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“I don’t blame her,” Bryce snapped, even as a sick feeling filled her stomach. Theia might have helped Midgard in the end, but she was no better than the monster who’d raised her.
“I have questions for you, too, mongrel.”
“By all means,” Bryce said, waving her hand.
“If we lost the war to Theia, if my people are now a mere myth, how is it that you know Rigelus intimately? Do the Asteri still dwell here?”
“No,” Bryce said. “I came from another world. One where the Asteri remain in control.”
“How long have the Asteri ruled?”
“Fifteen thousand years.”
“Rigelus must be very pleased with himself.”
“Oh, he is.”
But the Asteri looked from Bryce to Azriel and Nesta behind her, brows lifting. “Is life so unbearable under our rule that you must always defy us?”
Yes. No. For Bryce, life had been fine. Shitty in spots, but fine. But for so many others …
“Does it matter,” Vesperus pushed on, addressing Bryce once more, “that we take a little of your power? What would you even do with it?”
“It matters that we’re lied to,” Bryce said. “That our power is not yours for the taking. That your supremacy is unchecked and unearned.”
“There is a natural order to the universe, girl. The strong rule the weak, and the weak benefit from it. Everything in nature preys and is preyed upon. You Fae somehow consider this an affront only when it is applied to you.”
“I’m not going to debate the ethics of conquest with you. Rigelus and the others have no right to my world, but they’ve poisoned the water in Midgard—it’s full of some sort of parasite that leaches our magic and requires us to offer it up to the Asteri. How do I undo it?”
Vesperus’s eyes glowed with delight. “We’d hoped for something of this nature, rather than the Tithe, which required the consent”—she spat the word as if it tasted foul—“of our subjects, but we never figured out how … The water supply, you say?” A soft laugh. “Rigelus always was clever.”
“How the fuck do I undo it?”
“You seem to think me inclined to help you, when I would receive nothing in return.”
“I know what you want, and you’re not getting it.”
“And if I were to say that I have no wish to rule, only to live?”
“You’d still be a leech, who’d need to feed on these people. You don’t deserve to go free.”
“They have a place in this land for creatures like me. The unwanted. It is called the Middle. I have dreamt of it, seen it in my long slumber.”
“That’s not my decision to make.”
“Use the Crown that Made scum over there possesses.” Vesperus nodded to Nesta. “You could forge a path to enact your vision by clearing the minds of those before you.”
She had no idea what Vesperus meant, but Bryce countered coolly, “You guys had a long fucking time to figure out every way to justify your actions, huh?”
“We are superior beings. We do not need to justify anything.”
“You’d fit right in on Midgard.”
“If Rigelus has held on to his power for so long, then your world is firmly in his grasp. He will not abandon it. He will have learned from the mistakes my companions and I made on this world and on others.”
Bryce’s hand curled into a fist. The force of holding her power at bay sang through her.
Vesperus’s gaze darted to Bryce’s glowing fist. “Is it time for us to battle, then?”
