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The mountain shook again. Nesta and Azriel had halted ten feet away, Ataraxia a blazing light, Truth-Teller enveloped by shadows. The Starsword remained sheathed at Azriel’s back—but she could have sworn it twitched. As if urging Azriel to draw it.
Nesta warned Bryce, her eyes on the shaking earth, “If you open those cells—”
“I don’t want to fight you,” Bryce said, voice oddly hollow, like the surge of magic she’d taken from Silene’s store had emptied out her soul. “I’m not your enemy.”
“Then let us bring you back to our High Lord,” Nesta snapped. Ataraxia flashed in answer.
“To do what? Lock me up? Cut the Horn out of my skin?”
“If that’s what’s necessary,” Nesta said coldly, knees bending, readying to strike. “If that’s what it takes to keep our world safe.”
Bryce bared her teeth in a feral grin. More spikes of rock shot up from the ground, angling toward Nesta and Azriel. “Then come and take it.”
With a flap of his wings, Azriel burst toward her, fast as a striking panther—
Bryce stomped her foot. Those spikes of stone stretched higher, blocking his way. Blue light flared from him, smashing through the stones.
Bryce stomped her foot again, summoning more lethal spears of rock—but there were none left. Only a vast, gaping void.
Bryce had only a second to realize there literally was a void below her feet, before the ground beneath them collapsed entirely.
23
If the prisoners had done something as drastic as biting off Ruhn’s hand, they had to be dangerously close to breaking. Which left Lidia with too little time, and too few options.
The one before her now seemed the wisest and swiftest. She could only trust that Declan Emmet had gotten the coded message she’d sent through her secure labyrinth of channels and was turning the cameras away at this very moment.
The Mistress of the Mystics had scuttled off as soon as Lidia had stalked through the doors to the dank hall—surely to grouse to Rigelus about Lidia’s unexpected arrival. She’d ordered Lidia to wait at the front desk.
Lidia had lingered long enough to ensure the mistress had indeed left, then promptly ignored her order.
“Irithys,” Lidia said to the sprite lying on the bottom of the crystal ball. Curled on her side, the queen remained asleep. Or pretended to be. “I need your help.”
The Sprite Queen cracked open an eye. “To torture more people?”
“To torture me.”
Irithys opened both eyes this time. Slowly sat up. “What?”
Lidia brought her face close to the crystal and said quietly, “There is an angel in the dungeon. Hunt Athalar.”
Irithys sucked in a breath—she knew him. How could she not, as one of the Fallen in her own way? Though Irithys hadn’t fought in the failed rebellion, she’d been born into the consequences: heir to a damned people, a queen enslaved upon the moment of her crowning. She’d know every key player in the saga—know every decision that had led to the punishment that rippled across generations of sprites.
“He has begun the fight anew. And this spring, a sprite befriended him; she died to save his mate. Her name was Lehabah. She claimed to be a descendent of Queen Ranthia Drahl.” Just as Lidia had seen the footage of Athalar slaying Sandriel, so, too, had she witnessed the final stand of the fire sprite who had saved Bryce Quinlan. Rigelus had considered it imperative that Lidia know everything about the threat to the Asteri’s power.
Irithys’s eyes widened at the mention of their long-dead queen’s line. The bloodline believed gone. The queen whose decision to rebel alongside Athalar and his Archangel had led to this enslaved fate for all sprites, for Irithys herself. But she said evenly, “So?”
Lidia said, “I need you to help me free Hunt Athalar and two of his companions.”
Irithys stood, flame a mistrusting yellow. “Is this another warm-up?”
Lidia didn’t have time for lies, for games. “The warm-up with Hilde was a test. Not to see what you could do, but who you are.”
The queen’s head angled. The yellow hue remained.
Lidia said, “To see if you were as honorable as I had hoped. As trustworthy.”
“For what?” The sprite spat the words, sparks of pure red flying from her.
