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

She could have sworn Nesta’s lips curved into a smile. “On a good day, too many people to count. But today … I volunteered.”

Bryce arched a brow. “Why?”

That silvery flame flashed in Nesta’s eyes. A shiver slithered along Bryce’s spine. Fae and yet … not.

“Call it intuition,” Nesta said, and stepped onto the bridge.



* * *



They’d made it halfway across the narrow bridge—Bryce doing everything she could not to think about the lack of railings, the seemingly endless drop to that thundering river—when they heard it. A new noise, barely audible above the rapids’ roar.

Talons skittering over stone.

From above and below.

“Hurry.” Nesta drew that plain-yet-remarkable sword. At the touch of her hand, silver flames skittered down the blade and—

The breath whooshed out of Bryce. The sword pulsed, as if all the air around it had vanished. It was like the Starsword, somehow. A sword, but more. Just as Nesta was Fae but more.

“What is your sword—”

“Hurry,” Nesta repeated, stalking across the rest of the bridge.

Bryce mastered herself enough to obey, moving as fast as she dared given the plunge gaping on either side.

Leathery wings fluttered. Those talons scraped along the stone mere feet ahead—

Bryce damned caution to Hel and jogged toward the tunnel mouth beyond, where Nesta was waving at her to hurry the fuck up, sword gleaming faintly in her other hand.

Then Bryce’s star illuminated the rock framing the tunnel’s mouth.

She ran.

A teeming mass of things crusted the entrance, smaller than the beasts beneath the dungeon, but almost worse. Cruder, more leathery. Like some sort of primordial bat-lizard hybrid. Black tongues tasted the air between flesh-shredding, clear teeth. Like the kristallos, bred and raised for eons in darkness—

A few of the creatures leapt, swooping into the void below, off on the hunt—

The tunnel, the bridge, rumbled.

Bryce staggered, the drop looming sickeningly closer, and a white wave of panic blinded every sense—

Training and Fae grace caught her, and Bryce could have wept with relief that she hadn’t tumbled into that void. Especially as something massive and slimy lurched from below, the size of two city buses.

An enormous worm, gleaming with water and mud.

A mouth full of rows of teeth opened wide and snapped—

Bryce fell back on her ass as the worm caught three of the flying lizards between those teeth. Swallowed them all in one bite.

Her starlight flared, casting the whole cavern in light and shadow.

The creatures on the walls screeched—either at the worm or the light—flapping off their perches and right into the creature’s opening jaws. Another snapping bite, river water and metallic-reeking mud spraying with the movement, and more vanished down the worm’s throat.

Bryce could only stare.

One twist of its behemoth body and it’d be upon her. One bite and she’d be swallowed. Her starlight could do nothing against it. It had no eyes. It likely operated on smell, and there she was, a trembling treat offered up on that bridge—

A strong, slim hand grabbed Bryce under the shoulder and dragged her back.

Sensations pelted her: rock scraping beneath her as she was dragged, light and shadows and shrieking flying things, her back stinging as debris sliced her skin, the wet slap of the worm’s massive body as it surged from the depths again, snatching at the beasts—

She couldn’t stop shaking as Nesta dropped her a safe distance into the tunnel. The worm took a few more bites at the air, the cavern shuddering with each of its powerful thrusts upward. The iron smell grew stronger—blood. It misted the air alongside the river water.

Every snap of the worm’s jaws boomed through the rock, through Bryce’s bones.

She could only watch in mute horror as more creatures disappeared between those teeth. As the tang of more blood filled the air. Until the worm at last began sinking down, down, down. Back toward the river and wherever its lair lay below.

Nesta’s breathing was as harsh as Bryce’s, and when Bryce finally peered at the warrior, she found Nesta’s gaze already on her. Displeasure and something like disappointment filled Nesta’s pretty face as she said, “You froze out there.”

Hot anger washed away Bryce’s lingering shudders, the stinging from her scraped skin, and she shoved to her feet. “What the fuck was that thing?”

Nesta glanced to the shadows behind Bryce, as if someone stood there. But she said, “A Middengard Wyrm.”

“Middengard?” Bryce started at the word. “Like—Midgard? Did they come from my world originally?”

Horrific as the creature was, to have another being from her world here was … oddly comforting. And maybe finding a scrap of comfort in that fact proved how fucking desperate she was.

“I don’t know,” Nesta said.

“Are they common around here?” If they were, no wonder the Fae had bailed on this world.

“No,” Nesta said, a muscle ticking in her jaw. “As far as I know, they’re rare. But I’ve seen my sister’s paintings of the one she defeated. I thought her renderings exaggerated, but it was as monstrous as she depicted it.” She shook her head, shock honing into something cold and sharp once more. “I didn’t know more than one existed.” Her eyes swept over Bryce in a warrior’s wary assessment. “What manner of power is it that you possess? What sort of light is this?”