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“Play the Horn and Harp,” our mother ordered, pulling them out of that pocket of nothingness, “and get out of this world.” It would be swift, a momentary opening, too fast for Rigelus to pounce on. We’d open it and be gone before he would even catch wind of what we’d done—and then we would seal the door between worlds forever.
Theia pressed a kiss to each of their brows.
She warned that Pelias was coming. For both of us. Rigelus had made him Prince of the Fae, and Pelias would use us to legitimize his reign. He meant to father children on us.
Even with all they had done, the crimes they’d committed against humans, Bryce’s chest still tightened in panic for the sisters.
Pulling her daughters close, Theia flared with starlight. And in the small space between their bodies, Bryce could just make out Theia plucking a low string on the Harp. In answer, a star—akin to the one Bryce could pull from her own chest—emerged from Theia’s body. It split into three shimmering balls of light, one drifting into Silene’s chest and another to Helena’s before the final one, as if it were the mother from which the other two stars had been born, returned to Theia’s body.
For a moment, all three of them glowed. Even Truth-Teller, in Silene’s hand, seemed to ripple, a dark countermelody to how Gwydion flashed in Theia’s hand, its light a heartbeat.
She gave us what protection her magic could offer, transferring it from her body into our own using the Harp. Another secret she had learned from her long-ago masters: that the Harp could not only move its bearer through the world, but move things from one place to another—even move magic from her soul to ours.
Gwydion in hand, Theia left the tent. With Fae grace and surety, she leapt onto the back of a magnificent winged horse and was airborne in seconds, soaring into the battle-filled night.
Bryce drew in a sharp breath. Silene hadn’t shown the creatures in the earlier memories, or in the initial crossing into Midgard, but there they were. The pegasuses in the tunnels’ carvings hadn’t been religious iconography, then. And they’d lived long enough in Midgard to grace early art, like the frieze at the Crescent City Ballet. They must have all died out, becoming nothing more than myth and a line of sparkly toys.
Another beautiful thing that Theia and her daughters had destroyed.
Helena’s eyes filled with panic as she turned to Silene in the memory.
To escape, it was worth the risk of going back to our home world, even if the Fae there might kill us for our connections to the Asteri, our foolishness in trusting them.
Helena grabbed Silene’s hand and hauled her toward the far edge of the camp. Toward the snow-crusted peak ahead—a natural archway of stone. A gateway.
But no matter how fast we ran, it was not fast enough.
Far below, Fae were rushing up the mountain. Not the advancing enemy, but members of their court racing for them, realizing what Helena and Silene were doing. Still glowing with their mother’s magic, both princesses stood atop the slope like silver beacons in the night. The Fae masses sprinted for them, bearing small children in their arms, bundled against the cold.
Bryce couldn’t endure it, this last atrocity. But she made herself watch. For the memory of those children.
We would not stop. Not even for our people.
Hatred coursed through Bryce at Silene’s words, the rage so violent it threatened to consume her as surely as any flame.
Helena lifted the Horn to her lips as Silene plucked a string on the Harp. A shuddering, shining light rippled in the archway, and then a stone room appeared beyond it, dim and empty.
That was when the wolves found us. The shape-shifting Fae, closing in from the other side of the mountain, barreled through the snow. The Asteri had sent their fiercest warriors to capture us.
In the back of her mind, Bryce marveled at it: that the wolves, the shifters … they had once been Fae. So similar to Bryce’s sort of Fae, yet so different—
I lifted the Harp again, Silene said, voice finally hitching with emotion, but my sister did not sound the Horn. And when I turned …
Silene paused, finding Helena standing yards away. Facing the enemy advancing from the snow, the skies. Their frantic, desperate people surging up the side of the mountain, pleas for their children on their lips.
Helena eyed the fleeing people, the wolves closing in. She leaned over to Silene, plucked the shortest string, and shoved her sister, still holding the Harp, backward.
She used the Harp to send me the last of the distance to the archway.
Silene landed in the snow, hundreds of feet now between her and her sister. Wolves advanced on Helena below.
Helena didn’t look back as she charged down the mountain, away from the pass. Buying me time. But I took one moment to look. At her, at the wolves giving chase. And at our mother—farther down the mountain, now locked in combat with Pelias, her winged horse dead beside her.
Power blasted from Pelias, power such as I had never seen from him.
The power struck her mother—struck true.
Even their fleeing people halted, looking behind them at the figure lying prone in the gore. At Pelias, stooping to pick up the Starsword.
