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She said tightly, “You’re already a king here.”
“Of a continent. What is that to an entire planet?”
“You know, you might not be the Starborn Chosen One, but I think out of all of us, you’ve got the most in common with Theia. She thought the same damn thing. But she learned too late that Rigelus doesn’t share.”
“With the knife you brought back in play, he might find himself willing to bargain.”
Bryce gave him a flat look. “What makes you think the blades will do anything to him?”
“Those blades, united, would end him.”
“Trust me: I tried it on an Asteri and it didn’t do anything.” At least, not before Nesta had interfered.
If he was shocked by her confession, he didn’t let on. “Did you order them to work?”
“Hard to order them, shithead, when I don’t know what they can even do.”
“Open a portal to nowhere,” the Autumn King said, the flame guttering in his eyes.
“What do you mean?” Bryce demanded.
“The Starsword is Made, as you called it.” He waved an idle hand, sparks at his fingertips. “The knife can Unmake things. Made and Unmade. Matter and antimatter. With the right influx of power—a command from the one destined to wield them—they can be merged. And they can create a place where no life, no light exists. A place that is nothing. Nowhere.”
Her knees wobbled. “That’s not … that’s not possible.”
“It is. I read about it in the Avallen Archives centuries ago.”
“Then how do I do it? Just say ‘merge into nowhere’ and that’s that?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “My research has not revealed the steps to merge the blades. Only what they could do.”
Bryce stared at the male before her for a long moment. Glanced down the steps to the lower level—toward his study. “I want to see this research myself.”
“It is on Avallen, and females are not allowed beyond the lobby of the archives.”
“Yeah, our periods would probably get all over the books.”
His lip curled. “Perhaps it is lucky you weaseled out of your engagement to Cormac. Your coarseness wouldn’t have been well tolerated in Avallen.”
“Oh, they’d warm up to me once they saw me swinging around the Starsword and remembered who and what I am.”
“That would be an affront all on its own. A female has never possessed the blade.”
“What?” She barked a laugh that echoed off the stone walls. “In fifteen thousand years, you mean to tell me only males have claimed it?”
“As females are not allowed in the Cave of Princes, they had no opportunity to attempt to claim it, even if they had the starlight in their veins.”
Bryce gaped at him. “Are you fucking kidding me? They banned females from the Cave of Princes to keep us from getting our hands on the sword?”
His silence was answer enough.
She snapped, “I’m pretty sure there are rules, even in this shitty empire, against treating females like that.”
“Avallen has long been left mostly to govern itself, its ways hidden from the modern world behind its mists.”
“But there’s information, somewhere on Avallen, about what these blades can do.”
“Yes, but you must be invited in order to cross the mists. And considering where you stand with Morven …”
