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Baxian just swapped a look with Hunt that told him the Helhound suspected the same thing he did: only Bryce could get that door to open. It wasn’t a calming thought. Not as Hunt surveyed what lay ahead.
The lone object in the chamber was a sarcophagus carved from white marble, the hue striking against the deep black of the stone walls. A statue of an armored Fae male lay atop the sarcophagus, hands clasped around a missing object.
Bryce nodded to it. “That must be where the Starsword lies when not in use.” Her voice was flat, as if drained from their argument.
Sathia staggered a step closer. “Prince Pelias’s tomb,” she breathed.
“Ruhn told me his creepster descendants line the walls of the main passages in here,” Bryce said, pointing to the only other way out: another archway of stone across the chamber, barely visible through the mists. She adjusted the Starsword across her back, and a hand fidgeted with Truth-Teller at her side—like the blades were bothering her.
Hunt surveyed the domed space, examining the stories told on the walls: an archipelago nestled above a sea of starlight, an idyllic, serene land—all that the world believed Avallen to be. “I don’t see anything about the Starsword or Truth-Teller, let alone how to unify them,” Hunt admitted. “Or the mists. The islands are here, but nothing else.” Maybe this was a dead end for information.
“There could be something out in the main passage,” Tharion offered.
But Bryce approached the sarcophagus. Peered down at the perfectly carved, handsome face of the first Starborn Prince.
“Hello, you rapist fuck,” she said, her voice cold with fury.
Hunt barely breathed. He wondered if Urd were watching, if the heaviness in the room wasn’t the mists, but rather the goddess’s presence, having guided them here.
“You thought you won,” Bryce whispered to the sarcophagus. “But she got one over on you in the end. She got the last laugh.”
“Bryce?” Hunt ventured.
She looked up from Pelias’s carved rendering, and there was nothing of her human heart in those eyes. Only icy, Fae hatred for the long-dead male before her.
Offering a rope of neutral ground, Hunt said, “Can you, uh, fill us in?”
Yet it was Tharion who gestured to the empty death chamber. “Maybe Pelias built another chamber around here that’s actually got something about the sword and dagger and that portal to nowhere—”
“No,” Bryce said quietly. “We’re exactly where we need to be.” She pointed to the floor, the carving of rivers of stars winding throughout. “And this place wasn’t built by Pelias. He had nothing to do with these tunnels, the carvings.” She laid a hand on the floor. Her starlight flowed through the carvings in the stone, the walls, the ceiling—
What had looked like etched seas or rivers of stars now filled in with starlight, became … alive. Moving, cascading, coursing. A secret illustration, only for those with the gifts and vision to see it.
The rippling river of starlight flowed right to the sarcophagus in the center of the chamber. Swirled around it like an eddy.
Bryce threw herself against the coffin, legs straining as she pushed—
And the sarcophagus slid away. Revealing a small, secret staircase beneath.
Bryce panted for a moment, and then smiled grimly. “This place was built by Helena.”
57
The sword and knife pulsed more strongly with each step downward into the secret stairwell. Like they wanted to be here—needed to be here. Just when Bryce thought she honestly might chuck them off her for a moment of relief, her feet touched the bottom.
Amid the mists, trickling water sounded from a narrow stream in the center of the chamber. Some offshoot of the river a level up, filtered through the black rock. And beside the stream, a black ewer and bowl rested upon an etching of an eight-pointed star.
“What the fuck is this?” Hunt murmured, sticking close to her. As if, despite their fight, he still wanted to protect her. But maybe it was that need to protect her that was leading to the guilt, the fear devouring him whole.
She’d meant every word she’d said to him—it wasn’t good enough for him to go along with things. She needed Hunt, all of him, fighting at her side. She didn’t know how to convey that. How to make him understand and embrace that.
Her teeth chattered with the cold, but even that seemed secondary as Bryce surveyed the stream and pitcher and bowl. The eight-pointed star. Two of its points had been hollowed out into slits—one small, one larger.
There was nothing else in the room.
“You don’t know what this is?” she asked Hunt. She could play Situation Normal with him—at least for now.
“I’m getting really fucking sick of surprises,” Tharion burst out, arriving at the bottom of the stairs with Sathia in tow.
