House of Flame and Shadow: The INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER third instalment in the Crescent City series
House of Flame and Shadow: Part 3 – Chapter 78

Any hope of succeeding died in Tharion as the River Queen’s daughter threw herself into her mother’s lap and sobbed. “You married her?”

They were the only words he could discern among the weeping.

Sathia just stared at the girl. Like she was completely out of politesse to spin to their advantage. The River Queen stroked her daughter’s dark hair, murmuring gentle reassurances, but her eyes blazed with pure hate for Tharion.

Tharion began, “I …” He couldn’t replace the right words.

The River Queen’s daughter lifted her head at his voice, her face streaked with tears. The river outside trembled, shaking the Blue Court. “You sold yourself to some Fae harlot?” She sniffed at Sathia. “With dirt in her veins? Not even a drop of water to call to you?”

Sathia took the insults, stone-faced, granting him a window into the way she’d been treated in her life. It didn’t sit well.

It was enough to goad him into responding, “Her magic is that of growing things, of life and beauty. Not of drowning and stifling.”

The River Queen’s daughter stood slowly. “You dare speak to me in such a way?”

And at her petulant fury, at her mother’s rage … he’d had it. He’d fucking had it.

Tharion pointed to the window. Not at the sobeks, but at the surface too far above to see. “There are imperial battleships in this river! Asphodel Meadows is a smoldering ruin, with the bodies of children strewn in the streets!”

He’d never yelled like this. At anyone, least of all his former queen and princess.

But he couldn’t stop it, the pure rage and desperation that ruptured from him. “And all you care about is who one stupid fucking male is married to? There are babies in that rubble! And you cry only for yourself!”

Sathia was gaping, warning etched on her face, but Tharion spoke directly to the River Queen. “Bryce sent me to beg you to help, but I’m asking you personally, too. Not as mer, not as someone in the Blue Court, but as a living being who loves this city. There is nowhere else on Valbara that might weather the storm. This place, Beneath … it can withstand at least the initial brunt. Give the children of Crescent City a safe harbor. A chance. If you won’t let all the people come, then at least take the children.”

“No,” the River Queen’s daughter sniveled. “You used and discarded me. You don’t have the right to ask such favors of us, of the Blue Court.”

“I’m sorry,” Tharion burst out. “I am sorry that I misled you, and slept with you, and realized too late that I had gone too far. I’m sorry I strung you along for years—I didn’t know how to talk to you, or be an adult, and I’m sorry. It wasn’t right of me, and it was immature, and I hate that I did that to you, to anyone.”

She glowered at him, sniffling.

Tharion said, “And I married Sathia to bail her out of a shitty situation. King Morven of Avallen was forcing her into marriage with a Fae brute, and the only options were face the Asteri’s wrath and die, or wed. I offered her a way out. Marriage to me. I owed it to my sister to help a female in trouble. Our marriage isn’t a comment on how I feel about you or her.”

“And the fact that she is a Fae beauty held no sway over you?” sneered the River Queen’s daughter.

“No,” Tharion said honestly. “I …” He looked toward his wife, who was indeed pretty. Beautiful. But that hadn’t entered into his decision to offer his aid. “She was a person in trouble, who needed help.”

The River Queen’s daughter seethed.

Tharion said, voice breaking, “But if you take in the people of this city, if you shelter them against whatever storm the Asteri might bring … when this is over, if I am alive …” He held her stare. “I will divorce my wife and marry you.”

Sathia whirled to him, but he couldn’t face her, couldn’t bear to see her reaction to how he’d abandon her, too—

The River Queen’s daughter sniffed, a child calming from a tantrum. “I accept. I shall marry you once you’re rid of her.”

“You shall not.” The River Queen’s voice shook the room, the river. “My daughter does not accept this offer. Nor do I.”

Tharion’s chest crumpled. “Please,” he begged. “If you could just—”

“I am not done speaking,” she said, and held up a hand. Tharion obeyed. “I no longer wish my daughter to be tied to the likes of you, in truth or in promise. As far as marriage between you is concerned, it shall never happen.”

“Mother—”

“You are your wife’s problem now,” the River Queen said to Tharion.

Tharion shut his eyes against the stinging in them, hating this, hating that he’d lost this opportunity, this safe haven for the people of Crescent City, due to his own bullshit.

“But your willingness to sacrifice your freedom to live Above is no small thing,” the River Queen went on. She tilted her head to the side, and one of the shells in her hair sprouted legs and skittered under the tresses. A hermit crab. “You never asked me why I sent you to look for Sofie Renast’s body, and to replace her brother.”

Tharion opened his eyes and found her staring curiously at him. Not with kindness, but with something like respect. “It … it wasn’t my place to question,” he said.

“You are frightened of me, as all wise beings are,” she said a shade smugly. “But I have fears, too. Of this world, at the mercy of the Asteri.”

Tharion tried not to gape.

“Our people are ancient,” the River Queen said. “My sisters and I remember a world before the Asteri arrived and caused the land’s magic to wither. Entire islands vanished into the sea, our civilizations with them. And though we were limited in our power to stop them … we have tried, each in our own way.”

Her daughter was staring at her like she didn’t know her.

But the River Queen went on, “We remember the power the thunderbirds wielded. How the Asteri hunted them down. Because they feared them. And when I learned one had been killed, her thunderbird brother on the loose … I knew those were assets the Asteri would seek to recover at any cost. I might not have known why, but I had no intention of letting them attain either Sofie or her brother.”

