Bryce’s rasping voice overrode the sounds of the demons rallying again around her. “The firstlight I’ll generate by making the Drop will spread from this Gate to the others. It’ll light up everything, send those demons racing away. It’ll heal everything it touches. Everyone it touches. And I—” She took a deep breath. “I am Starborn Fae, and I bear Luna’s Horn in my body. With the power of the firstlight I generate, I can shut the portals to Hel. I did it here—I can do it everywhere else. But I need a link—and the power from my Drop to do it.”
Still no one answered. No life stirred, beyond the beasts in the deepest shadows.
“Please,” Bryce begged, her voice breaking.
Silently, she prayed for any one of those six other gems to light up, to show that just one person, in any district, would answer her plea.
But there was only the crackling nothingness.
She was alone. And Hunt was dying.
Bryce waited five seconds. Ten seconds. No one answered. No one came.
Swallowing another sob, she took a shuddering breath and let go of the disk.
Hunt’s breaths had grown few and far between. She crawled back to him, hands shaking. But her voice was calm as she again slid his head into her lap. Stroked his blood-soaked face. “It’s going to be all right,” she said. “Help is coming, Hunt. The medwitches are on their way.” She shut her eyes against her tears. “We’re going to be all right,” she lied. “We’re going to go home, where Syrinx is waiting for us. We’re going to go home. You and me. Together. We’ll have that afterward, like you promised. But only if you hold on, Hunt.”
His breathing rattled in his chest. A death rattle. She bent over him, inhaling his scent, the strength in him. And then she said it—the three words that meant more than anything. She whispered them into his ear, sending them with all she had left in her.
The final truth, the one she needed him to hear.
Hunt’s breathing spread and thinned. Not much longer.
Bryce couldn’t stop her tears as they dropped onto Hunt’s cheeks, cleaning away the blood in clear tracks.
Light it up, Danika whispered to her. Into her heart.
“I tried,” she whispered back. “Danika, I tried.”
Light it up.
Bryce wept. “It didn’t work.”
Light it up. Urgency sharpened the words. As if … As if …
Bryce lifted her head. Looked toward the Gate. To the plaque and its gems.
She waited. Counted her breaths. One. Two. Three.
The gems remained dark. Four. Five. Six.
Nothing at all. Bryce swallowed hard and turned back to Hunt. One last time. He’d go, and then she’d follow, once more brimstone fell or the demons worked up the courage to attack her.
She took another breath. Seven.
“Light it up.” The words filled the Old Square. Filled every square in the city.
Bryce whipped her head around to look at the Gate as Danika’s voice sounded again. “Light it up, Bryce.”
The onyx stone of the Bone Quarter glowed like a dark star.
92
Bryce’s face crumpled as she lurched to her feet, sprinting to the Gate.
She didn’t care how it was possible as Danika said again, “Light it up.”
Then Bryce was laughing and sobbing as she screamed, “LIGHT IT UP, DANIKA! LIGHT IT UP, LIGHT IT UP, LIGHT IT UP!”
Bryce slammed her palm onto the bronze disk of the Gate.
And soul to soul with the friend whom she had not forgotten, the friend who had not forgotten her, even in death, Bryce made the Drop.
Stunned silence filled the conference room as Bryce plunged into her power.
Declan Emmett didn’t look up from the feeds he monitored, his heart thundering.
“It’s not possible,” the Autumn King said. Declan was inclined to agree.
Sabine Fendyr murmured, “Danika had a small kernel of energy left, the Under-King said. A bit of self that remained.”
“Can a dead soul even serve as an Anchor?” Queen Hypaxia asked.
“No,” Jesiba replied, with all the finality of the Under-King’s emissary. “No, it can’t.”
Silence rippled through the room as they realized what they were witnessing. An untethered, solo Drop. Utter free fall. Bryce might as well have leapt from a cliff and hoped to land safely.
Declan drew his eyes from the video feed and scanned the graph on one of his three computers—the one charting Bryce’s Drop, courtesy of the Eleusian system. “She’s approaching her power level.” Barely a blip past zero on the scale.
Hypaxia peered over his shoulder to study the graph. “She’s not slowing, though.”
Declan squinted at the screen. “She’s gaining speed.” He shook his head. “But—but she’s classified as a low-level.” Near-negligible, if he felt like being a dick about it.
Hypaxia said quietly, “But the Gate is not.”
Sabine demanded, “What do you mean?”
Hypaxia whispered, “I don’t think it’s a memorial plaque. On the Gate.” The witch pointed to the sign mounted on the glowing quartz, the bronze stark against the incandescent stone. “The power shall always belong to those who give their lives to the city.”
Bryce dropped further into power. Past the normal, respectable levels.
Queen Hypaxia said, “The plaque is a blessing.”
Declan’s breathing was uneven as he murmured, “The power of the Gates—the power given over by every soul who has ever touched it … every soul who has handed over a drop of their magic.”
He tried and failed to calculate just how many people, over how many centuries, had touched the Gates in the city. Had handed over a drop of their power, like a coin tossed in a fountain. Made a wish on that drop of yielded power.
People of every House. Every race. Millions and millions of drops of power fueled this solo Drop.
Bryce passed level after level after level. The Autumn King’s face went pale.
Hypaxia said, “Look at the Gates.”
The quartz Gates across the city began to glow. Red, then orange, then gold, then white.
Firstlight erupted from them. Lines of it speared out in every direction.
The lights flowed down the ley lines between the Gates, connecting them along the main avenues. It formed a perfect, six-pointed star.
The lines of light began to spread. Curving around the city walls. Cutting off the demons now aiming for the lands beyond.
Light met light met light met light.
Until the city was ringed with it. Until every street was glowing.
And Bryce was still making the Drop.
It was joy and life and death and pain and song and silence.
Bryce tumbled into power, and power tumbled into her, and she didn’t care, didn’t care, didn’t care, because it was Danika falling with her, Danika laughing with her as their souls twined.
She was here, she was here, she was here—
Bryce plunged into the golden light and song at the heart of the universe.
Danika let out a howl of joy, and Bryce echoed it.
Danika was here. It was enough.
“She’s passing Ruhn’s level,” Declan breathed, not believing it. That his friend’s party-girl sister had surpassed the prince himself. Surpassed Ruhn fucking Danaan.
Declan’s king was still as death as Bryce smashed past Ruhn’s ranking. This could change their very order. A powerful half-human princess with a star’s light in her veins … Fucking Hel.
Bryce began slowing at last. Nearing the Autumn King’s level. Declan swallowed.
The city was awash with her light. Demons fled from it, racing back through the voids, opting to brave the glowing Gates rather than be trapped in Midgard.
Light shot up from the Gates, seven bolts becoming one in the heart of the city—above the Old Square Gate. A highway of power. Of Bryce’s will.