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

The Horn would bow to its maker, its master.

She needed air. She needed air—

Bryce shoved at him, freeing a bit of space between their bodies. Not severing contact, but enough that the Horn’s protection snapped back into place, and she could breathe.

Rigelus was speaking, shouting in her face, but no words reached her. There was no sound in space. But loathing twisted his face, and she knew he beheld the same in hers as she sucked in a breath. Her last, she knew. She’d make it count, too.

Bryce grabbed his scrawny torso and wrapped her arms, then her legs around it.

Rigelus had a one-way ticket for that black hole—she’d make sure of it.

Even if she went with him.





98


His Umbra Mortis helmet discarded in the rubble beside him, Hunt stared at the giant, dark thing that had appeared in the center of the city and was slowly devouring everything around it.

Bryce was in that hole. A dark wind whipped at Hunt’s hair, and he knew without looking who had arrived at his side.

“I told her to choose to live,” Aidas murmured sadly, gazing toward the starry black expanse.

“She wouldn’t be Bryce if she had chosen herself,” Hunt said hoarsely. He wouldn’t love her this much if she wasn’t the sort of person who would have jumped in. “We have to help her,” he growled, wings braced against the tug of the black hole trying to pull all of Midgard in with it.

“There’s nothing that can be done,” Aidas said, his voice full of sorrow.

“I have to try.” Hunt’s knees bent, his wings spread, preparing himself for that leap into space. To Bryce. And that eternal wall of black beyond where his mate glowed.

“You go in there, and you will die,” Aidas said. “There is no air to propel you, nothing for your wings to grasp onto to carry you forward to her. You will drift, and she will still wind up with Rigelus in the Void, and you will follow her in, helpless, a few minutes later.”

“But she left the portal open,” Hunt said. “To Midgard.”

Aidas turned those weary eyes to him. “I believe it shall shut when she and the Horn in her back are obliterated.”

“She left it open to come home,” Hunt snarled. He studied the Mask in his hands. She’d left it with him … why? He’d have no ability to get it back to the Fae in their home world. Hel, he couldn’t even wield the damn thing. He wasn’t Made; he couldn’t command it.

“She is likely already dead from lack of oxygen,” Aidas said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t accept that for one minute,” Hunt raged. “I refuse to accept that—”

“Then go die with her,” Aidas said, not unkindly. “If that’s your wish, then do so now. She and Rigelus already approach the Void’s edge.”

Hunt studied the Mask again.

Bryce did nothing without a reason. She had left him with the Mask, knowing she was headed to her death. She’d left it with her mate … her mate, who had a little bit of her Made essence in him thanks to their lovemaking last night.

Which might make him capable of wielding it. For just long enough.

She had given everything for Midgard. For him.

That day last spring, when all hope had been lost, she had made the Drop alone. To save him, and to save the city—and she had done it from pure love. She had done it without expecting to come back.

Just as she must have jumped through this portal suspecting she’d never return.

Demons were spilling into the streets, and the Asterian Guard was still fighting, unaware that their remaining masters were headed toward obliteration. The mech-suits of the Fallen and their enemies clashed.

Bryce had gone into death itself for him that day in the spring.

Hunt could do no less for her.

“Athalar,” Aidas said as he gazed at the hole in the world. “It is done. Come—we must finish this. Even with the Asteri gone, there are other battles to fight before the day is won.”

The words might have sunk in then—the Asteri gone—but the ground shook behind him.

Hunt turned. A mech-suit stood there, towering over him. No pilot—this was one of the Fallen. The glowing green eyes shifted between him and the hole in the universe, the small bit of light drifting, drifting toward that infinite darkness.

The mech-suit held out a hand, and Hunt knew.

He knew which of the Fallen controlled this suit, whose soul had come to offer a hand. To help him do the impossible.

“Shahar,” he said, tears falling.

The mech-suit, the Archangel’s soul within it, inclined its head. Aidas took a step back, as if surprised.

In the streets, the other suits halted. Fell to their knees, bowing. Hunt could feel them—the souls of the Fallen. Swarming around him, around the suit.

But Shahar simply knelt before Hunt and opened the pilot’s door.

His wings might not work in space, but the propulsion from the suit’s weapons would.

Hunt didn’t hesitate. He climbed in, wings furled tight in the small interior, and yanked the metal door shut.

“Thank you,” he said to the Archangel, to the Fallen he now felt pressing around him.

He’d once been forced to take mech-suits apart on the battlefield to help Shahar’s sister destroy humans. Now this one would help him save a life. The life that mattered to him more than any other.