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

“Okay, assuming for a moment that we believe all that,” Tharion said, “how do you know this was some secret chamber she used to commune with Hel, of all places? What do the pitcher and bowl mean?”

“She’d get thirsty with all the salt down here?” Baxian quipped, and Hunt grunted.

But Sathia walked up to the stream. “That water filters straight through the black salt, and this chamber is thick with it.” She met Bryce’s stare, brows knotting. “Can you summon a demon if you drink water laced with black salt?”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that, even during my demon-hunting years,” Hunt said.

“If Helena was summoning demons here, someone would have noticed,” Baxian said. “The temperature would have dropped enough that anyone else in the caves would have felt it, even a level above.”

“Maybe she wasn’t summoning them here,” Bryce said, walking to the pitcher and bowl, to the eight-pointed star they sat upon. The slits in two of the points had been deeply carved—too deep for her to see how far into the rock they went. But Bryce tapped the side of her head. “But in here.”

“What?” Hunt asked.

Bryce knelt and dipped the ewer into the dark, icy water. The vessel and bowl, too, had been carved from black salt. “The Starborn could mind-speak. Still can.” She nodded up toward the river a level above, with the Murder Twins lurking somewhere on its other side. “Maybe the salt helped her mind-speak with Hel. Maybe someone in Hel can tell us how to kill the Asteri. Apollion himself ate Sirius … Maybe he’s had the answer all along.”

Hunt blurted, “Don’t you dare—”

Bryce lifted the jug to her lips, but lightning smashed the vessel apart before she could drink.

She whirled, temper searing through her.

Hunt was glowing with lightning, furious as he advanced on her. “Do not drink from that—”

“This is not the time to go Alphahole!”

“—without me,” he finished.

Bryce could only gape at her mate as he grabbed the drinking bowl and held it out to her.

Ready to follow her into Hel.



* * *



Together, then. As their powers, their souls, were linked, so they’d drink the salt-laced water together.

“This … might be a very bad idea,” Tharion said as Bryce and Hunt sat facing each other, knee to knee and hand to hand.

Hunt was inclined to agree. But he said, “Apollion appeared to both me and to Bryce in dream states. Maybe he was using the same communication method he’d used with Helena.”

“So, what,” Baxian said as Sathia gathered the water in the drinking bowl. “You’re going to drink and hope you pass out and … talk to Hel? Ask them for answers about the sword and knife that they might have somehow forgotten to tell you until now?”

“Helena left this here,” Bryce said, holding Hunt’s stare. No doubt or fear—only steely focus gleamed in his mate’s eyes. “Just as Silene left everything in the caves of her home world. For someone to find. Someone who could bear the Starsword, and whose starlight would lead them down here. Someone who might also have learned the truth … and known where to look.” Bryce turned her gaze to the ceiling, the stairs upward. “I think Helena left this to help us.”

“Helena and Silene weren’t … good people,” Baxian warned.

“No, but they hated the Asteri,” Bryce said. “They wanted to get rid of them as much as we do.” And it was hope that brimmed in her eyes then, so bright it nearly stole Hunt’s breath away. For a moment, not even a full heartbeat, he nearly believed they might succeed. “If this buys us a shot, whatever it might be, we have to try. I want answers. I want the truth.”

Bryce lifted the bowl to her lips and drank.



* * *



Bryce was falling backward, and yet not moving. Her body remained kneeling, yet her soul fell, icing over, into the dark, into nothing and nowhere. A presence around her, beside her, flickered with lightning. Hunt.

He was with her. Soul-falling alongside her.

It was a leap. All of it was a leap, but she had to believe that Urd had led her here. That Helena had been as smart as her sister, and would have fought the male who abused her until the very end. That Helena had played the game not only for her lifetime, but for future generations.

Hoping that maybe one day, millennia from her death, another female might come along with starlight—Theia’s starlight—in her veins. Passed down not from Pelias, but from Helena herself. Theia’s starlight.

Passed down to her. Bryce Adelaide Quinlan.

And maybe she wasn’t who Helena or Silene would have chosen, certainly not with their anti-human bullshit, but that wasn’t her problem.

The falling sensation stopped. There was only blackness, frigid and dry. Her starlight flickered, a pale, feeble light in the impenetrable dark. A hand found hers, and she didn’t need to look to know Hunt stood beside her in … whatever this place was. This dreamworld.

Two blue lights glowed in the distance, closing in on them. Hunt’s fingers tightened on hers in warning. His lightning flickered. But the lights drew nearer. And nearer. And when they crossed into the light of her star …

Aidas was smiling faintly—joy and hope brightening his remarkable eyes. “It seems you got a little lost on your way to find me, Bryce Quinlan. But welcome to Hel.”