House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Series)

Aidas was a Prince of Hel, Silene went on.

Bryce’s breath caught in her throat.

Using rare summoning salts that facilitated communication between worlds, his spies in Midgard had kept him well informed since the Asteri had failed to conquer his planet. Aidas had been assigned to hunt for the Asteri ever since. So their evil might never triumph again. On his world, or any other.

Hel was somehow the force for good in all this. How had Aidas been able to see past Theia’s atrocities? And more than that, to love her? It made no sense. Unless Aidas was just like Theia, a murdering hypocrite—

Long hours did my mother and Aidas speak through the portal, neither daring to cross into the other’s world. For many days afterward, in secret, they planned.

It soon became clear that we needed more troops. Any Fae that were loyal to us … and humans. The very enemies my mother had slaughtered and enslaved, she now needed. Their final stronghold lay at Parthos, where all the scholars and thinkers of their day had holed up in the great library. And so it was to Parthos we next went, winnowing under cover of darkness.

“Unbelievable,” Nesta seethed.

The white-stoned city rose like a dream from a vast, black-soiled river delta.

Parthos was more beautiful than any city currently on Midgard, adorned with elegant spires and columns, massive obelisks in the market squares, sparkling fountains and complex networks of aqueducts, and humans milling about in relative peace and ease, not fear.

At the edge of the city, overlooking the marshes to the north, sat a massive, columned building—no, a complex of several buildings.

The library of Parthos.

It hadn’t only been a place to hold books, Bryce knew. The compound had housed several academies for various fields of study—the arts, sciences, mathematics, philosophy—as well as the vast collection of books, a treasure trove of thousands of years’ worth of learning.

Bryce’s heart ached to see it—what had once been. What had been lost.

Crowded into an amphitheater in the center of the complex stood a mix of humans and Fae arguing—pointing and shouting.

The meetings did not go well, Silene said. But my mother stood firm. Explained what she had learned. What the humans had long known, though they had been ignorant of the details.

The arguing parties slowly sat on the stone benches, quietly listening to Theia.

And when she had finished, the humans revealed their own discovery—one that showed us our doom.

As a lone human woman stood from the crowd, Bryce reminded herself to keep breathing, to steady herself—

The Asteri had infected the water we consumed with a parasite. They’d poisoned the lakes and streams and oceans. The parasites burrowed their way into our bodies, warping our magic.

Holy gods.

The Asteri created a coming-of-age ritual for all magical creatures who had entered Midgard, and their descendants. A blast of magic would be released and then contained—and then fed to the Asteri. It was a greater, more concentrated dose than the seeds of power they’d sucked off us for years in the Tithe. They spun it into a near-religious experience, explained it away as a method to harness energy for fuel, and had been feeding off it ever since.

“The Drop,” Bryce whispered, dismay rocking through her. She knew Nesta and Azriel were staring at her, but she couldn’t look away from the memory.

Should anyone with power opt out of the ritual, the parasites would suck immortals dry until they withered away to nothing—like humans. It would be dismissed as old age. Lies were planted about the dangers of performing the ritual in any place other than one of the Asteri’s harvesting sites, where the power could be contained and filtered to them, and to their cities and their technology.

Bryce was going to be sick.

The Asteri’s hold on the people of her world wasn’t merely based in military and magical might. These parasites ensured that they fucking owned each person, their very power. Their tyranny had wormed itself into the blood of every being on Midgard.

The humans had learned this—the Asteri had been careless in spilling knowledge around them, because without magic, the humans were unaffected. And they’d watched in smug silence while we, their gleeful oppressors, had unwittingly become oppressed. With one sip of water from this world, we belonged to the Asteri. There was no undoing it.

The despair nearly broke us then and there.

At last, Bryce could truly relate. She’d gone somewhere far away from her body. Listened as if from a distance as the last acts of this damned history played out.

But we convinced the humans to trust us. And my mother began reaching out to some of those Fae who had followed us into Midgard—those she hoped she could trust.

In the end, my mother had ten thousand Fae willing to march, most hailing from our dusk-bound lands. And when my mother fully opened the doorway to Hel, Aidas and his brothers brought fifty thousand soldiers with them.

I do not have the words for the war’s brutality. For the lives lost, the torment and fear. But my mother did not break.

The Asteri mounted their counteroffensive swiftly, and wisely put Pelias in charge of their forces. Pelias knew my mother and her tactics well.

And though Hel’s armies fought valiantly, our people with them, it was not enough.

