House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Series)

You’re a prince. Start acting like one.

Fuck, Lidia knew precisely what to say to piss him off. To keep him thinking about her in the hours that passed, during all the fruitless searching for anything about the missing islands, the Starsword, the dagger, or the mists.

She’d gone on a walk for half an hour and then come back, smelling of the sea, and still hadn’t said anything to him.

“You could, uh, talk to her,” Flynn said from beside Ruhn, shutting yet another useless drawer full of catalog cards. “I can literally feel you brooding.”

“I’m not brooding.”

“You’re brooding,” Declan said from Ruhn’s other side.

“You’re brooding,” Ruhn said, nodding to Dec’s taut face.

“I have good reason to. I can’t get in touch with my family or Marc—”

Ruhn softened. “I’m sure they’re fine. You warned them to lie low before all that shit at the Meat Market, and Sathia said she reached out to them. Marc will make sure they stay safe.”

“It doesn’t make it any easier, knowing I can’t even check in with them thanks to this medieval playland.”

Ruhn and Flynn grunted their agreement.

“This place sucks,” Dec said, and slammed the drawer he’d been combing through closed. “And so does this library’s cataloging system.” Dec peered down the long, long row and called, “Anything?”

Ruhn tried but failed not to look at Lidia. She’d taken the far end of the catalog, definitely on purpose, and had yet to say a word to them in the hours they’d been here together. “No,” she said, and continued her work.

Fine.

Just fine.

“Well,” Hunt whispered, voice echoing off the slick black stone before being swallowed by the dense mists, “this is terrifying.”

The reek of mold and rot was already giving him a headache, unsettling every instinct that told him to get out of the misty enclosed space and into the skies, into the safety of the wind and clouds—

“Once you’ve seen a Middengard Wyrm feeding,” Bryce muttered in the soupy darkness, waving away the mist in front of her face to no avail, “nothing’s as bad.”

“I don’t want to know what that is,” Baxian said.

Hunt appreciated that Baxian hadn’t needed to be asked before flanking Bryce’s exposed side. Tharion and Sathia walked close behind, saying little as the pathway descended. Ruhn had said the carvings on the walls started a little ways in, but they hadn’t found a hint of them yet. Just rock—and mist, so thick they could only see a few feet ahead.

Bryce said, “Think an earthworm with a mouth full of double rows of teeth. The size of two city buses.”

“I said I didn’t want to know what that was,” Baxian grumbled.

“It’s not even that bad, compared to some of the other shit I saw,” Bryce went on. And then admitted, if only because they had followed her into the deadly dark and deserved to know the whole truth, “They have a thing called the Mask—a tool that can literally raise the dead. No necromancers needed. No fresh bodies, either.”

They all stared at her. “Really?” Tharion asked.

Bryce nodded gravely. “I saw the Mask used to animate a skeleton that had been dead for ages. And give it enough strength that it could take on the Wyrm.”

Hunt blew out a whistle. “That’s some mighty powerful death-magic.”

He refrained from complaining that she hadn’t mentioned it until now, because he certainly wasn’t mentioning how Rigelus had taken his lightning to do something similar, and Baxian, thankfully, didn’t say anything, either. They’d heard nothing about what had come of it, but it couldn’t be good.

Another thing he’d have to atone for.

He’d heard what Bryce was trying to tell him last night, about all of them bearing a piece of the blame for their collective actions. But it didn’t stop him from harboring the guilt. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Didn’t want to feel it anymore.

“Yeah,” Bryce said, continuing into the dark, “the powers in that Fae world are … off the charts.”

“And yet the Asteri want to tangle with them again,” Baxian said.

“Rigelus knows how to hold a grudge,” Bryce said. She halted abruptly.

Hunt’s every instinct went on alert. “What?” he asked, scanning the misty darkness ahead. But Bryce’s gaze was on the wall to her left, where a carving had been etched into the stone with startling precision.

“An eight-pointed star,” Baxian said.

Bryce’s hand drifted to her chest, fingers silhouetted against the brightness shining there.

