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72
It took too long—way too fucking long—for the gates to yawn open, ice and snow cracking off and falling to the ground. Bryce wedged through them first, starfire blazing under her gloves.
“I don’t understand,” Ember was saying as she squeezed through behind Bryce, Randall hot on her tail. Hunt came last. “What is the Harpy doing out here?”
“She’s not the Harpy anymore,” Bryce said. “She’s like … some weird necromantically raised thing made by the Asteri thanks to whatever they managed to do with some of Hunt’s lightning. I don’t know, but we don’t want to meet whatever she is now.”
Bryce caught the worry and guilt on Hunt’s face. They didn’t have the time, though, for her to assure him that this wasn’t his fault. He’d had no choice but to give Rigelus his lightning. It had been used for some fucked-up shit, but that wasn’t on him.
Ember protested, “But the Harpy ate the guards—”
“Which is why we’re going to the Rift,” Bryce said, nodding to Hunt, whose eyes shone with steely determination. “Right fucking now.”
Hunt didn’t wait before lifting her mother in his arms and spreading his wings. Bryce grabbed Randall and said, “Surprise: I can teleport. Don’t barf.”
Thankfully, Randall didn’t vomit as she teleported them the twenty-four and a half miles to the center of the walled ring. But he did when they arrived.
They beat Hunt and her mother there, leaving Bryce with nothing to do but watch her dad puke his guts up in the snow as the dizziness of teleporting hit him again and again.
“That is …,” Randall said, and retched again. “Useful, but horrible.”
“I think that sums me up in a nutshell,” Bryce said.
Randall laughed, vomited again, then wiped his mouth and stood. “You’re not horrible, Bryce. Not by a long shot.”
“I guess. But this is,” she said, and gestured up at the structure before them. At the swirling mists.
A massive arch of clear quartz rose forty feet into the air, its uppermost part nearly hidden by the drifting mist. They could see straight through the archway, though, and nothing lay within it except what could only be described as a ripple in the world. Between worlds. And more mist on its other side.
“The Asteri must have built the archway around the Rift to try to contain it,” Bryce said. “Or try to control it, I guess.”
“I’ll say this once, and that’s it,” Randall said. Behind him, closing in, Hunt and Ember approached from above. “But is opening the Rift … the best idea?”
Bryce blew out a long, hot breath that faded into the mists wafting past. “No. But it’s the only idea I have.”
* * *
There wasn’t one black ribbon of mourning in the Den. No keening dirges offered up to Cthona, beseeching the goddess to guide the newly dead. In fact, somewhere in the compound, a stereo was blasting a thumping dance beat.
Trust Sabine to proceed as if nothing had changed. As if an atrocity hadn’t occurred in a neighboring district.
At this time of year, it was tradition for many of the Den families to scatter into the countryside to enjoy the changing of the leaves and the crisp autumn mountains, so only a skeleton crew of packs remained. Ithan knew which ones would be there—just as he knew that only Perry Ravenscroft, the Black Rose’s Omega and Amelie’s little sister, would be on guard duty at the gates.
A bronze rendering of the Embrace—the sun sinking or rising out of two mountains—was displayed in the window of the guard station. And it was because he knew Perry so well that he understood that this small decoration was her way of telling the city that there were some in the Den who mourned, who were praying to Cthona to comfort the dead.
Perry’s large emerald eyes widened at the sight of Ithan as he prowled up to the guard booth. To her, it must have seemed like he’d materialized out of thin air. In fact, his stealth was courtesy of his new speed and preternatural quiet—furthered by the fact that he’d traveled through the sewers, needing to remain out of sight until the last possible minute.
Perry lunged for the radio on the desk, long brown hair flashing in the afternoon sunlight, but Ithan held up a hand. She paused.
“I need to talk,” he said through the glass.
Those green eyes scanned his face, then drifted to a spot over his shoulder, to the sword he carried. Perry stared at him—then opened the door to the booth. Her cinnamon-and-strawberry scent hit him a heartbeat later.
This close, he could count the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The pale skin beneath them seemed to blanch further as she processed what he’d said.
“Sabine’s in a meeting—”
“Not Sabine. I need to talk to everyone else.” Ithan pushed, “You were the only one who checked in to see if I was alive after … everything.” She’d texted him occasionally—not much, but with Amelie as her Alpha and sister, he knew she didn’t dare risk more communication than that. “Please, Perry. Just let me into the courtyard.”
