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

My mother would trust only us. Pelias, she might have once included, but he had taken to the pleasures of this new world too eagerly, championed by Rigelus himself.

A glimpse through a curtain of Pelias dumping a human woman’s body into a river beside a white-stoned villa. Bruised and naked and dead.

Bryce nearly fell to her knees as the brutalized woman’s corpse drifted and sank beneath the clear river, Pelias already long gone.

“They’ve got some nerve,” Nesta grated out. “They were murdering children in those human cities.”

“It’s still going on today,” Bryce said hoarsely. “Humans tossed in dumpsters after the Vanir have tormented and killed them. It goes on every single day in Midgard, and it started with that fucker.” She pointed a shaking finger at the memory. “With him, and Theia, and all those monsters.”

She might have truly erupted then, but Silene continued her story.

My mother eventually trusted only Helena and myself to seek the truth. She knew we could be of great use to her, because we bore the shadows as well as starlight.

Helena and Silene crept through the dimness of a mighty crystal palace. Down a winding crystal staircase. “That’s the Asteri’s palace,” Bryce whispered to Azriel and Nesta. “In the Eternal City.”

We spent a month hidden in the enemy’s stronghold, no more than shadows ourselves. By the time we returned to our mother, we’d learned the truth: Rigelus and his companions were not Fae at all, but parasites who conquered world after world, feeding off the magic and lives of their citizens. The Daglan, now under their true name: the Asteri.

It was then that my mother told us, showed us, what had happened so long ago. All that she had done since. But she did not waste time apologizing for the past. If we had indeed walked into an enemy’s trap, she said, then we must defeat them.

Bryce placed a hand over the star-shaped scar on her chest, fingers curling into the fabric of her shirt. Could she carve it out of herself, the connection to these two-faced hypocrites, and walk away from it forever?

My mother had kept the star map that the Daglan had long ago annotated. And a world on it had caught her attention—a world, like ours, that had overthrown the Daglan.

In an elaborate bedroom, standing before a desk with her two daughters, Theia waved a hand. As if she’d pulled them from that pocket of nothingness, the Harp and Horn appeared on the desk, glimmering alongside the Starsword and the knife.

Theia nodded once, slowly, as if making a decision, and then played the Horn and Harp. A portal between worlds swirled. It solidified, an archway to nowhere. A handsome, golden-haired male stood before it, with eyes like blue opals.

Bryce inhaled sharply.

Prince Aidas only asked my mother one thing when she opened the gate to his world: “Have you come to ask for Hel’s help, then?”



* * *



Hunt cringed as Baxian vomited blood and flesh and bone. All of it splattered on the floor below them, and the smell—

Ruhn was gasping, shaking, but the prince hadn’t asked the Helhound to stop.

“A little more,” Baxian said, panting hard. Hunt’s own stomach churned at the blood sliding down the male’s chin. “Two more bites and it’ll be off.”

Ruhn whimpered but nodded grimly. They swung into each other, legs locking tight, and Baxian gave no warning before he bit down again. There was no time to waste.

Hunt shut out the sounds. The smells. Bryce and his future and those beautiful kids—that was the image he held in his mind instead. Escape—survival—was the goal. Bryce was the goal.

Even if he had no idea how he’d face her again after failing to protect them from this fate. After agreeing to let his friends do this. He had no idea how he’d look her in the eye.

Ruhn let out a muffled shout, and Baxian retched again, mouth still around Ruhn’s wrist. Balking.

They’d come too fucking far to stop now. So Hunt said, voice hardening into that cold, flat tone of the Umbra Mortis, just as Ruhn had said they needed, “Again, Baxian.”

“Please,” Ruhn moaned, and it wasn’t a request to stop, but to hurry. To get it over with.

“Again,” the Umbra Mortis ordered Baxian.

Baxian, who’d shouldered this unspeakable task for Hunt so he didn’t have to endure it—

The Helhound heaved forward, teeth clamping down, and crunched.

Ruhn screamed, swinging away wildly.

Hunt didn’t know where to look first. At Baxian, spewing blood and flesh onto the stones beneath him. At the hand and part of a wrist still attached to the chain, or at Ruhn surging for the rack, sobbing through his teeth at all the weight now on one arm, feet straining—

Hunt acted, lifting his feet and pushing. Ruhn’s toes nudged the top of the iron.

“More,” Hunt barked. He’d become the Umbra Mortis, become that fucking monster again if it gave his friends a shot at survival—

Ruhn swung toward Hunt, blood everywhere, and Hunt steeled himself, then gave him another kick. The prince’s toes connected with the iron poker. Held. And as he swung back—the poker came with him.

Ruhn came to a halt, dangling from that one arm. How the fuck would Ruhn curl upward with one arm, not two? Hunt began swinging for him. If he could use his legs and help Ruhn twist—

“What acrobatics,” drawled a familiar male voice from the doorway. “And what determination.”