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

“That confrontation will come.” Bryce walked calmly into the waiting darkness and swirling mist, adjusting Truth-Teller at her side. “But not yet.”

They had no choice but to follow her. “What does it all mean?” Baxian asked Hunt, almost plaintively.

Hunt cast aside his lingering anger and kept his focus pinned on his mate. “I think we’re about to find out.”



* * *



Flynn and Dec still weren’t at breakfast the next morning. And Ruhn’s quick jog through the castle and its grounds revealed no sign of them. Or of the Murder Twins. Just some Fae nobles and servants, unsure what to make of him, whether to sneer or bow. He ignored them, and was hurrying back to his room when Lidia emerged from it.

She took one look at his face and asked, “What’s wrong?”

He didn’t wonder how she’d guessed it—she’d had to be excellent at reading people her whole adult life. Her survival had depended on it.

Ruhn checked that his various blades were in place. “Flynn and Dec … I don’t think they’re here. And neither are my creep cousins. Or Morven.”

Her eyes sharpened with caution. “It might be unconnected.”

“It’s not. My friends don’t bail on me.” And he’d been so fucking distracted by her, by wanting her, that he hadn’t let himself think about it.

She put a hand on his arm. “Where do you think they went?”

Ruhn sucked in a breath. “Morven and the twins have to be involved. They must have taken Flynn and Dec to the Cave of Princes.”

“To make a move against Bryce?”

Ruhn’s stomach churned. “Maybe. But I think Morven took them as bait—for me. He expects me to follow.”

“If it’s a trap, then we shouldn’t rush in—”

“My friends rushed to save me from the Asteri dungeons,” he said, holding her beautiful gaze. “You found them, and they ran to help. I can’t leave them in Morven’s hands.”

“I wasn’t suggesting we leave them,” she said, striding to her own room. She left the door open so he could see her as she grabbed two guns off her night table and holstered them at her thighs. “I’m saying let’s think through a strategy before we go rescue them.”

Something burned in Ruhn’s chest, and he didn’t dare name it.

But he felt it all the same as they armed themselves and went to save his friends.



* * *



Hunt didn’t let his guard down, not for one second. Even with every word of his fight with Quinlan hanging in the air like the residue of fireworks. Lightning flickered in one fist; his sword was clenched in another. He didn’t put either aside as they entered a chamber at the other end of the tunnel.

He scanned its intricately carved walls of black stone, the exquisite landscapes depicted there, as they stepped in—

Stone grated against itself, and before Hunt could whirl, faster even than his lightning, the triangular door shut behind them. Tharion, a step ahead, let out a low whistle.

Baxian just swapped a look with Hunt that told him the Helhound suspected the same thing he did: only Bryce could get that door to open. It wasn’t a calming thought. Not as Hunt surveyed what lay ahead.

The lone object in the chamber was a sarcophagus carved from white marble, the hue striking against the deep black of the stone walls. A statue of an armored Fae male lay atop the sarcophagus, hands clasped around a missing object.

Bryce nodded to it. “That must be where the Starsword lies when not in use.” Her voice was flat, as if drained from their argument.

Sathia staggered a step closer. “Prince Pelias’s tomb,” she breathed.

“Ruhn told me his creepster descendants line the walls of the main passages in here,” Bryce said, pointing to the only other way out: another archway of stone across the chamber, barely visible through the mists. She adjusted the Starsword across her back, and a hand fidgeted with Truth-Teller at her side—like the blades were bothering her.

Hunt surveyed the domed space, examining the stories told on the walls: an archipelago nestled above a sea of starlight, an idyllic, serene land—all that the world believed Avallen to be. “I don’t see anything about the Starsword or Truth-Teller, let alone how to unify them,” Hunt admitted. “Or the mists. The islands are here, but nothing else.” Maybe this was a dead end for information.

“There could be something out in the main passage,” Tharion offered.

But Bryce approached the sarcophagus. Peered down at the perfectly carved, handsome face of the first Starborn Prince.

“Hello, you rapist fuck,” she said, her voice cold with fury.

Hunt barely breathed. He wondered if Urd were watching, if the heaviness in the room wasn’t the mists, but rather the goddess’s presence, having guided them here.

“You thought you won,” Bryce whispered to the sarcophagus. “But she got one over on you in the end. She got the last laugh.”

“Bryce?” Hunt ventured.

She looked up from Pelias’s carved rendering, and there was nothing of her human heart in those eyes. Only icy, Fae hatred for the long-dead male before her.

Offering a rope of neutral ground, Hunt said, “Can you, uh, fill us in?”

Yet it was Tharion who gestured to the empty death chamber. “Maybe Pelias built another chamber around here that’s actually got something about the sword and dagger and that portal to nowhere—”