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

Bryce blinked up at him—though it was difficult with the force of the storm around them. “How did you know?”

“I might have caught the end of your conversation.” Bryce clung harder as the wind pressed. Cormac said, “He’s right.”

“Spare me.”

“And you were right, too. When we first met, and you said the Oracle’s prophecy was vague. I understand that now. She didn’t mean our union in marriage would bring prosperity to our people. She meant our union as allies. Allies in this rebellion.”

The world took form at the edges of the darkness.

“But after today …” Cormac’s words grew heavy. Weary. “I think the choice about whether to lead our people forward will be up to you.”

Hunt couldn’t shake the tremor from his hands. Being here, in this palace …

It smelled the same. Even in the hallway directly outside the archives, where he hid in an alcove, the stale odor of this place dragged claws down his temper, set his knees wobbling.

Screaming, pain blinding as they sawed off his wings slowly—

Shahar was dead, her broken body still dust-covered from Sandriel dragging it through the streets on her way in here—

Pollux laughing as he pissed on Shahar’s corpse in the middle of the throne room—

His wings, his wings, his wings—

Hunt swallowed, shutting out the memories, focusing his mind on the hall. No one was around.

Bryce and Cormac appeared, and she’d hardly thanked him before he vanished, off to grab Ruhn before teleporting back to the lab. Sweat gleamed on the prince’s face, his skin sallow. He had to be exhausted.

“All right?” Hunt murmured, brushing back her hair with a gloved hand. She nodded, eyes full of worry—and something else. But Hunt flicked her chin and went back to monitoring.

They stood in tense silence, and then Ruhn was there, Cormac with him. Cormac’s skin was ashen now. He disappeared immediately, back to the lab.

“Tell Declan we’re a go,” Hunt said.

Ruhn’s shadows cloaked them from sight as he thumbed in a message on a secure phone that Declan had retrofitted against tracking. In five minutes, Tharion would contact them on it to tell them whether or not to move.

Bryce’s fingers slid into Hunt’s, clutching tight. He squeezed back.

He had no idea how five minutes passed. He was barely breathing, monitoring the hall ahead. Bryce held his gloved hand through all of it, her jaw tense.

Then Ruhn lifted his head. “Tharion said Cormac just blew up the jeep.”

Hunt nudged her with a wing. “Your turn, Quinlan.”

Ruhn said, “Remember: Every minute in there risks detection. Make them count.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” she said, but smiled grimly up at Hunt. “Light it up, Athalar.”

Hunt pressed a hand to her heart, his lightning a subtle flare that was sucked into the scar. As the last of it faded, Bryce teleported into the archives.

To find whatever truth might lie within them.





71

Bryce’s breathing turned so jagged that she could barely think as she tumbled alone through the darkness.

They were in the Asteri’s palace. In their sacred, forbidden archives.

And she was … in a stairwell?

Bryce took steadying inhales as she surveyed the spiral staircase, crafted entirely of white quartz. Firstlight glimmered, golden and soft, lighting the carved steps downward. At her back was a door—the other side of the one they’d watched Sofie walk through on the surveillance footage.

The one labeled with the number Sofie had etched into her biceps.

Bryce began to creep down the stairs, her black utility boots nearly silent against the quartz steps. She saw no one. Heard no one.

Her heart raced, and she could have sworn the veins of firstlight in the quartz throbbed with each beat. As if in answer.

Bryce halted after a turn in the stairs and assessed the long hallway ahead. When it revealed no guards, she stepped into it.

There were no doors. Only this hall, perhaps seventy feet long and fifteen feet wide. Likely fourteen feet, to be a multiple of seven. The holy number.

Bryce scanned the hall. The only thing in it was a set of crystal pipes shooting upward into the ceiling, with plaques beneath them, and small black screens beside the plaques.

Seven pipes.

The crystal floor glowed at her feet as she approached the nearest plaque.

Hesperus. The Evening Star.

Brows rising, Bryce strode to the next pipe and plaque. Polaris. The North Star.

Plaque after plaque, pipe after pipe, Bryce read the individual names of each Asteri.

Eosphoros. Octartis. Austrus.

She nearly tripped at the penultimate. Sirius. The Asteri the Prince of the Pit had devoured.

She knew what the last plaque would say before she reached it. Rigelus. The Bright Hand.

What the Hel was this place?

This was what Danika had felt was important enough for Sofie Renast to risk her life for? What the Asteri had wanted to contain so badly they’d hunted Sofie down to preserve the secret?

The crystal at her feet flared, and Bryce had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, as firstlight, pure and iridescent, ruptured.

She squeezed her eyes shut, dropping into a crouch.

But nothing happened. At least, not to her.

The firstlight faded enough that Bryce cracked open her eyes to see it shooting up six of the pipes.