Sandriel, to Hunt’s shock, did. With trembling hands, he picked up.
“Bryce?”
On the video feed, he could see her wide eyes. “Hunt?” Her voice was so raw. “I—I thought it would go to audiomail—”
“Help is coming soon, Bryce.”
The stark terror on her face as she surveyed the last of the sunlight destroyed him. “No—no, it’ll be too late.”
“It won’t. I need you to get up, Bryce. Get to a safer location. Do not go any closer to that Gate.”
She bit her lip, trembling. “It’s still wide open—”
“Go to your apartment and stay there until help comes.” The panicked terror on her face hardened into something calm at his order. Focused. Good.
“Hunt, I need you to call my mom.”
“Don’t start making those kinds of goodbyes—”
“I need you to call my mom,” she said quietly. “I need you to tell her that I love her, and that everything I am is because of her. Her strength and her courage and her love. And I’m sorry for all the bullshit I put her through.”
“Stop—”
“Tell my dad …,” she whispered. The Autumn King stiffened. Looked back toward Hunt. “Tell Randall,” she clarified, “that I’m so proud I got to call him my father. That he was the only one that ever mattered.”
Hunt could have sworn something like shame flitted across the Autumn King’s face. But Hunt implored, “Bryce, you need to move to safer ground now.”
She did no such thing. “Tell Fury I’m sorry I lied. That I would have told her the truth eventually.” Across the room, the assassin had tears running down her face. “Tell Juniper …” Bryce’s voice broke. “Tell her thank you—for that night on the roof.” She swallowed a sob. “Tell her that I know now why she stopped me from jumping. It was so I could get here—to help today.”
Hunt’s heart cracked entirely. He hadn’t known, hadn’t guessed that things had ever been that bad for her—
From the pure devastation on Ruhn’s face, her brother hadn’t known, either.
“Tell Ruhn I forgive him,” Bryce said, shaking again. Tears streamed down the prince’s face.
“I forgave him a long time ago,” Bryce said. “I just didn’t know how to tell him. Tell him I’m sorry I hid the truth, and that I only did it because I love him and didn’t want to take anything away from him. He’ll always be the better one of us.”
The agony on Ruhn’s face turned to confusion.
But Hunt couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t take another word of this. “Bryce, please—”
“Hunt.” The entire world went quiet. “I was waiting for you.”
“Bryce, sweetheart, just get back to your apartment and give me an hour and—”
“No,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She put her hand on her chest. Over her heart. “I was waiting for you—in here.”
Hunt couldn’t stop his own tears then. “I was waiting for you, too.”
She smiled, even as she sobbed again.
“Please,” Hunt begged. “Please, Bryce. You have to go now. Before more come through.”
She opened her eyes and got to her feet as true night fell. Faced the Gate halfway down the block. “I forgive you—for the shit with the synth. For all of it. None of it matters. Not anymore.” She ended the call and leaned Danika’s sword against the wall of the shelter alcove. Placed her phone carefully on the ground next to it.
Hunt shot from his seat. “BRYCE—”
She ran for the Gate.
87
“No,” Ruhn was saying, over and over. “No, no—”
But Hunt heard nothing. Felt nothing. It had all crumbled inside him the moment she’d hung up.
Bryce leapt the fence around the Gate and halted before its towering archway. Before the terrible black void within it.
A faint white radiance began to glow around her.
“What is that?” Fury whispered.
It flickered, growing brighter in the night.
Enough to illuminate her slender hands cupping a sparkling, pulsing light before her chest.
The light was coming from her chest—had been pulled from inside it. Like it had dwelled inside her all along. Bryce’s eyes were closed, her face serene.
Her hair drifted above her head. Bits of debris floated up around her, too. As if gravity had ceased to exist.
The light she held was so stark it cast the rest of the world into grays and blacks. Slowly, her eyes opened, amber blazing like the first pure rays of dawn. A soft, secret smile graced her mouth.
Her eyes lifted to the Gate looming above her. The light between her hands grew stronger.
Ruhn fell to his knees.
“I am Bryce Quinlan,” she said to the Gate, to the void, to all of Hel behind it. Her voice was serene—wise and laughing. “Heir to the Starborn Fae.”
The ground slid out from under Hunt as the light between her hands, the star she’d drawn from her shattered heart, flared as bright as the sun.
Danika knelt on the asphalt, hands interlocked behind her blood-soaked hair. The two gunshot wounds to her leg had stopped leaking blood, but Bryce knew the bullets remained lodged in her upper thigh. The pain from kneeling had to be unbearable.
“You stupid cunt,” the asp shifter spat at her, opening the chamber of his handgun with brutal precision. Bullets were on the way—as soon as his associate found them, that gun would be loaded.
The agony in Bryce’s injured arm was secondary. All of it was secondary to that gun.
The motorcycle smoldered thirty feet away, the rifle thrown even farther into the arid scrub. Down the road, the semitruck idled, its cargo hold filled with all those petrified animals on their way to gods knew where.
They had failed. Their wild rescue attempt had failed.
Danika’s caramel eyes met the asp shifter’s. The leader of this horrific smuggling ring. The male responsible for this moment, when the shootout that had taken place at a hundred miles an hour had turned on them. Danika had been steering the motorcycle, an arm looped through Bryce’s leg to hold her steady as she’d aimed her rifle. Taken out the asps’ two sedans full of equally hateful males intent on hurting and selling those animals. They’d been nearing the racing semi when the male before them had managed a shot to the motorcycle’s tires.
The motorcycle had flipped, and Danika had reacted with a wolf’s speed. She had wrapped her body around Bryce. And taken the brunt of the impact.
Her shredded skin, the fractured pelvis—all thanks to that.
“Bryce,” Danika whispered, tears running down her face now as the reality of this colossal fuckup set in. “Bryce, I love you. And I’m sorry.”
Bryce shook her head. “I don’t regret it.” The truth.
And then the asp shifter’s associate arrived, bullets in hand. Their clink as they loaded into the gun echoed through Bryce’s bones.
Danika sobbed. “I love you, Bryce.”
The words rippled between them. Cleaved Bryce’s heart wide open.
“I love you,” Danika said again.
Danika had never said those words to her. Not once in four years of college. Not once to anyone, Bryce knew. Not even Sabine.
Especially not Sabine.
Bryce watched the tears roll down Danika’s proud, fierce face. A lock clicked open in Bryce’s heart. Her soul.
“Close your eyes, Danika,” she said softly. Danika just stared at her.
Only for this. Only for Danika would she do this, risk this.
The gravel around Bryce began to shiver. Began to float upward. Danika’s eyes widened. Bryce’s hair drifted as if underwater. In deep space.
The asp shifter finished loading the bullets and pointed the gun at Danika’s face. His colleague smirked from a step behind him.
Bryce held Danika’s stare. Did not look away as she said again, “Danika, close your eyes.” Trembling, Danika obeyed. Squeezed them shut.
The asp shifter clicked off the gun’s safety, not even glancing at Bryce and the debris that floated toward the sky. “Yeah, you’d better close your eyes, you—”
Bryce exploded. White, blinding light ruptured from her, unleashed from that secret place in her heart.