House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City #3) by Sarah J. Maas

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—