Hunt surveyed the star, then the images that began a few feet beyond it, plunging onward into the mists, as if this place marked the beginning of a formal walkway. Bryce merely began walking again, head swiveling from side to side as she took in the ornate, artistic carvings along the black rock. It was all Hunt could do to keep up with her, not letting the mists veil her from sight.

Fae in elaborate armor had been carved into the walls, many holding what seemed to be ropes of stars. Ropes that had been looped around the necks of flying horses, the beasts screaming in fury as they were hauled toward the ground. Some sank into what looked like the sea, drowning.

“A hunt,” Bryce said quietly. “So the early Fae did kill all of Theia’s pegasuses, then.”

“Why?” Sathia asked.

“They weren’t fans of the Starlight Fancy dolls,” Hunt answered.

But Bryce didn’t smile. “These carvings are like the ones in Silene’s caves. Different art, but the storytelling style is similar.”

“It’d make sense,” Tharion said, running his fingers over a thrashing, drowning horse, “considering that the art’s from the same time period.”

“Yeah,” Bryce muttered, and pressed on, her starlight now flaring a beam through the mists. Pointing straight ahead. There was no privacy to corner her and ask what the Hel she was really thinking—certainly not as something shifted in the shadows to Hunt’s left.

He reached over a shoulder for his sword, lightning at the ready. Or as ready as it could be with the gods-damned halo suppressing it—

“Ghouls,” Baxian said, drawing his sword in an easy motion. The shadows writhed, hissing like a nest of snakes.

“They’re not coming any closer,” Sathia whispered, her fear thick as the fog around them.

Hunt wrapped his lightning around his fist, the sparks making the damp walls glisten like the surface of a pond. But light flared from Bryce, and the ghouls shrank back further.

“Benefits of being the Super Powerful and Special Magic Starborn Princess,” Bryce drawled, sashaying past the nooks and alcoves in the stone where the ghouls teemed. “Ruhn said they ran from his starlight during his Ordeal. Looks like they’re not fans of mine, either.”

Sathia inched past the nearest cluster of ghouls, keeping a step behind Bryce.

A scabbed, jet-colored hand skittered from a deep pocket of shadows, its nails long and cracked, digging into the stone—

Before Hunt’s lightning could strike, Bryce’s starlight flared again. The hand fell back, a low hiss skimming over the rocks. “Super Powerful and Special Magic Starborn Princess, indeed,” Hunt said, impressed.

But Bryce turned toward the lines the ghoul had gouged into the rock, running a hand over them. She rubbed the bits of dust and debris between her forefinger and thumb, sniffed it once, then slid her gaze to Hunt. “Flynn’s right: I don’t like it here.” She licked—fucking licked—the dark substance on her fingers and grimaced. “Nope. Not at all.”

Sathia, still a few steps behind Bryce, shivered. “Can you feel it, then? How … dead it all seems? Like there’s something festering here.”

Hunt had no idea what the Hel either female was talking about, and from Tharion’s and Baxian’s baffled expressions, they didn’t, either.

Bryce only moved on into the dark and mists. They had no choice but to keep pace with her, to stay in that protective bubble of starlight.

“There’s water ahead,” Baxian said, his advanced hearing picking it up before Hunt could detect it. “A river—a big one, from the sound of it.”

Bryce slid Hunt a look. “Good thing we’ve got two hunky dudes with wings.”

And there it was again—that gleam in her eyes. There and gone, but … he could almost hear her brain working. Connecting some dots he couldn’t see.

“Stay close,” Bryce murmured, leading them deeper into the cave. “I’ve spent a disgusting amount of time underground lately, and I can tell you there’s nothing good coming our way.”

Flynn and Dec left to grab everyone lunch, and Ruhn resigned himself to working in silence with Lidia, only the rustle of paper and slamming of fruitless drawers for sound.

He found nothing. Neither did she, he concluded from her occasional sighs of frustration. So different from the contented, near-purring sighs she’d made in his arms that time their souls had merged, as he’d moved in her—

Cousin.

