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His face was a mask of cold determination in the light of the golden orbs floating over them, his hazel eyes darting around to monitor the gloom.
This close to him, hand in hand, she could feel the sword and dagger again thrumming and pulsing. They throbbed against her eardrums—
The hilt of the Starsword shifted in her direction—she could have reached out and touched it with her other hand. One movement, and its hilt would be in her grip.
Azriel shot her a warning look.
Bryce kept her face bland, bored. Had his glance been to warn her to be careful for her own safety, or for her not to make one wrong move?
Maybe both.
Too soon, too quickly, they neared the entrance to the large, round chamber at the end of the short passage. The faelight danced over carvings etched and embossed onto the stone floor, as ornate and detailed as those in the tunnels leading here. The entire floor of the chamber was covered with them.
But between her and that room hung a sense of foreboding, of heaviness, of keep the fuck out.
Even the sword and dagger seemed to go quiet. Her star remained extinguished. Like their task was done. They’d arrived at the place they’d been compelled to bring her.
Bryce sucked in a breath. “I’m going in. Keep a step back,” she warned Azriel.
“And miss the fun?” Azriel muttered. Nesta chuckled behind them.
“I mean it,” Bryce said, trying to tug her hand from his. “You stay here.”
His fingers tightened on hers, not letting go. “What do you sense?”
“Wards,” Bryce replied, again scanning the arena-sized cavern ahead. And there, right in the center of the space …
Another eight-pointed star.
It must have been the one Nesta had seen before. As if in answer, the star on Bryce’s chest flared, then dimmed.
Nesta stepped up beside them, pointing. “The Harp sat atop that star.”
“Harp?” Bryce asked, not missing the glare that Azriel directed at Nesta. But Nesta’s eyes remained on the star as she said, more to herself than to them, “It was held there by those wards.”
Azriel scanned the chamber, still not letting go of Bryce’s hand as he said to Nesta, “We don’t know what else might be kept at bay in here.”
“I didn’t sense anything except the Harp last time,” Nesta replied, but she still assessed the chamber with a warrior’s focus.
“We also didn’t sense that there was a second entrance into this place,” Azriel countered. “We can assume nothing right now.”
Bryce fingered the Archesian amulet around her neck. It had protected her at the gallery … had allowed her to walk through Jesiba’s grade A wards …
There had to be an answer here, somewhere. About something. Anything.
Bryce’s fingers tightened around the amulet. Then she looked over Azriel’s shoulder, and her eyes widened. “Watch out!”
He dropped her hand instantly, whirling to the unseen, unsensed opponent.
The nonexistent opponent.
Bryce moved with Fae swiftness, and by the time Azriel realized there was nothing there, she’d already crossed the ward line.
Cold fury tightened his features, but Nesta was smirking with something like approval.
“You’re on your own now,” Azriel said, blue stones glimmering at his hands with a cold fury that matched his expression.
Bryce’s brows lifted, walking backward a few steps. “You really can’t get through?”