I was never privy to the story of how my mother and Prince Aidas became lovers. I know only that even in the midst of war, I had never seen my mother so at peace. She told me once, when I marveled at our luck that the portal had opened to Aidas that day, that it was because they were mates—their souls had found each other across galaxies, linking them that fateful day, as if the mating bond between them was indeed some physical thing. That was how deeply they loved each other. And when this war was over, she promised me, we would go to Hel with Aidas. Not to rule, but to live. When this was over, she promised, she would spend the rest of her existence atoning.

She did not get to fulfill that promise.

“Too bad,” Nesta said pitilessly.

But Bryce had moved beyond words. Beyond anything other than pure despair and dread.

Word came from the enemy right before they attacked in the dead of night: Surrender, and we would be spared. Fight, and we would be slaughtered.

Our camp had been erected high in the mountains, where we thought the winter snows would protect us from advancing enemies. Instead, we were cold and hungry, with barely any time to ready our forces. Aidas had returned to Hel to recruit more soldiers, so we were spending a rare night with our mother alone.

Hel did not have the chance to come to our aid. My mother did not even bother to try to open a portal to their world. Our forces on Midgard were already depleted—the new recruits wouldn’t be amassed for days. We begged her to open the portal anyway, to at least get the princes’ help, but my mother believed it would do little good. That what was coming that night was inevitable.

“Fool,” Nesta said again, and Bryce nodded numbly.

But my mother didn’t ask us to fight.

A bloodied Theia pressed the Horn into Helena’s hands, and urged Silene to take the Harp and the dagger. She kept the Starsword for herself.

The place where we had first entered this world was nearby. We’d been camping here in part so that my mother could eventually open a portal again and recruit more Fae to fight. She still did not understand much about voyaging between worlds—she wasn’t sure, if she opened a portal in another spot, if it would open to a different place in our world. So she’d gambled on our entry point in Midgard opening precisely into our court once more. From there, she’d planned to take the tunnels that leapt across the lands and build Fae armies. Even knowing they’d opposed her before, knowing they’d probably refuse her or kill her, she had no other options.

But there was no time for that now.

“Play the Horn and Harp,” our mother ordered, pulling them out of that pocket of nothingness, “and get out of this world.” It would be swift, a momentary opening, too fast for Rigelus to pounce on. We’d open it and be gone before he would even catch wind of what we’d done—and then we would seal the door between worlds forever.

Theia pressed a kiss to each of their brows.

She warned that Pelias was coming. For both of us. Rigelus had made him Prince of the Fae, and Pelias would use us to legitimize his reign. He meant to father children on us.

Even with all they had done, the crimes they’d committed against humans, Bryce’s chest still tightened in panic for the sisters.

Pulling her daughters close, Theia flared with starlight. And in the small space between their bodies, Bryce could just make out Theia plucking a low string on the Harp. In answer, a star—akin to the one Bryce could pull from her own chest—emerged from Theia’s body. It split into three shimmering balls of light, one drifting into Silene’s chest and another to Helena’s before the final one, as if it were the mother from which the other two stars had been born, returned to Theia’s body.

For a moment, all three of them glowed. Even Truth-Teller, in Silene’s hand, seemed to ripple, a dark countermelody to how Gwydion flashed in Theia’s hand, its light a heartbeat.

She gave us what protection her magic could offer, transferring it from her body into our own using the Harp. Another secret she had learned from her long-ago masters: that the Harp could not only move its bearer through the world, but move things from one place to another—even move magic from her soul to ours.

Gwydion in hand, Theia left the tent. With Fae grace and surety, she leapt onto the back of a magnificent winged horse and was airborne in seconds, soaring into the battle-filled night.

Bryce drew in a sharp breath. Silene hadn’t shown the creatures in the earlier memories, or in the initial crossing into Midgard, but there they were. The pegasuses in the tunnels’ carvings hadn’t been religious iconography, then. And they’d lived long enough in Midgard to grace early art, like the frieze at the Crescent City Ballet. They must have all died out, becoming nothing more than myth and a line of sparkly toys.

Another beautiful thing that Theia and her daughters had destroyed.

Helena’s eyes filled with panic as she turned to Silene in the memory.

To escape, it was worth the risk of going back to our home world, even if the Fae there might kill us for our connections to the Asteri, our foolishness in trusting them.

Helena grabbed Silene’s hand and hauled her toward the far edge of the camp. Toward the snow-crusted peak ahead—a natural archway of stone. A gateway.

But no matter how fast we ran, it was not fast enough.

Far below, Fae were rushing up the mountain. Not the advancing enemy, but members of their court racing for them, realizing what Helena and Silene were doing. Still glowing with their mother’s magic, both princesses stood atop the slope like silver beacons in the night. The Fae masses sprinted for them, bearing small children in their arms, bundled against the cold.