Tharion blinked. “You … you wanted them in order to stop the Asteri?”

A shallow nod. “It might not have made a difference in the greater sense, but keeping them safe was my attempt, however small, at thwarting the Asteri’s plans.”

Tharion had no idea what to do other than bow his head and admit, “Emile wasn’t a thunderbird. Only a human. He’s in hiding now.”

“And yet you kept this from me.” The river shuddered at her displeasure.

“I thought it would be best for the boy to disappear from the world completely.”

The ruler scanned his face again for a long, long moment.

“I see the male that you are,” the River Queen said, and it was more gentle than he’d ever heard her. “I see the male that you shall become.” She nodded to Sathia. “Who sees a female in trouble and does not think of the consequences to his own life before helping.” A nod, grave and contemplative. “I wish I had seen more of that male here. I wish you had been that male for my daughter. But if you are that male now, and you are that male for the sake of this city …”

She waved a hand, and the sobeks swam away on a silent command.

“Then the Blue Court shall help. Any who we can bring down here before the warships catch wind of it … any person, from any House: I shall harbor them.”

The Harpy was a horror. Hunt could feel her lack of presence. The emptiness leaking from her.

The Asteri had raised her from the dead, but left her soul by the wayside.

They’d bypassed the necromancers, who used one’s soul for resurrection, and instead created a perfect soldier to station here: one who did not feel cold, who did not need to eat, and who had no scruples whatsoever.

And it had all come from his lightning. His Helfire. He knew, deep down, that it wasn’t his fault, but … he’d given Rigelus that lightning.

And it had created this nightmare.

Rigelus had to have guessed they’d come to the Northern Rift, and planted the Harpy to lie in wait.

Hunt rallied his lightning, making the mists glow eerily around him, but Bryce said, “What did they do to you?”

The Harpy didn’t answer. She didn’t show any sign that she’d heard or cared. As if she’d lost her voice. Her very identity.

“Fry the bitch,” Bryce muttered to Hunt, and he didn’t wait before sending a plume of lightning for the Harpy.

She dodged it, those white-painted wings as fast as they had ever been—

No, they hadn’t been painted white. They’d turned white. As if whatever the Asteri had done to her with Hunt’s lightning had bleached the color out of them.

Hunt threw another bolt of lightning, then another, and he might have lit up the whole fucking sky if not for that gods-damned halo—

“Athalar!” A familiar male voice rang from the mists above them. Hunt didn’t dare take his focus off the Harpy as the voice clicked.

Isaiah.

“What the Hel—” an equally familiar female voice said. Naomi.

But it was the third voice, coming from behind him as its owner landed in the snow, that made Hunt’s blood go cold. “What new evil is this?”

The Governor of Valbara had arrived.

Bryce didn’t know which was worse: Celestina or the Harpy. The female who’d stabbed them in the back, or the one who’d literally tried to slit Ruhn’s throat.

She and Hunt couldn’t take on two enemies at once—not in subfreezing temperatures, totally drained from opening the Rift, with the mists obscuring almost everything.

The Harpy swooped, and Hunt launched his lightning, so fast only the swiftest of angels could evade the strike. The Harpy did, and plunged earthward, mist streaming off her white wings, straight for Bryce. Bryce rolled out of the way and the Harpy hit the ground, snow exploding around her, but she was instantly up, lunging for Bryce again.

Isaiah blasted the Harpy with a wall of wind, knocking her back. But Celestina stood three yards away, and Hunt was already whirling to face her—

Bryce unzipped her thick jacket, the cold wind instantly biting into her skin. She grabbed the Mask.

And gave no warning at all as she fitted the icy gold to her face.

Wearing the Mask was like being underwater, or at a very high altitude. Her head was full of its power, her blood thrumming, pulsing in time with the presence in her head, her bones. The world seemed to dilute into its basics: alive or dead. She was alive, but with the Mask, she might escape even death itself and live forever.

The star in her chest hummed, welcoming that power like an old friend.

Bryce shoved aside her revulsion. Hunt was readying his lightning for Celestina, the mists glowing with each crackle, and the Harpy had broken through Isaiah’s power and was diving for Bryce again—

“Stop,” Bryce said to the Harpy. It was her voice, but not.

The Harpy halted.

Everyone halted.

“Bryce,” Hunt breathed, but he was far away. He was alive, and her business was with the dead.

“Kneel.”

The Harpy fell to her knees in the snow.

Celestina started, “What evil weapon have you—”

“I shall deal with you later,” Bryce said in that voice that resonated through her and created ripples in the mist.

Even the Archangel fell silent as Bryce approached the Harpy. Peered down into her narrow, hateful face. Truly soulless.

A body with no pilot.

Cold horror lurched through Bryce, despite the Mask’s unholy embrace. Maybe it was a mercy, she thought as she stared into the vacant, raging face of the Harpy. Maybe it was a mercy to do this.

There was no soul to grab onto, to command. Only the body. But the Mask seemed to understand what was needed. “Your work is done,” Bryce said, her voice reverberating through the frozen landscape. “Be at rest.”

It was sickening—and yet it was a relief as the Harpy’s eyes closed and she collapsed to the ground. As her skin began to wither, her body reclaiming the form it had known in death.

The cheekbones sank, decaying over the Harpy’s face. Bryce knew that beneath the angel’s white gear, her body would be doing the same.

When the Harpy lay desiccated in the snow, Bryce finally peeled the Mask off—only to replace Naomi, Isaiah, and Celestina staring at her, awash in shock and dread.