paper yellow with age despite the preserving spells upon it. “I thought looking at old maps might give us some hints about the mists—you know, see how old cartographers represented them and stuff. And then I found this.”

Athalar rubbed his neck and said, “At the risk of being ridiculed … what am I looking at?”

“There are islands here,” Declan said. “Dozens.”

It clicked. “There shouldn’t be any islands around Avallen,” Ruhn said.

Bryce leaned closer, running her fingers across the archipelago. “When’s this map from?”

“The First Wars,” Dec said, and pulled another map from the bottom of the pile. “This is Midgard now. No islands in this area except the one we’re on.”

“So …,” Baxian said.

“So,” Dec said, annoyed, “isn’t it weird that there were islands fifteen thousand years ago, and now they’re gone?”

Tharion cleared his throat. “I mean, sea levels do rise—”

Dec gave them all a withering look, and pulled out a third map. “This map’s from a hundred years after the First Wars.” Ruhn scanned it. No islands at all.

Across the table, Lidia was silently assessing the different maps. She lifted her eyes to Ruhn’s, and he couldn’t stop his heartbeat from jacking up, his blood from thrumming at her nearness—

“All those islands,” Bryce murmured, “disappeared within a hundred years.”

“Right after the Asteri arrived,” Athalar added, and Ruhn looked away from Lidia long enough to consider what was before them.

He said, “Well, despite its mists, Avallen clearly has had no problem revealing its shape and coastline to the Asteri for the empire’s official maps. Why hide the islands?”

“There are no islands,” Sathia said quietly. “The ones on that first map …” She pointed along the northwestern coast. “We sailed in from that direction. We didn’t see a single island. The mists could have obscured some of them, but we should have seen at least a few.”

“I’ve never seen or heard any mention of additional islands here,” Flynn agreed.

Silence fell, and they all glanced between the three maps as if they’d reveal some big secret.

Dec finally shook his head. Something happened here a long time ago—something big. But what?”

“And,” Lidia murmured, the cadence of her voice sending shivers of pleasure down Ruhn’s spine, “is this knowledge at all useful to us?”

Bryce tapped a hand on the oldest map, and Ruhn could practically see the wheels turning in her head.

“Silene said something in her memories about the island that had once been her court.” Bryce’s face took on a faraway look, as if she were trying to remember the exact words. “She said that the land … shriveled. That when she started to house those monsters to hide the Harp’s presence, the island of the Prison became barren. And the Ocean Queen said islands literally withered into the sea in despair when the Asteri arrived.”

“So?” Flynn asked.

Bryce’s gaze sharpened again. “It seems weird that two Fae strongholds, both islands, were once archipelagos, and then both lost all but the central island in the wake of the arrival of … unpleasant forces.”

Ruhn raised his eyebrows. “I can’t believe you actually told us what you were thinking, for once.”

Bryce flipped him off as Athalar snickered. She nodded decisively. “Team Archives: keep looking into this.”

The others dispersed again to resume their researching, but Bryce grabbed Ruhn by the elbow before he could move. “What?” he asked, glancing down at her grip.

Bryce’s look was resolute. “We don’t have the luxury of time.”

“I know,” Ruhn said. “We’ll search as quickly as we can.”

“A few days,” Bryce said, letting go of his arm. She glanced toward the sealed front doors of the archives, the island beyond. “I don’t think we have more than that before Morven decides it’s in his best interest to tell the Asteri we’re here, risks to his people be damned. Or before the Asteri’s mystics pinpoint our location.”

“Maybe the mists can keep out mystic eyes as well,” Ruhn suggested.

“Maybe, but I’d rather we not replace out the hard way. A few days, Ruhn—then we’re out of here.”

“The caves could take longer than that to navigate,” Ruhn warned. “You sure there’s anything in there worth replaceing? As far as I could tell, it was some decorative crap on the walls and a lot of misty tunnels. We’d get through the archives way faster if we all tackled the catalog together.”

“I have to look at the caves,” Bryce said quietly. “Just in case.”

It hit him then, like a bucket of ice water. Bryce wasn’t entirely sure she could replace anything to help her unite the blades. To kill the Asteri.

