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And then Bryce was before him, her hair floating like she was underwater. Face crusted—frozen. Unconscious.
The Mask said a different word, but he ignored it.
Ignored it and reached and reached, time still so fucking slow—
The metal hands of the suit wrapped around her waist just as time resumed. He deployed the remaining small artillery and blasted toward home. Toward the portal, now beginning to slide shut.
It could only mean one thing. The Mask had been trying to tell him, but he refused to believe it. He wouldn’t believe it for one second.
But the portal was closing, getting smaller and smaller, and—
A glowing, black figure filled it. Then another.
Aidas and Apollion.
Their power grabbed the edges of the portal and held it a little wider. Held it open a moment longer.
And with what little strength he had left, Hunt threw a desperate, raging, blazing-hot rope of lightning toward Apollion. The only being on Midgard who could handle his power.
Apollion caught it, in that humanoid form once more, and pulled.
Aidas flared with black light, pushing back against the sealing portal, against Urd’s wishes. Hunt was close enough to see the princes’ strained faces, Apollion’s teeth flashing as he dragged Hunt by his lightning, inch by inch, closer and closer. Aidas was sweating, panting as he fought to keep the portal open—
And then Ruhn was there. Starlight flaring. Pushing back against the impossible. Lidia was beside him, crackling with fire.
Tharion. Holstrom. Flynn and Dec. A fire sprite, her small body bright with flame. Isaiah and Naomi.
So many hands, so many powers, from almost every House.
The friends they’d made were what mattered in the end. Not the enemies.
Through love, all is possible.
It was love that was holding the portal open. That held it open until the very end, until Hunt and Bryce were through, crashing into the dirt of Midgard, the blue sky filling his sight and all that beautiful air filling his lungs—
The portal shut, sealing the black hole and all of space behind it.
The Asteri were gone.
Hunt was out of the mech-suit in a heartbeat, shattering the metal panel, swinging down to where Bryce lay on the ground. She wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing.
And he finally let the Mask say the word he’d been ignoring since he’d grabbed her in the depths of space.
Dead.
99
“It was too long,” Declan was saying as Hunt worked on Bryce’s heart, his lightning slamming into her, over and over. “She was without oxygen for too long, even for Vanir. There’s nothing my healing magic can do if she’s already—”
Hunt blasted his lightning into her chest again.
Bryce arced off the ground, but her heart didn’t start beating.
Their friends were gathered around them, shadows to his grief, this unfathomable pain.
Get up, he willed the Mask, willed her. Get the fuck up.
But it did not respond. Like one final fuck you, the Mask tumbled off his face. As if her Made essence had faded from him with her death.
