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

Ithan glanced to the empty ring. “Where’s the dragon?”

The Viper Queen pulled out her phone and typed into it, the screen casting her already pale face in an unearthly pallor. “Ariadne? Oh, she’s no longer in my employ.”

“What?” Tharion and Flynn blurted at the same time.

The Viper Queen didn’t look up from her phone, thumbs flying. The light bounced off her long nails, also painted a metallic gold. “An offer too good to refuse came in an hour ago.”

“She’s not your slave,” Tharion snapped, face more livid than Ithan had ever seen. “You don’t fucking own her.”

“No,” the Viper Queen agreed, typing away, “but the arrangement was … advantageous to us both. She agreed.” She at last lifted her head. Nothing remotely kind lay within her green eyes as she surveyed Tharion. “If you ask me, I think she said yes in order to avoid having to toast Holstrom to a crisp. I wonder who might have made her feel bad about that?”

They all turned to the mer, who gaped at the Viper Queen.

“Of course,” the Vipe went on, typing again on her phone, “I didn’t inform her new employer that the dragon’s a softhearted worm. But given her new surroundings, I think she’ll harden up quickly.” The swish of a message being sent punctuated her words.

Tharion looked like he was going to be sick. Ithan didn’t blame him.

But Ithan willed himself to focus, his breathing to steady. She wanted him off-balance. Wanted him reeling. He squared his shoulders. “So who am I fighting, then?”

The Viper Queen slid her phone into her pocket and smiled, revealing those too-white teeth.

“The Fendyr heir, of course.”



* * *



“We should get Rhys.”

“We’d have to hike up through the mountain, climb down past the wards, then hope we’re not too far to reach him mind-to-mind.”

Bryce listened to Azriel and Nesta quietly argue, content to let them debate while she took in the chamber.

“This place is lethal,” Azriel insisted gravely. “The wards in there are sticky as tar.”

“Yes,” Nesta admitted, “but we’ve come all this way, so let’s see why we’ve been dragged here.”

“Why she’s been dragged here—by that star.” They both turned toward her at last, expressions taut.

Bryce composed her own face into the portrait of innocence as she asked, “What is the Prison?”

Nesta’s lips pursed for a heartbeat before she said, “A misty island off the coast of our lands.” She glanced at Azriel and mused, “Do you think we somehow walked beneath the ocean?”

Azriel slowly shook his head, his dark hair shining in the faelights bobbing overhead. “There’s no way we walked that far. The door must have been a portal of some sort, moving us from the mainland out here.”

Nesta’s brows lifted. “How is that possible?”

“There are caves and doors throughout the land,” Azriel said, “that open into distant places. Maybe that was one of them.” His gaze flicked to Bryce, noting how closely she was listening to all that, and said, “Let’s go in.”

He took Bryce’s hand in his broad, callused one, pulling her toward the chamber beyond.

His face was a mask of cold determination in the light of the golden orbs floating over them, his hazel eyes darting around to monitor the gloom.

This close to him, hand in hand, she could feel the sword and dagger again thrumming and pulsing. They throbbed against her eardrums—

The hilt of the Starsword shifted in her direction—she could have reached out and touched it with her other hand. One movement, and its hilt would be in her grip.

Azriel shot her a warning look.

Bryce kept her face bland, bored. Had his glance been to warn her to be careful for her own safety, or for her not to make one wrong move?

Maybe both.

Too soon, too quickly, they neared the entrance to the large, round chamber at the end of the short passage. The faelight danced over carvings etched and embossed onto the stone floor, as ornate and detailed as those in the tunnels leading here. The entire floor of the chamber was covered with them.

But between her and that room hung a sense of foreboding, of heaviness, of keep the fuck out.

Even the sword and dagger seemed to go quiet. Her star remained extinguished. Like their task was done. They’d arrived at the place they’d been compelled to bring her.

Bryce sucked in a breath. “I’m going in. Keep a step back,” she warned Azriel.

“And miss the fun?” Azriel muttered. Nesta chuckled behind them.

“I mean it,” Bryce said, trying to tug her hand from his. “You stay here.”

His fingers tightened on hers, not letting go. “What do you sense?”

“Wards,” Bryce replied, again scanning the arena-sized cavern ahead. And there, right in the center of the space …

Another eight-pointed star.

It must have been the one Nesta had seen before. As if in answer, the star on Bryce’s chest flared, then dimmed.

Nesta stepped up beside them, pointing. “The Harp sat atop that star.”

“Harp?” Bryce asked, not missing the glare that Azriel directed at Nesta. But Nesta’s eyes remained on the star as she said, more to herself than to them, “It was held there by those wards.”