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Declan’s king was still as death as Bryce smashed past Ruhn’s ranking. This could change their very order. A powerful half-human princess with a star’s light in her veins … Fucking Hel.
Bryce began slowing at last. Nearing the Autumn King’s level. Declan swallowed.
The city was awash with her light. Demons fled from it, racing back through the voids, opting to brave the glowing Gates rather than be trapped in Midgard.
Light shot up from the Gates, seven bolts becoming one in the heart of the city—above the Old Square Gate. A highway of power. Of Bryce’s will.
The voids between Midgard and Hel began to shrink. As if the light itself was abhorrent. As if that pure, unrestrained firstlight could heal the world.
And it did. Buildings shattered by brimstone slid back into place. Rubble gathered into walls and streets and fountains. Wounded people became whole again.
Bryce slowed further.
Declan ground his teeth. The voids within the Gates became smaller and smaller.
Demons rushed back to Hel through the shrinking doorways. More and more of the city healed as the Horn closed the portals. As Bryce sealed the portals, the Horn’s power flowing through her, amplified by the firstlight she was generating.
“Holy gods,” someone was whispering.
The voids between worlds became slivers. Then nothing at all.
The Gates stood empty. The portals gone.
Bryce stopped at last. Declan studied the precise number of her power, just a decimal point above that of the Autumn King.
Declan let out a soft laugh, wishing Ruhn were here to see the male’s shocked expression.
The Autumn King’s face tightened and he growled at Declan, “I would not be so smug, boy.”
Declan tensed. “Why?”
The Autumn King hissed, “Because that girl may have used the Gates’ power to Drop to unforeseen levels, but she will not be able to make the Ascent.”
Declan’s fingers stilled on the keys of his laptop.
The Autumn King laughed mirthlessly. Not from malice, Declan realized—but something like pain. He’d never known the prick could feel such a thing.
Bryce slumped to the stones beside the Gate. Declan didn’t need medical monitors to know her heart had flatlined.
Her mortal body had died.
A clock on the computer showing the Eleusian system began counting down from a six-minute marker. The indicator of how long she had to make the Search and the Ascent, to let her mortal, aging body die, to face what lay within her soul, and race back up to life, into her full power. And emerge an immortal.
If she made the Ascent, the Eleusian system would register it, track it.
The Autumn King said hoarsely, “She made the Drop alone. Danika Fendyr is dead—she is not a true Anchor. Bryce has no way back to life.”
93
This was the cradle of all life, this place.
There was a physical ground beneath her, and she had the sense of an entire world above her, full of distant, twinkling lights. But this was the bottom of the sea. The dark trench that cut through the skin of the earth.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered at all. Not with Danika standing before her. Holding her.
Bryce peeled away far enough to look at her beautiful, angular face. The corn-silk hair. It was the same, right down to the amethyst, sapphire, and rose streaks. She’d somehow forgotten the exact features of Danika’s face, but … there they were.
Bryce said, “You came.”
