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

The Viper Queen’s warriors were flashes of metal and light far down the street, still fighting. Some had fallen, heaps of steaming armor and blood.

If she could make it to her apartment, it had enchantments enough to protect her and any others she could get inside. But it was twenty blocks away. It might as well have been twenty miles.

An idea flared, and she weighed it, considering. She could try. She had to try.

Bryce took a bracing breath. In her hand, Danika’s sword shook like a reed in the wind.

She could make it. Somehow, she’d find a way.

She leapt into the blood-slick streets, sword held ready to attack. She didn’t look back at the shelter behind her as she began to run, blind memory of the city grid sinking in to guide her on the fastest route. A snarl rumbled from around a corner, and Bryce barely brought up her sword in time to intercept the demon. She partially severed its neck, and was running again before it fully hit the ground. She had to keep moving. Had to get to the Old Square—

Dead shifters and the Viper Queen’s soldiers lay in the streets. Even more dead humans around them. Most in pieces.

Another demon barreled from the red sky—

She screamed as it knocked her back, slamming her into a car so hard the windows shattered. She had all of a second to wrench open the passenger-side door and climb in before it landed again. Attacked the car.

Bryce scrambled over the armrests and stick shift, fumbling for the driver’s-side door. She yanked on the handle and half fell into the street, the demon so distracted with shredding the tires on the opposite side that it didn’t see her lurch into a sprint.

The Old Square. If she could make it to the Old Square—

Two demons raced for her. The only thing she could do was run as the light began to fade.

Alone. She was alone out here.





86

The city was starting to go quiet. Every time Declan checked the audio in another district, more screams had diminished, cut off one by one.

Not from any calm or salvation, Hunt knew.

The voids in the Gates remained open. The sunset gave way to bruised purple skies. When true night fell, he could imagine what sort of horrors Hel would send through. The kind that did not like the light, that had been bred and learned to hunt in the dark.

Bryce was still out there. One mistake, one misstep, and she would be dead.

There would be no healing, no regeneration. Not without the Drop.

She made it over the border of the Old Square. But she didn’t run for safety. No, she seemed to be running for the Heart Gate, where the flow of demons had halted. As if Hel were indeed waiting for true night to begin before its second round.

His heart thundered as she paused down the block from the Gate. As she ducked into the alcove of a nearby shelter. Illuminated by the firstlight lamp mounted outside it, she slid to the ground, her sword loosely gripped in one hand.

Hunt knew that position, that angle of the head.

A soldier who had fought a good, hard battle. A soldier who was exhausted, but would take this moment, this last moment, to rally before their final stand.

Hunt bared his teeth at the screen, “Get up, Bryce.”

Ruhn was shaking his head, terror stark on his face. The Autumn King said nothing. Did nothing as he watched his daughter on the feed Declan placed on the main screen.

Bryce reached into her shirt to pull out her phone. Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely hold it. But she hit a button on the screen and lifted it to her ear. Hunt knew what that was, too. Her final chance to say goodbye to her parents, her loved ones.

A faint ringing sounded in the conference room. From the table at its center. Hunt looked to Jesiba, but her phone remained dark. Ruhn’s stayed dark as well. Everyone went silent as Sandriel pulled a phone from her pocket. Hunt’s phone.

Sandriel glanced toward him, shock slackening her face. Every thought eddied from Hunt’s head.

“Give him the phone,” Ruhn said softly.

Sandriel just stared at the screen. Debating.

“Give him the fucking phone,” Ruhn ordered her.

Sandriel, to Hunt’s shock, did. With trembling hands, he picked up.

“Bryce?”

On the video feed, he could see her wide eyes. “Hunt?” Her voice was so raw. “I—I thought it would go to audiomail—”

“Help is coming soon, Bryce.”

The stark terror on her face as she surveyed the last of the sunlight destroyed him. “No—no, it’ll be too late.”

“It won’t. I need you to get up, Bryce. Get to a safer location. Do not go any closer to that Gate.”

She bit her lip, trembling. “It’s still wide open—”

“Go to your apartment and stay there until help comes.” The panicked terror on her face hardened into something calm at his order. Focused. Good.

“Hunt, I need you to call my mom.”

“Don’t start making those kinds of goodbyes—”

“I need you to call my mom,” she said quietly. “I need you to tell her that I love her, and that everything I am is because of her. Her strength and her courage and her love. And I’m sorry for all the bullshit I put her through.”

“Stop—”

“Tell my dad …,” she whispered. The Autumn King stiffened. Looked back toward Hunt. “Tell Randall,” she clarified, “that I’m so proud I got to call him my father. That he was the only one that ever mattered.”