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

These people weren’t her friends or allies. This might be the home world of the Fae, but who the fuck knew what they wanted or aspired to? Rhysand and Azriel looked pretty, but Urd knew the Fae of Midgard had used their beauty for millennia to get what they wanted.

Rhysand didn’t need to read her mind—no, he seemed to read all that on her own face. He uncrossed his legs, bracing both feet on the stone floor. “Allow me to lay out the situation for you, Bryce Quinlan.”

She made herself meet his star-flecked stare. She’d taken on the Asteri and Archangels and Fae Kings and walked away. She’d take him on, too.

The corner of Rhysand’s mouth curled upward. “We will not torture it from you, nor will I pry it from your mind. If you choose not to talk, it is indeed your choice. Precisely as it will be my choice to keep you down here until you decide otherwise.”

Bryce couldn’t stop herself from coolly surveying the room, her attention lingering on the grate and the hissing that drifted up from it. “I’ll be sure to recommend it to my friends as a vacation spot.”

Stars winked out in Rhysand’s eyes. “Can we expect any others to arrive here from your world?”

She gave the truest answer she could. “No. As far as I know, they’ve been looking for this place for fifteen thousand years, but I’m the only one who’s ever made it back.”

“Who is they?”

“The Asteri. I told you—intergalactic parasites.”

“What does that mean?”

“They are …” Bryce paused. Who was to say these people wouldn’t hand her right over to Rigelus? Bow to him? Theia had come from this world and fought the Asteri, but Pelias had bought what they were selling and gleefully knelt at their immortal feet.

Her pause said enough. Amren snorted. “Don’t waste your breath, Rhysand.”

Rhysand angled his head, a predator studying prey. Bryce withstood it, chin high. Her mother would have been proud of her.

He snapped his fingers again, and the blood, the dirt on her, disappeared. A stickiness still coated her skin, but it was clean. She blinked down at herself, then up at him.

A cruel half smile graced his mouth. “To incentivize you.”

Amren and Azriel remained stone-faced. Waiting.

She’d be stupid to believe Rhysand’s incentive meant anything good about him. But she could play this game.

So Bryce said, “The Asteri are ancient. Like tens of thousands of years old.” She winced at the memory of that room beneath their palace, the records of conquests going back millennia, complete with their own unique dating system.

Her captors didn’t reply, didn’t so much as blink. Fine—insane old age wasn’t totally nuts to them.

“They arrived in my world fifteen thousand years ago. No one knows from where.”

“What do you mean by arrived?” Rhysand asked.

“Honestly? I have no idea how they first got to Midgard. The history they spun was that they were … liberators. Enlighteners. According to them, they found Midgard little more than a backwater planet occupied by non-magical humans and animals. The Asteri chose it as the place to begin creating a perfect empire, and creatures and races from other worlds soon flocked to it through a giant rip between worlds called the Northern Rift. Which now only opens to Hel, but it used to open to … anywhere.”

Amren pushed, “A rip. How does that happen?”

“Beats me,” Bryce said. “No one’s ever figured out how it’s even possible—why it’s at that spot in Midgard, and not others.”

Rhysand asked, “What happened after these beings arrived in your world?”

Bryce sucked her teeth before saying, “In the official version of this story, another world, Hel, tried to invade Midgard. To destroy the fledgling empire—and everyone living in it. But the Asteri unified all these new people under one banner and pushed Hel back to its own realm. In the process, the Northern Rift was fixed with its destination permanently on Hel. After that, it remained mostly closed. A massive wall was erected around it to keep any Hel-born stragglers from getting through the cracks, and the Asteri built a glorious empire meant to last for eternity. Or so we’re all ordered to believe.”

The faces in front of her remained impassive. Rhysand asked quietly, “And what is the unofficial story?”

Bryce swallowed, the room in the archives flashing through her memory. “The Asteri are ancient, immortal beings who feed on the power of others—they harvest the magic of a people, a world, and then eat it. We call it firstlight. It fuels our entire world, but mostly them. We’re required to hand it over upon reaching immortality—well, as close to immortality as we can get. We seize our full, mature power through a ritual called the Drop, and in the process, some of our power is siphoned off and given over to the firstlight stores for the Asteri. It’s like a tax on our magic.”

She wasn’t even going to touch upon what happened after death. How the power that lingered in their souls was eventually harvested as well, forced by the Under-King into the Dead Gate and turned into secondlight to fuel the Asteri even more. Whatever reached them after the Under-King ate his fill.

Amren angled her head, sleek bob shifting with the movement. “A tax on your magic, taken by ancient beings for their own nourishment and power.” Azriel’s gaze shifted to her, Rhysand presumably still translating mind-to-mind. But Amren murmured to herself, as if the words triggered something, “A tithe.”