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

The fabric of his gray T-shirt pulled over his chest as his shoulders tensed.

Bryce pointed to the orrery. “The Astronomer said you had some Avallen craftsmen make that for you. Fancy.” The Autumn King’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the Astronomer, but he didn’t look up from his paper. Bryce plowed on, “He said the orrery is to contemplate fundamental questions about ourselves, like who we are and where we came from. I have a hard time believing you’re in here all day, thinking about anything that profound.”

His pen stalled on the paper. “The Fae bloodlines have been weakening for generations now. It is my life’s work to investigate why. This orrery was built in pursuit of answering that question.”

She blew on her nails. “Especially after little old me became a certified Starborn Princess, huh?”

His fingers tightened on his pen, hard enough that she was surprised the gold plating didn’t dent. “The question of our failing bloodlines plagued me long before you were born.”

“Why? Who cares?”

He lifted his head at last, his eyes cold and dead. “I care if our people are weakening. If we become lesser than the angels, the shifters, the witches.”

“So it’s about your ego, then.”

“It’s about our survival. The Fae stand in a favorable position with the Asteri. If our power wanes, they will lose interest in maintaining that. Others will creep in to take what we have, predators around a carcass. And the Asteri won’t lift a finger to stop them.”

“And this is why you and Morven schemed to throw me and Cormac together?”

“King Morven has noticed the fading as well. But he has the luxury of hiding behind Avallen’s mists.”

Bryce drummed her fingers on the smooth rolled arm of her chair. “Is it true that the Asteri can’t pierce the mists around Avallen?”

“Morven is almost certain they can’t. Though I don’t know if Rigelus has ever tried to breach the barriers.” He glanced toward the tall windows to his left, toward the dome of the glamour shimmering above the olive trees and lavender beds. As much of a barrier as he could ever hope to hide behind.

Bryce weighed her options, and ultimately dared to go for it as she asked, “Does the term thin place mean anything to you?”

He angled his head, and damn if it didn’t freak her the fuck out to see how similar the motion was to her own habits. “No. What is it?”

“Just something I heard once.”

“You lie. You learned of it in the home world of the Fae.”

Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. Maybe it was too dangerous to have revealed this to him. Not for her, but for the world she’d left. Bryce halted her fingers’ drumming, laying her hand flat on the cool, smooth leather arm. “I only heard the phrase, not the definition.”

He surveyed her, sensing that lie as well, but something like admiration brightened his eyes. “Defiant to a fault.”

Still seated, she sketched a half bow.

The Autumn King went on, idly twirling the pen between his fingers, “I always knew your mother was hiding something about you. She went to such lengths to conceal you from me.”

“Maybe because you’re a sociopath?”

His fingers tightened around the pen once more. “Ember loved me, once upon a time. Only something enormous would have severed that love.”

Bryce propped her chin on a fist, all innocent curiosity. “Like when you hit her? Something enormous like that?”

Fire licked along his shoulders, in his long hair. But his voice remained flat. “Let us not retread old ground. I have told you my feelings on the matter.”

“Yeah, you’re so sorry about it. Sorry enough that now you’ve done exactly what she was so scared of all along: locked me up in your villa.”

He motioned to the windows. “Has it occurred to you that here, hidden from the world and any spying eyes, you are safe? That should anyone on Midgard have learned of your return, word would soon have reached the Eternal Palace and you would be dead?”

Bryce put a hand on her chest. “I totally love how you’re building yourself up as my savior—really, A for effort on that front—but let’s cut the bullshit. I’m locked up here because you want something from me. What is it?”

He didn’t answer, and instead twisted to adjust one of the settings on some sort of prism-like device. Whatever he’d done sent the sunlight piercing through the orrery’s assortment of planets.

A prism—the total opposite of what she’d done with her powers when she’d fought Nesta and Azriel. Where she’d condensed light, the prism fractured it.

She glanced at her hands, so pale against the bloodred of the leather chair. She’d been riding on adrenaline and despair and bravado. How had she managed to make her light into a laser in those last moments in the Fae world? It had been intuitive in the moment, but now … Maybe it was better not to know. Not to think about how her light seemed to be edging closer to the properties of an Asteri’s destructive power.

“Ruhn told me that you hole up in here all day looking for patterns,” Bryce said, nodding to the orrery, the prism device, the assortment of golden tools on the desk. “What sort of patterns?” She and Ruhn had enjoyed a good laugh over that—the thought of the mighty Autumn King as little more than a conspiracy theorist. What does he think he’s going to find? Ruhn had asked, snickering. That the universe is playing a giant game of tic-tac-toe?