So Ruhn squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll figure it out, Bryce.”

She offered him a grim smile. It was all Ruhn could do to offer one back.

They found nothing else regarding the missing islands, the mists, or the sword and the knife in the hours they spent combing through the catalog. They’d barely made a dent in the collection by the time Bryce called it quits for dinner, her hands so achingly dry from all the dust that they burned.

In silence, the group walked to the castle dining room. What a long, fucking day. Each of their trudging steps seemed to echo the sentiment.

The dining room was empty, though a small buffet of food had been laid out for them.

“Guess we’re early,” Tharion said as the group surveyed the firelit room, its faded tapestries depicting long-ago Fae hunts. Their quarry lay at the center of one: a chained, collared white horse.

Bryce jolted. It wasn’t a horse. It was a winged horse.

So they’d survived here, then—at least for a few generations. Before they’d either died out or the Fae had hunted them to extinction.

“We’re not early,” Sathia said beside Tharion, her face tight. “The formal dinner started fifteen minutes ago. If I were to guess, it’s been moved to another location for everyone else.”

“No one wants to eat with us?” Hunt asked.

Bryce said, “They probably consider it beneath them to mingle with our ilk.” Hunt, Baxian, and Tharion turned to her with incredulous expressions. Bryce shrugged. “Welcome to my life.” Hunt was frowning deeply, and Bryce added to him, unable to help herself, “You don’t need to feel guilty about that one, you know.”

He glared at her, and the others made themselves scarce.

“What does that mean?” Hunt asked quietly.

It wasn’t the time or place, but Bryce said, “I can’t get a read on you. Like, if you even want to be here or not.”

“Of course I do,” Hunt growled, eyes flashing.

She didn’t back down. “One moment you’re all in, the next you’re all broody and guilty—”

“Don’t I have the right to feel that way?” he hissed. The others had already reached the table.

“You do,” she said, keeping her voice low, though she knew the others could hear them. One of the downfalls of hanging with Vanir. “But each of us made choices that led us to all this. The weight of that’s not only on you, and it isn’t—”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” He started walking toward the center of the room.

“Hunt,” she started. He kept walking, wings tucking in tight.

Across the room, she met Baxian’s stare from where he was pulling out a chair at the table. Give him time, the Helhound’s look seemed to say. Be gentle with him.

Bryce sighed, nodding. She could do that.

They served themselves, and sat at random spots along the massive table, large enough to seat forty: Ruhn, Flynn, Sathia, and Dec in one cluster; Tharion, Baxian, Hunt, and Bryce in another. Lidia claimed a chair beside Bryce, definitely not looking to where Ruhn watched them from down the table.

“So this is Avallen,” Lidia said, breaking the awkward silence.

“I know,” Bryce muttered. “I’m trying to scrape my jaw off the floor.”

“It reminds me of my father’s house,” Lidia said quietly, digging into her potatoes and mutton. Hearty, simple food. Definitely not the fine feast Morven and his court were indulging in elsewhere.

“They must both have a subscription to Medieval Living,” Bryce said, and Lidia’s mouth curved toward a smile.

It was so weird to see the Hind smile. Like a person.

The males must have been thinking the same thing, because Baxian asked, “How long, Lidia? How long since you turned spy?”

Lidia gracefully carved her meat. “How long since you started believing in the cause?”

“Since I met my mate, Danika Fendyr. Four years ago.”

Bryce’s chest ached at the pride in his voice—and the pain. Her fingers itched with the urge to reach across the table to take his hand, just as she had last night.

But Lidia blinked slowly. And said softly, “I’m sorry, Baxian.”

Baxian nodded in acknowledgment. Then said to Lidia and Hunt, “I kind of can’t get over being here with the two of you. Considering where we were not that long ago. Who we were.”

“I bet,” Bryce murmured.

Hunt tested the edge of a knife with his thumb, then cut into his own meat. “Urd works in mysterious ways, I guess.”

Lidia’s eyes glimmered. Hunt lifted his glass of water to her. “Thanks for saving our asses.”

“It was nothing,” she replied, slicing into the mutton again.

Baxian put down his fork. “You put everything on the line. We owe you.”

