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Bryce pointed to the place where Silene had stood. “That fucking bitch locked out children to save herself and then tried to justify it.”
It was no different than what the Valbaran Fae had done this spring in Crescent City—locking the innocents out of their villas while they cowered inside, protected by their wards.
“What did you …,” Nesta began, a shade gently. “What was it that you expected to find here?”
“I don’t know.” Bryce let out a bitter laugh. “I thought maybe … maybe they’d have some answer about how to kill the Asteri. But she glossed over that part. I thought that in the thousands of years since then, maybe the Fae of Midgard had evolved into the reprehensible shitheads they are. Not that they were reprehensible all along.”
She scrubbed at her face, eyes stinging. “I thought having Theia’s light was … good. Like she was somehow better than Pelias. But she wasn’t.” And Aidas had loved her? “I thought it’d somehow give me an edge in this shitshow. But it fucking doesn’t. It just means I’m the heir to a legacy of selfish, scheming assholes.”
And worse, that parasite in Midgard’s waters … what could even be done against that? Bryce sucked in a shuddering breath.
A gentle hand rested on her shoulder. Nesta.
“We need to tell Rhys,” Azriel said hoarsely. Like he was still reeling from all he’d heard. “Immediately.”
Bryce’s gaze snapped to his face. The concern and determination there. Everything he’d seen … it was a threat to this world, to the people in it.
Azriel asked her with terrifying calm, “What happened to the Horn?”
Bryce held his stare, seething, beyond trying to spin any bullshit.
But Nesta said, “She is the Horn, Azriel. It’s inked into her flesh.” She lowered her hand from Bryce’s shoulder and peered at her. “Isn’t that right? It’s the only thing that would have made your tattoo react that way earlier.”
Azriel’s hazel eyes flickered with predatory intent. He’d carve it out of her fucking back.
If she ran for the exit tunnel … They’d said something about a climb out of here, then a hike down a mountain.
But this court was an island. She wouldn’t be able to get away from them.
Azriel began circling her with an unhurried, calculating precision. Bryce turned with him, keeping him in sight, but doing so exposed her back to Nesta, who she suspected might be the apex predator in the room.
“That’s how you got to this world,” Nesta went on, backing up a step—no doubt to provide space to draw Ataraxia. “Why you, and no one else, can come. Why you said no one would be able to follow you here. Because only you have the Horn. Only you can move between worlds.”
“You got me,” Bryce said, throwing up her hands in mock surrender and taking a step out of Nesta’s range. “I’m a big, bad, world-jumping monster. Like my ancestors.”
“You’re a liability,” Nesta said flatly, eyes taking on that silvery sheen—that otherworldly fire.
“I told you guys a hundred times already: I didn’t even want to come here—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nesta said. “You did come here, to the place where the Daglan are still apparently dead set on returning.”
“The Asteri would need the Horn to open a portal. They might find me, but they can’t get in.”
“But you want to go home,” Nesta said, “and for that you’ll have to open a door to Midgard. What if Rigelus is right there? Waiting to come through?”
Bryce turned to keep facing Azriel, but—
Only shadows surrounded her.
Nesta had distracted her, enough that her focus had slipped and Azriel had vanished. They’d worked in silent, perfect tandem.
Not to attack, she realized, as a shadow darker than the ones around it raced for the tunnel across the chamber. But to go get reinforcements.
“No!” Bryce threw out a hand, and light ruptured from her fingers. It slammed into Azriel’s shadows, fracturing the darkness and revealing the warrior beneath. But not enough to stop his sprint—
She needed more power.
The eight-pointed star at her feet glimmered. As if her magic had nudged something within it. Like embers flaring in stirred ashes. What if her star hadn’t been guiding her to the knowledge, but to something … different? Something tangible.
