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Bryce flew like a shooting star through the dim cavern.
“She doesn’t need my help,” Hunt whispered.
* * *
Fire met starlight met shadows, and Bryce loosed herself on the world.
It ended today. Here. Now.
This had nothing to do with the Asteri, or Midgard. The Fae had festered under leaders like these males, but her people could be so much more.
Bryce carried the weight of that with each punch of starfire toward the Autumn King that had him dancing away, with each smothering spate of shadows Morven sent to herd her back toward the stream.
She hadn’t gone to that other world only because of the sword and knife, or to find some magic bullet to stop the rot in her own world. She knew that now.
Urd had sent her there to see, even in the small fraction of their world that she’d witnessed, that Fae existed who were kind and brave. She might have had to betray Nesta and Azriel, trick them … but she knew that at their cores, they were good people.
The Fae of Midgard were capable of more.
Ruhn proved it. Flynn and Dec proved it. Even Sathia proved it, in the short time Bryce had known her.
Bryce launched a line of pure starfire at Morven, gouging deep in the black-salt floor. He dodged, rolling out of reach with a warrior’s skill.
It stopped today.
The pettiness and chauvinism and arrogance that had been the hallmarks of the Fae of Midgard for generations. Pelias’s legacy.
It all fucking stopped today.
The starlight flared around Bryce, the darkness of Silene’s—Theia’s—dusk power giving it shape, transforming it into that starfire. If she could find that final third piece and make the star whole—
She was already whole. What she had—who she was … it was enough. She’d always been enough to take on these bastards, power or no power. Starborn crap or no.
She was enough.
The Murder Twins were returning Hunt’s ambush now. From his angle, Bryce knew Hunt couldn’t see what they were up to behind their wall of shadows, pushing his way, blasting apart his lightning.
But from over here … Bryce could see how they used that wall against Hunt. Used it to shield themselves from view as they turned her way.
Even Hunt’s lightning wasn’t fast enough as the Murder Twins sprang for her with swords drawn. Right as their shadowy talons scraped down the wall of her mind.
It stopped today.
Bryce exploded—into the twins’s minds, their bodies. Flooding them with starfire. A part of her recoiled in horror as their huge forms crumpled to the ground, steaming holes where their eyes had been. Where their brains had been. She’d melted their minds.
Morven screamed in fury—and something like fear.
She’d done that. With only two-thirds of Theia’s star, she’d managed to—
“Bryce!” Hunt shouted, but he was too late—Morven had sent a whip of shadow, hidden beneath a plume of the Autumn King’s flame, for her. It wrapped around her legs and yanked. Bryce slammed into stone, starlight blinking out.
The impact cracked through her skull, setting the world spinning. Or maybe that was the shadows, dragging her closer to the wall of flame.
Bryce slashed down at the leash of shadows with a hand wreathed in starfire.
It tore the darkness into ribbons. Bryce was up in a heartbeat, but not fast enough to dodge the punch of flame the Autumn King sent toward her gut—
Bryce teleported, swift and instinctive as a breath. Right to the Autumn King.
