House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas

He knew those thoughts weighed on Bryce. For five fucking days, she barely ate. Just went to work, slept, and went to work again.

Every morning he made her breakfast. Every morning she ignored the plate he laid out.

Micah called only once, to ask if they’d gotten proof on Sabine. Hunt had merely said, “It was a dead end,” and the Governor had hung up, his rage at the unsolved case palpable.

That had been two days ago. Hunt was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I thought hunting for ancient, deadly weapons would be exciting,” Lehabah groused from where she sat on her little divan, half watching truly inane daytime television.

“Me too,” Bryce muttered.

Hunt looked up from the evidence report he’d been skimming and was about to answer when the front doorbell rang. Ruhn’s face appeared on the camera feed, and Bryce let out a long, long sigh before silently buzzing him in.

Hunt rotated his stiff shoulder. His arm still throbbed a bit, an echo of the lethal venom that had ripped his magic right from his body.

The prince’s black boots appeared on the green carpeted steps seconds later, apparently taking a hint about their location thanks to the open library door. Lehabah was instantly zooming across the space, sparks in her wake, as she beamed and said, “Your Highness!”

Ruhn offered her a half smile, his eyes going right to Quinlan. They missed none of the quiet, brooding exhaustion. Or the tone in Bryce’s voice as she said, “To what do we owe this pleasure?”

Ruhn slid into a seat across from them at the book-strewn table. The Starsword sheathed down his back didn’t reflect the lights in the library. “I wanted to check in. Anything new?”

Neither of them had told him about Sabine. And apparently Declan hadn’t, either.

“No,” Bryce said. “Anything about the Horn?”

Ruhn ignored her question. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Her spine stiffened.

Ruhn looked ready to get into it with his cousin, so Hunt did both of them—and himself, if he was being honest—a favor and said, “We’ve been waiting on a Many Waters contact to get back to us about a possible pattern with the demon attacks. Have you come across any information about the kristallos negating magic?” Days later, he couldn’t stop thinking about it—how it’d felt for his power to just sputter and die in his veins.

“No. I still haven’t found anything about the creation of the kristallos except that it was made from the blood of the first Starborn Prince and the essence of the Star-Eater himself. Nothing about it negating magic.” Ruhn nodded at him. “You’ve never come across a demon that can do that?”

“Not one. Witch spells and gorsian stones negate magic, but this was different.” He’d dealt with both. Before they’d bound him using the witch-ink on his brow, they’d shackled him with manacles hewn from the gorsian stones of the Dolos Mountains, a rare metal whose properties numbed one’s access to magic. They were used on high-profile enemies of the empire—the Hind herself was particularly fond of using them as she and her interrogators broke the Vanir among the rebel spies and leaders. But for years now, rumors had swirled in the 33rd’s barracks that rebels were experimenting with ways to render the metal into a spray that could be unleashed upon Vanir warriors on the battlefields.

Ruhn motioned to the ancient book he’d left on the table days ago, still open to a passage about the Starborn Fae. “If the Star-Eater himself put his essence in the kristallos, that’s probably what gave the demon the ability to eat magic. Just as Prince Pelias’s blood gave it the ability to look for the Horn.”

Bryce frowned. “So that Chosen One sense of yours hasn’t detected a trace of the Horn?”

Ruhn tugged at the silver ring through his bottom lip. “No. But I got a message this morning from a medwitch I met the other day—the one who stitched up Hunt in the night garden. It’s a shot in the dark, but she mentioned that there’s a relatively new drug on the market that’s just starting to come into use. It’s a synthetic healing magic.” Hunt and Bryce straightened. “It can have some wicked side effects if not carefully controlled. She didn’t have access to its exact formula or the trials, but she said research showed it capable of healing at rates nearly double that of firstlight.”

Bryce said, “You think something like that could repair the Horn?”

“It’s a possibility. It’d fit with that stupid riddle about light that’s not light, magic that’s not magic repairing the Horn. That’s kind of what a synthetic compound like that is.”

Her eyes flickered. “And it’s … readily available?”

“It entered the market at some point in the past few years, apparently. No one has tested it on inanimate objects, but who knows? If real magic couldn’t heal it, maybe a synthetic compound could.”

“I’ve never heard of synthetic magic,” Hunt said.

“Neither have I,” Ruhn admitted.

“So we have a potential way to repair the Horn,” Bryce mused, “but not the Horn itself.” She sighed. “And we still don’t know if Danika stole the Horn on a lark or for some actual purpose.”

Ruhn started. “Danika did what?”

Bryce winced, then filled the prince in on all they’d learned. When she finished, Ruhn leaned back in his chair, shock written on every line of his face.