Ruhn slowly, slowly turned toward the towering open doorway. No one stood there. Only the gray day lay beyond.

On your left.

Seamus leaned against a nearby stack, arms crossed. A dagger was buckled over his broad chest, just as it had been all those decades ago. As it had been then, the male’s dark hair was cut close to his head—to avoid an enemy getting a grip on it, Ruhn knew. And if Seamus was there, then that meant—

On your right, Duncan said into his mind, and Ruhn glanced the other way to find Seamus’s brother leaning in a mirror position on the opposite stack. In lieu of a dagger, Duncan carried a slender sword strapped down his spine.

Ruhn kept both of them in his line of sight. What do you want?

Instinct had already kept his mind veiled in stars and shadows, but he did a quick mental scan to ensure his walls were intact.

Duncan sneered. Our uncle sent us to make sure the female was behaving herself.

Ruhn glanced at Lidia, still searching the catalog. Fuck, her mind was unguarded—

It was second nature, really, to leap for her mind. As if he could somehow shield her from them.

But on the other end of that mental bridge, a wall of fire smoldered. It wasn’t just fire—it was a conflagration that swirled sky-high, as if generating its own winds and weather. Magma seemed to churn beneath it, visible through cracks in the whirling storm of flame.

Well, he didn’t need to worry about her, then.

You spoil our fun, cousin, Seamus said.

She’d be fun to rummage through, Duncan added.

Ruhn eyed the males. Get lost.

Her presence defiles this place, Seamus said, attention sliding to Lidia and fixing on her shoulder blades with an intensity Ruhn didn’t like one fucking bit.

So does yours, Ruhn shot back.

Seamus’s dark eyes shifted toward Ruhn once more. We can smell you on her, you know. Seamus’s teeth flashed. Tell me: Was it like fucking a Reaper?

A low growl slipped out of Ruhn, and Lidia turned at the sound. She showed no surprise. As if she’d been aware of their presence this whole time, and had been waiting for some sort of signal to interfere.

She looked coolly between his cousins. “Seamus. Duncan. I’ll thank you to stay out of my mind.”

Seamus bristled, pure Fae menace. “Did we talk to you, bitch?”

Ruhn clenched his jaw so hard it hurt, but Lidia lifted those golden eyes to the twin princes and said, “Shall I demonstrate how I make males like you talk to me?”

Duncan snarled. “You’re lucky our uncle gave the word to stand down. Or else we’d have already told the Asteri you’re here, Hind.”

“Good dogs,” Lidia said. “I’ll be sure to advise Morven to give you both a treat.”

Ruhn’s lips twitched upward. But—she’d told him to act like the prince he was. So he schooled his face into icy neutrality. A mask as hard as Lidia’s. “Tell Morven we’ll send word if we require his assistance,” he said to his cousins.

The dismissal found its mark better than any taunt. Duncan pushed off the bookshelf, hand curling at his side—shadows wrapping around his knuckles. Darker, wilder than Ruhn’s. As if they’d been captured from a storm-tossed night.

“You’re an embarrassment to our people,” Duncan said. “A disgrace.”

Seamus stalked over to his twin, his identical face displaying matching disdain. “Don’t waste your breath on him.”

Seamus said into Ruhn’s mind, You’ll get what’s coming to you.

Ruhn kept his face impassive—princely, some might say. “Good to see you both.”

Again, his failure to snap back at them only riled them further, and both of his cousins growled before turning as one and striding from the archives.

Only when they’d vanished through the massive doors did Ruhn say quietly to Lidia, “You all right?”

“Yes,” she said, her golden eyes meeting his. Ruhn’s breath caught in his throat. “They’re no different from any other brute I’ve encountered.” Like Pollux. She turned back to the catalog. “They’d get along with Sandriel’s triarii.”

“I’ll remind you that a good chunk of that triarii has since proved to be on our side,” Ruhn said. But he could think of nothing else to say, and silence once more fell—inside his head and in the archives—so he began to search again.

After several long minutes, it became unbearable. The silence. The tension. And simply to say something, to break that misery, he blurted, “Why fire?”

