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“I didn’t realize making rainbows on the wall was so important to you.”
He ignored her. “This device refracts the light, pulling it apart so I might study every facet of it.” He pointed to a sister device positioned directly across from it. “That device gathers it back into one beam again. I am attempting to add more to the light in the process of re-forming it. If the light might be pulled apart and strengthened in its most basic form, there’s a chance that it will coalesce into a more powerful version of itself.”
She refrained from mentioning the blue stones Azriel had wielded—how they’d condensed and directed his power. Instead, she drawled, “And this is a good use of your time because …?”
His silence was biting.
“Let me do the math.” She began ticking items off on her fingers. “The Asteri are made of light. They feed on firstlight. You are studying light, its properties, beyond what science can already tell us …”
A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“Am I getting warm?” Bryce asked. “But if you have such questions about the Asteri, why not ask them yourself?” She hummed in contemplation. “Maybe you want to use this against them?”
He arched a brow. “Your imagination does run rampant.”
“Oh, totally. But you took zero interest in me as a kid. And now suddenly, once I revealed my magic light, you want me to be part of your fucked-up little family.”
“My only interest in you lies in the bloodline you stand to pass on.”
“Too bad Hunt complicates that.”
“More than you know.”
She paused, but didn’t fall for the trap of asking about it. She continued to lead him down the path of her rambling, resuming her counting on her fingers.
“So your daughter has light powers, you’re interested in patterns in light … you want the information hidden from the Asteri …” She chuckled, lowering her hand at last. “Oh, don’t even try to deny it,” she said when he opened his mouth. “If you wanted to help them, you’d have turned me over to them already.”
The Autumn King smiled. It was a thing of nightmarish beauty. “You truly are my child. More so than Ruhn ever was.”
“That’s not a compliment.” But she went on, content to needle him with her guesses. “You want to know if I can kill them, don’t you? The Asteri. If the Starborn light is different from their light, and how it is different. That’s where the orrery comes in: contemplating where we come from … what sort of light we have, how it can be weaponized.”
His nostrils flared again. “And did you learn such things on your journey?”
Bryce tapped her gorsian-shackled wrist. “Remove these and I can show you what I learned.”
He smirked, and picked up the prism device again. “I’ll wait.”
She hadn’t thought for a second that would work—but it seemed he knew it, too. That this was a game, a dance between them.
Bryce nodded to where he’d left the Starsword and Truth-Teller on the desk the day before. According to Ruhn, the Autumn King had rarely dared to touch the sword. It seemed like that was true, if he hadn’t moved the blades since her crash landing. “Let’s talk about how we can add another notch to my Magical Starborn Princess belt: I united the sword and knife. Prophecy fulfilled.”
“You don’t know anything about that prophecy,” the Autumn King said, and returned to his work.
She asked sweetly, “So my interpretation is wrong? When knife and sword are reunited, so shall our people be. Well, I went to our old world. Met some people. Reminded them we exist. Came back here. Thus, two people reunited.”
He shook his head in pure disgust. “You know as little about those blades as you do your own true nature.”
She made a show of yawning. “Well, I do know that only the Chosen One can handle the blades. Wait—does that mean you can’t? Since last I checked … only Ruhn and I got the Chosen One membership cards.”
“Ruhn doesn’t possess the raw power to handle such a thing correctly.”
“But I do?” she asked innocently. “Is that why I’m here? We’re going to cooperate in some kind of training montage so I can take down the Asteri for you?”
“Who says I want to get rid of the Asteri?”
“You’ve been really careful not to mention one way or another how you feel about them. One moment, you’re protecting me from them, the next you’re trying to keep the Fae in their good graces. Which is it?”
“Can it not be both?”
