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She whirled, temper searing through her.
Hunt was glowing with lightning, furious as he advanced on her. “Do not drink from that—”
“This is not the time to go Alphahole!”
“—without me,” he finished.
Bryce could only gape at her mate as he grabbed the drinking bowl and held it out to her.
Ready to follow her into Hel.
* * *
Together, then. As their powers, their souls, were linked, so they’d drink the salt-laced water together.
“This … might be a very bad idea,” Tharion said as Bryce and Hunt sat facing each other, knee to knee and hand to hand.
Hunt was inclined to agree. But he said, “Apollion appeared to both me and to Bryce in dream states. Maybe he was using the same communication method he’d used with Helena.”
“So, what,” Baxian said as Sathia gathered the water in the drinking bowl. “You’re going to drink and hope you pass out and … talk to Hel? Ask them for answers about the sword and knife that they might have somehow forgotten to tell you until now?”
“Helena left this here,” Bryce said, holding Hunt’s stare. No doubt or fear—only steely focus gleamed in his mate’s eyes. “Just as Silene left everything in the caves of her home world. For someone to find. Someone who could bear the Starsword, and whose starlight would lead them down here. Someone who might also have learned the truth … and known where to look.” Bryce turned her gaze to the ceiling, the stairs upward. “I think Helena left this to help us.”
“Helena and Silene weren’t … good people,” Baxian warned.
“No, but they hated the Asteri,” Bryce said. “They wanted to get rid of them as much as we do.” And it was hope that brimmed in her eyes then, so bright it nearly stole Hunt’s breath away. For a moment, not even a full heartbeat, he nearly believed they might succeed. “If this buys us a shot, whatever it might be, we have to try. I want answers. I want the truth.”
Bryce lifted the bowl to her lips and drank.
* * *
Bryce was falling backward, and yet not moving. Her body remained kneeling, yet her soul fell, icing over, into the dark, into nothing and nowhere. A presence around her, beside her, flickered with lightning. Hunt.
He was with her. Soul-falling alongside her.
It was a leap. All of it was a leap, but she had to believe that Urd had led her here. That Helena had been as smart as her sister, and would have fought the male who abused her until the very end. That Helena had played the game not only for her lifetime, but for future generations.
Hoping that maybe one day, millennia from her death, another female might come along with starlight—Theia’s starlight—in her veins. Passed down not from Pelias, but from Helena herself. Theia’s starlight.
Passed down to her. Bryce Adelaide Quinlan.
And maybe she wasn’t who Helena or Silene would have chosen, certainly not with their anti-human bullshit, but that wasn’t her problem.
The falling sensation stopped. There was only blackness, frigid and dry. Her starlight flickered, a pale, feeble light in the impenetrable dark. A hand found hers, and she didn’t need to look to know Hunt stood beside her in … whatever this place was. This dreamworld.
Two blue lights glowed in the distance, closing in on them. Hunt’s fingers tightened on hers in warning. His lightning flickered. But the lights drew nearer. And nearer. And when they crossed into the light of her star …
Aidas was smiling faintly—joy and hope brightening his remarkable eyes. “It seems you got a little lost on your way to find me, Bryce Quinlan. But welcome to Hel.”
58
It took two days of working without rest to help the people of the Meadows. But Ithan didn’t mind, barely thought about the need to go to Avallen to find Sofie’s body or the exhaustion as he dug through the rubble, or carried out the dead or dying, or held down the wounded long enough for Hypaxia or another medwitch to save them. And still there were more. So many more humans, hurt or dead.
There was no sign of the Governor, but the 33rd showed up, at least. The Aux—Fae and a scant number of wolves—arrived soon after. Ithan kept clear of the latter, both to avoid conflict and to avoid being spotted by any Asteri sympathizers who might have come to gloat over the ruins.
But he kept his head down. Kept working. Doing what little he could to help or clear or at least respectfully move the fallen.
There were no Sailings, not for the humans. There’d never been Sailings for them. So their bodies were laid out in rows upon rows inside the lobby of the nearest intact office building.