She slowly turned toward him. “What?”

“You always appeared as a ball of fire to me. Why?”

She angled her head, eyes gleaming faintly. “Stars and night were already taken.” She smirked, and something eased in his chest at this bit of normalcy. Of what it had been like when they were just Day and Night. Despite himself, he found himself smiling back.

But she studied him. “How …”

He met her wide, searching stare. “How what?”

“How did you wind up like this?” she asked, voice soft. “Your father is …”

“A psychotic dickbag.”

She laughed. “Yes. How did you escape his influence?”

“My friends,” he said, nodding toward the door they’d exited through. “Flynn and Dec kept me sane. Gave me perspective. Well, maybe not Flynn, but Dec did. Still does.”

“Ah.”

He allowed himself the luxury of taking in her face, her expression. Noted the kernel of worry there and asked, “How did it go with your sons before we left yesterday?” He’d heard she’d gone to say goodbye, but nothing about the encounter. And given how haunted her face had looked when they’d left the Depth Charger …

“Great.” The word was terse enough that he thought she wouldn’t go on, but then she amended, “Terrible.” A muscle ticked in her jaw. “I think Brann would want to get to know me, but Ace—Actaeon … He loathes me.”

“It’ll take time.”

She changed the subject. “Do you think your sister will actually find something of use against the Asteri?”

Given how many people over the centuries had probably looked for such a thing, Ruhn didn’t resent her question. “Knowing Bryce, she’s up to something. She always has a few cards up her sleeve. But …” He blew out a breath. “Now that she’s in the fucking Cave of Princes, part of me doesn’t want to know what those cards might entail.”

“Your sister is a force of nature.” Nothing but admiration shone through the words.

Pride glimmered in his chest at the praise, but Ruhn merely said, “She is.” He let that be that.

But the silence that followed was different. Lighter. And he could have sworn he caught Lidia glancing toward him as often as he looked toward her.

Ithan strode down the halls of the House of Flame and Shadow, Hypaxia at his side, his stomach full and contented after a surprisingly good breakfast in its dim dining hall. They’d been early enough that most people hadn’t yet arrived.

He’d eaten an insane amount, even for him, but given that they were leaving for Avallen tomorrow, he’d wanted to fuel up as much as possible. He’d demanded that they go now, but Jesiba apparently had to arrange transportation and permission for them to enter the island, and since they weren’t telling anyone the truth about why they were going, she also had to weave a web of lies to whoever her contact on the Fae island was.

But soon he could right this awful wrong. They’d find Sofie’s body, get her lightning, and then fix this. It was a slim shard of hope, but one he clung to. One that kept him from crumbling into absolute ruin.

One he could only thank the female beside him for—the female who hadn’t thought twice before helping him so many times. It was for her sake that he made himself keep his tone light as he patted his rock-hard stomach and said, “Did you know they had such good food here?”

Hypaxia smirked. “Why do you think I defected so easily?”

“In it for the food, huh?”

Hypaxia grinned, and he knew the expression was rare for the solemn queen. “I’m always in it for the—”

A shudder rumbled through the black halls, clouds of dust drifting from the ceiling. Ithan kept his footing, wrapping a hand around Hypaxia’s elbow to steady her.

“What the Hel was that?” Ithan murmured, scanning the dark stone above them.

Another boom, and Ithan began running, Hypaxia hurrying behind him, aiming for Jesiba’s office. He was through the double doors a moment later, revealing Jesiba at her desk, her face taut, eyes wide—

“What the Hel is going on?” Ithan demanded, rushing over to where she had a feed up on her computer, showing exploding bombs.

Another impact hit, and Ithan motioned Hypaxia to get under the desk. But the former witch-queen did no such thing, instead asking, “Is that feed right above us?”

“No,” Jesiba said, her voice so hoarse she almost sounded like a Reaper. “Omega-boats pulled into the Istros.” On the feed, buildings crumbled. “Their deck launchers just fired brimstone missiles into Asphodel Meadows.”