House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2) by Sarah J. Maas

Hunt’s lightning hit the Starsword, and the world erupted.





32

Hunt screamed as Bryce leapt in front of his power. As his lightning hit the black blade, exploding from the metal, flowing up into her arm, her body, her heart. Light flashed, blinding—

No, that was Bryce.

Power crackled from every inch of her, and from the Starsword she clenched in one hand as she barreled toward the Shepherd. It split into three hounds again, and as the first beast landed, Bryce struck. The glowing Starsword pierced the thick hide. Lightning exploded across the beast’s body. The other two screamed, and Reapers began scattering into the mist beyond the obelisks.

Bryce whirled as Hunt reached her and said, eyes white with light, “Watch out!”

Too late. The beast who’d fallen snapped its tail at Hunt, catching him in the gut and hurling him into the Dead Gate. He hit the stone and crumpled, his power fizzing out.

Bryce shouted his name as she held her ground against the remaining two beasts. The one she’d injured died, twitching on the ground. Hunt gasped for breath, trying to rise.

She lifted the sword, crackling with remnants of power. Not much. Like the first blow had exhausted most of it. Hunt braced a hand on the Dead Gate’s brass plaque as he tried to raise himself once more.

Power sucked from his fingers, pulled into the stone. He snatched his hand back. One of the beasts lunged for Bryce, but bounced away at a swipe of her sword. She needed more power—

Hunt peered at the Dead Gate’s archway above him. Firstlight flowed both ways. Into the Dead Gate and out of it.

And here, where the last power of the dead was fed into it … here was a well, like the one Bryce had used during the attack last spring.

Sofie and Emile Renast could channel energy, too—and lightning. Hunt was no thunderbird, but could he do the same?

Lightning flowed in his veins. His body was equipped to handle raw, sizzling energy. Was this what Apollion had hinted at—why the prince wanted not only him and Bryce, but Emile and Sofie? Had the Prince of the Pit engineered this situation, manipulating them into coming to the Bone Quarter so that Hunt would be forced to realize what he could do with his own power? Perhaps Emile hadn’t even come here at all. Perhaps the Reapers had lied about that at Apollion’s behest, just to get them here, to this place, this moment—

Bryce angled her sword higher, ready to fight until the end. Hunt gazed at her for a moment, an avenging angel in her own right—and then slammed his hand onto the brass plaque of the Dead Gate.

Bryce dared only a glance behind her as Hunt bellowed again. He was standing, but his hand …

White, blinding firstlight—or was it secondlight?—flowed from the Dead Gate up his arm. Up his shoulder. And on the other side of the archway, the stone began to go dark. As if he were draining it.

The two hounds of the Shepherd merged back together, anticipating the next strike. Hunt’s voice was a thunderclap as he said behind her, “Light it up, Bryce.”

The words bloomed in Bryce’s heart at the same moment Hunt shot a bolt of his power—the Dead Gate’s power—into her. It burned and roared and blinded, a writhing ball of energy that Bryce broke to her will and funneled into the Starsword.

Forks of lightning cracked from Hunt, from her, from the sword.

The Shepherd turned tail and fled.

Bryce ran after it.

Wings flapped behind her, and then she was in Hunt’s arms. He carried her high above the beast’s back, then plunged down, lightning streaming around them, a meteorite crashing—

They slammed into the creature, and Bryce drove the sword into the Shepherd’s nape. Into the skull beneath. Lightning and firstlight blasted through it, and the hound exploded into smoking smithereens.

Bryce and Hunt hit the ground panting and steaming, soaked with the Shepherd’s blood. But Hunt was up again in a moment, running, a hand on Bryce’s back as he hauled her with him. “The river,” he panted, lightning skittering across his teeth, his cheeks. His wings drooped like he was wholly exhausted. Like flying was beyond him.

Bryce didn’t waste breath to answer as they raced through the mist toward the Istros.

“Two more Vanir bodies this morning, Your Excellency,” Tharion said by way of greeting, bowing at the waist as he stood in his queen’s private study.

It was more biodome than study, really, full of plants and a deep, winding stream, studded with large pools. The River Queen swam among the lily pads, her black hair trailing like ink in the water behind her. Her day of meetings might require her to be inside the building, but she took all of them here, sitting in her element.

She turned toward Tharion, hair plastered down her ample, heavy breasts, her brown skin gleaming with water. “Tell me where.” Her voice was lovely, but subdued. Cold.

“One left hanging upside down in an olive grove north of the city—drained and shot the same way as the selkie—the other crucified on the tree next to him. Also shot, with a slit throat. They’d clearly been tortured. Two human scents were present. Seems like this happened yesterday.”

He’d gotten the report this morning over breakfast. Hadn’t bothered to go to the sites or ask Holstrom to come with him, not when the Aux had been the ones to get the call, and would be the ones to handle the bodies.

“And you still believe the rebel Pippa Spetsos is behind these killings.”