Bryce couldn’t endure it, this last atrocity. But she made herself watch. For the memory of those children.

We would not stop. Not even for our people.

Hatred coursed through Bryce at Silene’s words, the rage so violent it threatened to consume her as surely as any flame.

Helena lifted the Horn to her lips as Silene plucked a string on the Harp. A shuddering, shining light rippled in the archway, and then a stone room appeared beyond it, dim and empty.

That was when the wolves found us. The shape-shifting Fae, closing in from the other side of the mountain, barreled through the snow. The Asteri had sent their fiercest warriors to capture us.

In the back of her mind, Bryce marveled at it: that the wolves, the shifters … they had once been Fae. So similar to Bryce’s sort of Fae, yet so different—

I lifted the Harp again, Silene said, voice finally hitching with emotion, but my sister did not sound the Horn. And when I turned …

Silene paused, finding Helena standing yards away. Facing the enemy advancing from the snow, the skies. Their frantic, desperate people surging up the side of the mountain, pleas for their children on their lips.

Helena eyed the fleeing people, the wolves closing in. She leaned over to Silene, plucked the shortest string, and shoved her sister, still holding the Harp, backward.

She used the Harp to send me the last of the distance to the archway.

Silene landed in the snow, hundreds of feet now between her and her sister. Wolves advanced on Helena below.

Helena didn’t look back as she charged down the mountain, away from the pass. Buying me time. But I took one moment to look. At her, at the wolves giving chase. And at our mother—farther down the mountain, now locked in combat with Pelias, her winged horse dead beside her.

Power blasted from Pelias, power such as I had never seen from him.

The power struck her mother—struck true.

Even their fleeing people halted, looking behind them at the figure lying prone in the gore. At Pelias, stooping to pick up the Starsword.

With an easy, almost graceful flip of his hand, he plunged the sword through Theia’s head.

There was a choice for me, then. To stay and avenge my mother, fight alongside my sister … or to survive. To shut the door behind me.

Silene jumped through the portal toward the chamber beyond, plucking the Harp as she went.

And as I tumbled between worlds … the Horn sounded.

Silene fell and fell and fell, down and sideways. The Horn’s keening was cut off abruptly, and then she lay awkwardly on a stone floor, surrounded by darkness.

She was home.

Sobbing, Silene scrambled to her feet, snow spraying from her clothes. Not one shred of pity stirred in Bryce’s heart at Silene’s tears.

Not as screaming echoed through the walls. Through the stone. Silene’s people had reached the pass, and now banged on the rock, begging to be let through.

Silene covered her ears, sinking again to the floor. She clutched the Harp to her chest.

Mother above, open up! a male roared. We have children here! Take the children!

Bryce shook her head in mute horror as the screams and pleading faded. Then stopped entirely. As if sucked into the very stones of this place. Right along with the melting snow around Silene.

“You fucking coward,” Bryce breathed at last. Her voice broke on the last word. This was her heritage.

Heavy quiet fell in the chamber, interrupted only by Silene’s broken rasping as she knelt, cradling the Harp.

At that moment, Silene said, I had only one thought in my mind. That this knowledge would die with me. This world would continue as if the Fae who had gone into Midgard had never been. They would become a story whispered around campfires about people who had vanished. It was the only thing I could think to do to protect this world. To atone.

Too little, too late. And of course, Silene would have benefitted from hiding her past—if she didn’t tell anyone who she was or what she and her family had done, she couldn’t be punished for it. How convenient. How noble.

Silene studied the spot where she knelt on the eight-pointed star in the center of the room. The only adornment.

She slowly set the Harp atop the star. Snow still melting in her hair, she got to her feet and wiped her tears, then rallied her magic, the sheer concentrated power of her light. It sliced through the stone like a knife through warm butter—a laser.

Light that wasn’t just light—light, as the Asteri could wield their power.

Silene carved planets and stars and gods. A map of the cosmos. Of the world she had abandoned. When she finished, she lay beside the Harp, curled around the dagger sheathed at her waist.

Silene traced her fingers over the stone, like she could somehow reach across the stars to her sister. A seed of starlight began to form at her fingertip—

The vision went dark. Then Silene’s face appeared again—older, worn. Her clear blue eyes looked out with a steady gaze. My strength wanes, she said. I hope that my life has been spent wisely. Atoning for my mother’s crimes and foolishness and love—and trying to make it right. I carved these tunnels, the path here, so some record might exist of what we were, what we did. But first I had to erase all of it from recent memory.

Her face faded away, and more images began. A faster montage.

