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“They don’t realize that you haven’t fed in thousands of years, and I can kick your ass.”
“We realized it,” Nesta muttered.
“Let’s start with the basics, leech,” Bryce said to the Asteri. “Where did—”
“You may call me Vesperus.” The creature’s eyes glowed with irritation.
“Are you related to Hesperus?” Bryce arched a brow at the name, so similar to one of Midgard’s Asteri. “The Evening Star?”
“I am the Evening Star,” Vesperus seethed.
Bryce rolled her eyes. “Fine, we’ll call you the Evening Star, too. Happy?”
“Is it not fitting?” A wave of long fingers capped in sharp nails. “I drank from the land’s magic, and the land’s magic drank from me.”
“Where did you come from, before you arrived here?”
Vesperus folded her hands in her lap. “A planet that was once green, as this one is.”
“And that wasn’t good enough?”
“We grew too populous. Wars broke out between the various beings on our world. Some of us saw the changes in the land beginning—rivers run dry, clouds so thick the sun could not pierce them—and left. Our brightest minds found ways to bend the fabric of worlds. To travel between them. Wayfarers, we called them. World-walkers.”
“So you trashed your planet, then went to feed off others?”
“We had to find sustenance.”
Bryce’s fingers curled against the rock floor, but her voice remained steady. “If you knew how to open portals between worlds, why did you need to rely on the Dread Trove?”
“Once we left our home world, our powers began to dim. Too late, we realized that we had been dependent on our land’s inherent magic. The magic in other worlds was not potent enough. Yet we could not find the way back home. Those of us who ventured here found ways to amplify that power, thanks to the gifts of the land. We pooled our power, and imbued those gifts into the Cauldron so that it would work our will. We Made the Trove from it. And then bound the very essence of the Cauldron to the soul of this world.”
Solas. “So destroy the Cauldron …”
“And you destroy this world. One cannot exist without the other.”
Behind them, Nesta sucked in a sharp breath. But Bryce said, “You gave this world a kill switch.”
“We gave many worlds … kill switches. To protect our interests.” She said it with such calm, such surety.
“Do you know Rigelus?”
“You speak his name very casually for a worm.”
“We’re closely acquainted.”
A slight pursing of the lips. “I knew him in passing. I’m assuming you wish to slay him—and have come to ask me how to do it.”
Bryce said nothing.
Vesperus leveled a cold look at her. “I will not help you in that regard. I will not betray the secrets of my people.”
“Was this sort of compassion the reason Theia didn’t kill you?”
Vesperus glowered. “Theia knew that for my kind, this sort of punishment would be far worse than death. To be confined, yet live. To neither breathe, nor eat, nor drink—but to be left in half slumber, starving.” That gleam in her eyes—it wasn’t solely rage. It was madness. “It would have been a mercy to kill me. Theia did not understand the word. I raised her from childhood not to. She would come down here every now and then and stare at me—I slept, but I could sense her there. Gloating over me. Convinced of her triumph.”
A chill skittered down Bryce’s spine. “She kept you down here as a trophy.”
Vesperus’s chin dipped in a nod. “I believe she drew pleasure from my suffering.”
