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Bryce held up a finger, and let her light condense there.
“And then there’s that,” Tharion said, but Bryce held Hunt’s stare as she pointed it at the ground and sliced a small line. An inch, and that was it.
“Helena used the same gifts to carve this place as her sister, Silene, used in their home world. But there’s one big difference. One reason why she chose this place for the caves.”
She knelt, and rubbed her fingers through the debris she’d left on either side of the cut. Brought it up to Hunt’s face. “Do you recognize it?”
Hunt studied the black, glittering dust on her fingers and paled. “That’s black salt.”
Bryce nodded slowly. Baxian blew out a breath that sounded suspiciously like Oh fuck.
“These caves are made entirely of black salt,” Bryce said. She’d seen it as soon as the ghoul had gouged lines in the wall. Knew its smell, its rotting, oily feel. A taste of it had confirmed her suspicions.
Hunt frowned. “You think Helena was trying to summon her sister from their home world?”
“No,” Bryce said, shaking her head. “She sent Silene back to be safe—she was an asshole, but she would never have done anything to jeopardize that.”
“So what is this place, then?” Tharion asked.
It was Sathia who got it first. “It’s to summon demons. To commune with Hel.”
Stunned silence rocked the room.
“They were her only remaining allies,” Bryce explained.
Helena might have done some unforgivable things, but Bryce could admit the female had been a fighter. Until the very end, if this chamber was any indication.
Hunt asked, wings twitching, “But why make an entire underground warren of caves? And why dedicate it to her rapist husband?”
Bryce shrugged. “As a reason to keep coming here. She built him a tomb that would last, where his sword might lie forever until a worthy successor came along.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Hunt said carefully. Like he was afraid of getting into another fight.
It did something to her heart, that caution, but Bryce said, “The caves are nearly identical to the ones in her home world—caves she grew up navigating. And Avallen, like her childhood home, is wreathed in mist. It’s a thin place as well. Judging by all the mists in here, maybe Avallen, these caves, are an even stronger thin place than the one in the Fae world. The Prison—the court it had been before that … Vesperus said that she chose it originally because it was a thin place, good for traveling between worlds. Theia knew this, too. She must have told Helena.”
Tharion cleared his throat. “So Helena made all these caves just to have a private line to Hel?”
“Pretty much,” Bryce said. “Avallen had everything she needed. But for her to have built the caves this way suggests resources. Helena couldn’t have done it in secret. She had to have had approval from Pelias. And what better way to hide this, to protect it through the ages, than to wrap it up in a temple to the patriarchy?” Bryce pointed to the sarcophagus room above them. To the bones she’d have liked to scatter into a septic tank. “She knew the Fae males would never tear this place down or disturb it—for fuck’s sake, Morven refuses to update Avallen in any way because he wants it to stay the same as it was when Pelias was alive. Helena knew these males well. She knew if she hid this under here, it’d be preserved, and remain undisturbed.”
“Okay, assuming for a moment that we believe all that,” Tharion said, “how do you know this was some secret chamber she used to commune with Hel, of all places? What do the pitcher and bowl mean?”
“She’d get thirsty with all the salt down here?” Baxian quipped, and Hunt grunted.
But Sathia walked up to the stream. “That water filters straight through the black salt, and this chamber is thick with it.” She met Bryce’s stare, brows knotting. “Can you summon a demon if you drink water laced with black salt?”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that, even during my demon-hunting years,” Hunt said.
“If Helena was summoning demons here, someone would have noticed,” Baxian said. “The temperature would have dropped enough that anyone else in the caves would have felt it, even a level above.”
“Maybe she wasn’t summoning them here,” Bryce said, walking to the pitcher and bowl, to the eight-pointed star they sat upon. The slits in two of the points had been deeply carved—too deep for her to see how far into the rock they went. But Bryce tapped the side of her head. “But in here.”
“What?” Hunt asked.
Bryce knelt and dipped the ewer into the dark, icy water. The vessel and bowl, too, had been carved from black salt. “The Starborn could mind-speak. Still can.” She nodded up toward the river a level above, with the Murder Twins lurking somewhere on its other side. “Maybe the salt helped her mind-speak with Hel. Maybe someone in Hel can tell us how to kill the Asteri. Apollion himself ate Sirius … Maybe he’s had the answer all along.”
Hunt blurted, “Don’t you dare—”
Bryce lifted the jug to her lips, but lightning smashed the vessel apart before she could drink.