Silene, walking away from the Harp and through the empty, beautiful halls of a palace carved into the mountain—this mountain.

Our home had been left empty since we’d vanished. As if the other Fae thought it cursed. So I made it truly cursed. Damned it all.

She wandered through rooms that must once have been familiar to her, pausing as if lost in memory. Then she waved a hand, and entire hallways were walled off with natural rock. Another wave, and ornate throne rooms were swallowed by the mountain, until only the lowermost passages, the dungeons and this chamber far beneath, remained.

Despite my efforts to hide what this place had once been, a terrible, ancient power hung in the air. It was as my mother had warned us when we were children: evil always lingered, just below us, waiting to snatch us into its jaws.

So I went to find another monster to conceal it.

Beneath another mountain, far to the south, I found a being of blood and rage and nightmares. Once a pet of the Asteri, it had long been in hiding, feeding off the unwitting. With the dagger and my power, I laid a trap for it. And when it came sniffing, I dragged it back here. Locked it in one of the cells. Warded the door.

One after another, I hunted monsters—the remaining pets of the Daglan—until many of the lowest rooms were filled with them. Until my once-beautiful home became a prison. Until even the land was so disgusted by the evil I’d gathered here that the islands shriveled and the earth became barren. The winged horses who hadn’t gone with my mother to Midgard, who had once flown in the skies, playing in the surf … they were nearly gone. Not a single living soul remained, except for the monstrosities in the mountain.

No pity or compassion stirred in Bryce. She didn’t buy Silene’s “for the common good” bullshit. It had all been to cover her own ass, to make sure the Fae in this world never learned how close she and her mother and sister had come to damning them. How Silene and Helena had damned the Fae of Midgard, locking them out along with their children. Another few seconds of keeping the portal open and she could have saved dozens of lives. But she hadn’t.

So boo-fucking-hoo and to Hel with her atonement.

I left, wandering the lands for a time, seeing how they had moved on without Theia’s rule. They’d splintered into several territories, and though they were not at war, they were no longer the unified kingdom I had known.

I will spare you the details of how I came to wed a High Lord’s son. Of the years before and after he became the High Lord of Night, and I his lady. He wanted me to be High Lady, as the other lords’ mates were, but I refused. I had seen what power had done to my mother, and I wanted none of it.

Yet when my first son was born, when the babe screamed and the sound was full of night, I brought him to the Prison and keyed the wards into his blood. No one knew that the infant who sometimes glowed with starlight had inherited it from me. That it was the light of the evening star. The dusk star.

And this island that had become barren and empty … this, too, was his. I told him, when he was old enough, what I had left here for him. So that someone might be able to access this record, to know the risks of using the Trove and the threat of the Asteri, always waiting to return here. I made sure he knew that the buried weapon he’d need against the Asteri was down here. I only asked that he not tell his father, my mate. To my knowledge, he never has. And one day, he has promised to tell his son, and his son after him. A secret shame, a secret history, a secret weapon—all hidden within our bloodline. Our burden to carry forward, carved and recounted here so that if the original history becomes warped or parts of it lost to time … here it is, etched in stone.

Nesta murmured to Azriel, “Does Rhys … does he know?”

“No,” Azriel replied without an ounce of doubt. “Somewhere along the line … all this was forgotten, and never passed on.”

Bryce couldn’t bring herself to care. She knew the truth now, and all that mattered was getting home to Midgard to share it with others. With Hunt.

But to the rest of the world, Silene said, I ensured that my mother and her lands became a whisper. Then a legend. People wondered if Theia had ever existed. The old generation died off. I clung to life, even after my mate had passed. As an elder, I spun lies for my people and called them truth.

“No one knows what became of Theia and General Pelias,” I told countless generations. “They betrayed King Fionn, and Gwydion was forever lost, his dagger with it.” I lied with every breath.

“Theia and Fionn had two daughters. Unimportant and unimpressive.” That was the hardest, perhaps. Not that my own name was gone. But that I had to erase Helena’s, too.

Bryce glowered. Erasing her sister’s name was worse than butchering human families?

My son had sons, and I lived long enough to see my grandsons have sons of their own. And then I returned here. To the place that had once been full of light and music, and now housed only terrors.

To leave this account for one whose blood will summon it, child of my child, heir of my heir. To you—I leave my story, your story. To you, in this very stone, I leave the inheritance and the burden that my own mother passed to me.

The image blurred, and there she was again. That old, weary face.

I hope the Mother will forgive me, Silene said, and the hologram dissolved.

“Well, I fucking don’t,” Bryce spat, and flipped off the place where Silene had stood.