Bryce glanced down the table and noticed Ruhn watching them. She gave him a pointed glance, as if to say, Chime in, asshole, but Ruhn ignored her.

Lidia’s mouth kicked into a half smile. “Find a way to kill the Asteri, and we’re even.”

The rest of dinner was mostly quiet, and Bryce found herself growing weary enough that by the time she’d finished her plate, she just wanted to lie down somewhere. Thankfully, one person in the castle deigned to engage with them: an older Fae woman who gruffly said she’d show them to their rooms.

Even if they weren’t welcome, at least they were given decent accommodations, all along the same hall. Bryce didn’t really mark who bunked with whom, focusing solely on being shown to her own room, but she didn’t fail to notice the awkward beat when Tharion and Sathia were shown through a door together halfway down the hall.

Bryce sighed once she and Hunt entered their own chamber. She wished she’d had the energy to talk to Ruhn, to really delve into what it had been like for him here, what he was feeling, but …

“I need to lie down,” Bryce said, and slumped face-first onto the bed.

“Today was weird,” Hunt said, helping to remove her sheathed sword and dagger. He placed them with expert care at the side of the bed, then gently turned her over. “You all right?”

Bryce peered up into his face—the halo on his brow. “I really hope we replace something here to make it worthwhile.”

Hunt sat beside her, removing his own weapons and setting them on a side table. “You’re suddenly worried we won’t?”

Bryce got to her feet, unable to sit still despite her exhaustion. She paced in front of the crackling fire. “I don’t know. It’s not like I was expecting a giant neon sign in the archives that said Answers Here! But if the Asteri are going after Flynn’s family …” She hadn’t let herself think about it earlier. There was nothing she could do from here, without phone or interweb service. “Then they’re going after mine.”

“Randall and Ember can look after themselves.” But Hunt rose, walking to her and taking her hands. “They’ll be okay.” His hands were warm around hers, solid. She closed her eyes at the touch, savoring its love and comfort. “We’ll get there, Quinlan. You traveled between worlds, for fuck’s sake. This is nothing by comparison.”

“Don’t tempt Urd.”

“I’m not. I’m just telling you the truth. Don’t lose faith now.”

Bryce sighed, examining his tattooed brow again. “We need to replace some way to get this off you.”

“Not a big priority.”

“It is. I need you at your full power.” The words came out wrong, and she amended, “I need you to be free of them.”

“I will be. We all will be.”

Staring into his dark eyes, she believed him. “I’m sorry about earlier. If I pushed you too hard.”

“I’m fine.” His voice didn’t sound fine.

“I wasn’t trying to tell you how to feel,” she said. “I just want you to know that none of us, especially me, hold you responsible for all this shit. We’re a team.”

He lowered his stare, and she hated the weight pressing on his head, drooping his wings. “I don’t know if I can do this again, Bryce.”

Her heart strained. “Do what?”

“Make choices that cost people their lives.” His eyes lifted to hers again, bleak. “It was easier for Shahar, you know. She didn’t care about other people’s lives, not really. And she died so fast, she didn’t have to endure the weight of the guilt that might have come later. Sometimes I envy her for it. I did envy her for it, back then. For escaping it all by dying.”

“That’s the old Umbra Mortis talking,” Bryce said, fumbling for humor amid the cold wash of pain and worry at his words, his dead tone.

“Maybe we need the Umbra Mortis right now.”

She didn’t like that. Not one bit. “I need Hunt, not some helmeted assassin. I need my mate.” She kissed his cheek. “I need you.”

The darkness in his eyes lightened, and it eased her heart, relief washing through her.

She kissed his cheek again. “I know we should go wash up for bed and use the chamber pot or whatever excuse they have for a toilet in this museum, but …”

“But?” He lifted his brows.

Bryce rose onto her toes, brushing her mouth against his. And the taste of him … Gods, yes. “But I need to feel you first.”

His hands tightened around her waist. “Thank fuck.”

There was more to be discussed, of course. But right now …

He lowered his face to hers, and Bryce met him, the kiss thorough and open, and just … bliss. Home and eternity and all she’d fought for. All she’d keep fighting for.

