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The asp shifter gave up on the engine and fled the cab, sprinting down the road. Bryce took aim, just as Randall had taught her, and waited for the shot to come to her.
Another crack of the gun. The male dropped.
Bryce blazed for a long moment, the world bleached into blinding white.
Slowly, carefully, she spooled the light back into herself. Smothered it, the secret she and her parents had kept for so long. From her sire, from the Asteri, from Midgard.
From Ruhn.
The pure light of a star—from another world. From long, long ago. The gift of the ancient Fae, reborn again. Light, but nothing more than that. Not an Asteri, who possessed brute power of the stars. Just light.
It meant nothing to her. But the Starborn gifts, the title—they had always meant something to Ruhn. And that first time she’d met him, she’d intended to share her secret with him. He’d been kind, joyful at finding a new sister. She’d instantly known she could trust him with this secret, hidden thing.
But then she’d seen their father’s cruelty. Seen how that Starborn gift gave her brother just the slightest edge against that fucking monster. Seen the pride her brother denied but undoubtedly felt at being Starborn, blessed and chosen by Urd.
She couldn’t bring herself to tell Ruhn the truth. Even after things fell apart, she hid it. Would never tell anyone—anyone at all. Except Danika.
Blue skies and olive trees filtered back in, color returning to the world as Bryce hid the last of her starlight inside her chest. Danika still trembled on the asphalt.
“Danika,” Bryce said.
Danika lowered her hands from her face. Opened her eyes. Bryce waited for the terror her mother had warned about, should someone learn what she bore. The strange, terrible light that had come from another world.
But there was only wonder on Danika’s face.
Wonder—and love.
Bryce stood before the Gate, holding the star she’d kept hidden within her heart, and let the light build. Let it flow out of her chest, untethered and pure.
Even with the void mere feet away, Hel just a step beyond it, a strange sense of calm wended through her. She’d kept this light a secret for so long, had lived in such utter terror of anyone finding out, that despite everything, relief filled her.
There had been so many times these weeks when she was sure Ruhn would realize it at last. Her blatant disinterest in learning about anything related to the first Starborn, Prince Pelias and Queen Theia, had bordered on suspicious, she’d feared. And when he’d laid the Starsword on the table in the gallery library and it had hummed, shimmering, she’d had to physically pull back to avoid the instinct to touch it, to answer its silent, lovely song.
Her sword—it was her sword, and Ruhn’s. And with that light in her veins, with the star that slumbered inside her heart, the Starsword had recognized her not as a royal, worthy Fae, but as kin. Kin to those who had forged it so long ago.
Like called to like. Even the kristallos’s venom in her leg had not been able to stifle the essence of what she was. It had blocked her access to the light, but not what lay stamped in her blood. The moment the venom had come out of her leg, as Hunt’s lips had met hers that first time, she’d felt it awaken again. Freed.
And now here she was, the starlight building within her hands.
It was a useless gift, she’d decided as a child. It couldn’t do much at all beyond blinding people, as she’d done to her father’s men when they came after her and her mother and Randall, as had happened to the Oracle when the seer peered into her future and beheld only her blazing light, as she’d done to those asp-hole smugglers.
Only her father’s unfaltering Fae arrogance and snobbery had kept him from realizing it after her Oracle visit. The male was incapable of imagining anyone but pure Fae being blessed by fate.
Blessed—as if this gift made her something special. It didn’t. It was an old power and nothing more. She had no interest in the throne or crown or palace that could come with it. None.
But Ruhn … He might have claimed otherwise, but the first time he’d told her about his Ordeal, when he’d won the sword from its ancient resting place in Avallen, she’d seen how his face had glowed with pride that he’d been able to draw the sword from its sheath.
So she’d let him have it, the title and the sword. Had tried to open Ruhn’s eyes to their father’s true nature as often as she could, even if it made her father resent her further.
She would have kept this burning, shining secret inside her until her dying day. But she’d realized what she had to do for her city. This world.
The dregs of the light flowed out of her chest, all of it now cupped between her palms.
She’d never done it before—wholly removed the star itself. She’d only glowed and blinded, never summoned its burning core from inside her. Her knees wobbled, and she gritted her teeth against the strain of holding the light in place.
At least she’d spoken to Hunt one last time. She hadn’t expected him to be able to pick up. Had thought the phone would go right to audiomail where she could say everything she wanted. The words she still hadn’t said aloud to him.
She didn’t let herself think of it as she took the final step to the Gate’s quartz archway.
