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

Bryce savored the whipping, wild wind around her as she teleported—one last time, propelling herself through the world.

She lifted the rifle to her shoulder, clicking off the safety, and then she was there in the core room, debris and crystal everywhere, her rifle already aimed at the hole in the center.

But Rigelus was not alone. The three other remaining Asteri now stood with him, the four of them a solid wall between Bryce and the firstlight core. At least another one was dead, if the slowing of the world a few minutes ago was any indication. But four remained.

Bryce’s finger stalled on the trigger. To waste the bullet on them—

“Don’t you want to know what you risk, before you act so recklessly?” Rigelus said smugly. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You destroy the firstlight core, and you destroy Midgard itself.”





96


Bryce didn’t lower the Godslayer Rifle. She kept it aimed at the Asteri’s feet. At the hole just behind them. To get close enough, she’d have to teleport right to them, and fire straight into the hole.

“That core is tied to Midgard’s very soul,” Rigelus said. “You destroy it, and this entire planet will wink out of existence.”

Bryce’s blood chilled. She might have called bullshit had it not been for Vesperus’s claims about the Cauldron.

“You made the core a kill switch for this world,” Bryce breathed.

The Asteri to Rigelus’s left—Eosphoros, the Morning Star—sneered, “To prevent rodents like you from getting any ideas about destroying us.”

“Our fate,” Rigelus said to Bryce, folding his hands in front of him almost beatifically, “is tied to that of this planet. You kill our source of nourishment, and you doom every living soul on Midgard as well.”

“And if I call your bluff?” Bryce demanded, buying whatever time she could to sort out all she’d heard and witnessed and endured—

“Then a darkness like none you have ever known shall devour this planet, and you will all cease to exist,” said the Asteri to Rigelus’s right—Hesperus, the Evening Star.

“So you’d rather die,” Bryce said, “than see any of us freed from you?”

“If we are denied our food, then we shall die; there is no purpose to your existence, if not to sustain us. You are chattel.”

“You’re fucking delusional.” Bryce kept the rifle aimed at their feet. “How about I kill all of you, and leave the core here? How about that?”

“You’d have to get close enough with those blades to do so, girl,” Eosphoros sneered, death in her eyes as she glanced to the Starsword at Bryce’s back, to Truth-Teller sheathed at her side. “We shall not make Polaris’s mistake.”

They were right—Bryce knew that if she set down the gun, if she drew the blades … Well, they’d kill her so fast she probably wouldn’t be able to draw the weapons in time.

“Think very carefully, Bryce Quinlan,” Rigelus said, stepping forward with his hands raised. “One bullet from you into the core, and this world and all its innocents will be sucked into a void with no end.”

The same Void that Apollion had claimed allowed him to devour the Asteri? Polaris’s body had been sucked into nothing—

“You seemed so outraged in your little video,” Rigelus purred, “at the deaths of those innocents in Asphodel Meadows. But what are a few hundred children compared to the millions you damn by firing that bullet?”

A void with no end …

“Kill her, brother,” hissed the fourth Asteri, Austrus, glowing with power. “Kill her, and let us return to battle the princes before they find us down here—”

“What will it be, Bryce Quinlan?” Rigelus asked, extending a hand. “You have my word that if you do not fire that bullet, you and yours shall go free. And remain so.”

The other Asteri whirled on him, outraged.

“I can teach you things you’ve never even dreamed of,” Rigelus promised. “The language inked on your back—it is our language. From our home world. I can teach you how to wield it. Any world might be open to you, Bryce Quinlan. Name the world, and it shall be yours.”

“I only want this world to be free of you,” Bryce said through her teeth. “Forever.”

One of the Asteri began, “How dare you speak to—” but Rigelus interrupted, attention only on Bryce, “That, too, might be possible. A Midgard of your imagining.” He smiled, so earnestly she almost believed him. “Yours will be a life of comfort. I shall set you up as a true queen—not only of the Fae, but of all Valbara. No more Governors. No more angelic hierarchies, if that is what you and Athalar wish. If you desire the dead to be freed, then we shall find a way around death, too. They were always simply dessert to us.”

“Dessert,” Bryce said, hands shaking with anger. She gripped the rifle tighter.

“The secondlight shall be the dead’s to keep,” Rigelus went on.

But Bryce said, a familiar white haze of pure rage creeping over her vision, “They’re not dessert. They’re people. People the inhabitants of this planet knew and loved.”

“A poor choice of words,” Rigelus acknowledged, “and I apologize. But what you wish, you shall have. And if you desire to—”