From the way he returned the kiss, she knew he realized it, too. Hoped he let it burn through any lingering scraps of remorse.

“I love you,” he said against her mouth, and deepened the kiss. She stifled a sob of relief, arms winding around his neck. Hunt’s hands slid around to her ass and he hefted her up, smoothly walking them over to the enormous, curtained bed.

Clothes were peeled away. Mouths met, and explored, and tasted. Fingers caressed and stroked. Then Hunt was over her, and Bryce let her joy, her magic shine through her.

“Look at you,” Hunt breathed, hips flexing beneath her hands, cock teasing her entrance. “Look at you.”

Bryce smiled as she let more of that power shine through her: Starborn light so silvery bright it cast shadows upon the bed. “Like it?”

Hunt’s thrust, driving himself in to the hilt, was his response. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he whispered. Lightning gathered around his wings, his brow. Like his power couldn’t help but answer hers, even with the halo’s damper on it.

Bryce moaned as he withdrew, nearly pulling out of her, then plunged back in.

Hunt angled her hips to drive himself deeper. And as his cock brushed her innermost wall, as lightning flickered above her, in her …

Mate. Husband. Prince. Hunt.

“Yes,” Hunt said, and she must have voiced her thoughts aloud, because his thrusts turned deeper, harder. “I fucking love you, Bryce.”

Her magic rose at his words, a surging wave. Or maybe that was her climax, rising along with it. She couldn’t get enough of him, couldn’t get close enough to him, needed to be in him, his very blood—

“Solas, Bryce,” Hunt growled, pumping into her in a long, luxurious stroke. “I can’t—” She didn’t want him to. She gripped his ass, nails digging in deep in silent urging. “Bryce,” he warned, but he didn’t stop moving in her. Lightning crackled and snaked around them, an avalanche racing toward her.

“Don’t stop,” she pleaded.

Their magics collided—their souls. She scattered across the stars, across galaxies, lightning skittering in her wake.

She had the dim sense of Hunt being thrown with her, of his shout of ecstasy and surprise. Knew that their bodies remained joined in some distant world, but here, in this place between places, all they were melted into one, crossed over and transferred and becoming something more.

Stars and planets and rainbow clouds of nebulas swirled around them, darkness cut with lightning brighter than the sun. Sun and moon held together in perfect balance, suspended in the same sky. And beneath them, far below, she could see Avallen, thrumming with their magic, so much magic, as if Avallen were the very source of it, as if they were the very source of all magic and light and love—

Then it ebbed away. Receded into muted color and warm air and heavy breathing. The weight of Hunt’s body atop hers, his cock pulsing inside her, his wings splayed open above them.

“Holy shit,” Hunt said, lifting himself enough to look at her. “Holy … shit.”

It had been more then fucking, or sex, or lovemaking. Hunt stared down at her, starlight shimmering in his hair. Just as she knew lightning licked through her own.

“It felt like my power went into you,” Hunt said, eyes tracking the lightning as it slithered down her body. “It’s … yours.”

“As mine is yours,” she said, touching a fleck of starlight glittering between the sable locks of his hair.

“I feel weird,” he admitted, but didn’t move. “I feel …”

She sensed it, then. Understood it at last. What it had always been, what she’d learned to call it in that other world.

“Made,” Bryce whispered with a shade of fear. “That’s what it feels like. Whatever power can flow between us … my Made power from the Horn can, too.”

Hunt looked down at himself, at where their bodies remained joined. She had a pang of guilt, then, for not telling him all she knew yet about the other Made objects in the universe—about the Mask, the Trove. “I guess it flows both ways: my power into you, and yours into me.”

Hunt smiled and surveyed the room around them. “At least we seem to be past ending up somewhere new every time we fuck.”

Bryce snorted. “That’s a relief. I don’t think Morven would have appreciated our naked asses landing in his room.”

“Definitely not,” Hunt agreed, kissing her brow. He brushed back a strand of her hair. “But what difference does it make? That we’re connected this way?”

Bryce lifted her head to kiss him. “Another thing for us to figure out.”

“Team Caves all the way,” he said against her mouth.

She laughed, their breath mingling, twining together like their souls. “I told you I should have ordered T-shirts.”