PART 1
THE DROP
1
Bryce Quinlan sat in a chamber so far beneath the mountain above that daylight must have been a myth to the creatures who dwelled there.
For a place that apparently wasn’t Hel, her surroundings sure appeared like it: black stone, subterranean palace, even-more-subterranean interrogation cell … The darkness seemed inherent to the three people standing across from her: a petite female in gray silk, and two winged males clad in black scalelike armor, one of them—the beautiful, powerful male in the center of the trio—literally rippling with shadows and stars.
Rhysand, he’d called himself. The one who looked so much like Ruhn.
It couldn’t be coincidence. Bryce had leapt through the Gate intending to reach Hel, to finally take up Aidas’s and Apollion’s repeated offers to send their armies to Midgard and stop this cycle of galactic conquest. But she’d wound up here instead.
Bryce glanced to the warrior beside Ruhn’s almost-twin. The male who’d found her. Who’d carried the black dagger that had reacted to the Starsword.
His hazel eyes held nothing but cold, predatory alertness.
“Someone has to start talking,” the short female said—the one who’d seemed so shocked to hear Bryce speak in the Old Language, to see the sword. Flickering braziers of something that resembled firstlight gilded the silken strands of her chin-length bob, casting the shadow of her slender jaw in stark relief. Her eyes, a remarkable shade of silver, slid over Bryce but remained unimpressed. “You said your name is Bryce Quinlan. That you come from another world—Midgard.”
Rhysand murmured to the winged male beside him. Translating, perhaps.
The female went on, “If you are to be believed, how is it that you came here? Why did you come here?”
Bryce surveyed the otherwise empty cell. No table glittering with torture instruments, no breaks in the solid stone beyond the door and the grate in the center of the floor, a few feet away. A grate from which she could have sworn a hissing sound emanated.
“What world is this?” Bryce rasped, the words gravelly. After Ruhn’s body double had introduced himself in that lovely, cozy foyer, he’d grabbed her hand. The strength of his grip, the brush of his calluses against her skin had been the only solid things as wind and darkness had roared around them, the world dropping away—and then there was only solid rock and dim lighting. She’d been brought to a palace carved beneath a mountain, and then down the narrow stairs to this dungeon. Where he’d pointed to the lone chair in the center of the room in silent command.
So she’d sat, waiting for the handcuffs or shackles or whatever restraints they used in this world, but none had come.
The short female countered, “Why do you speak the Old Language?”
Bryce jerked her chin at the female. “Why do you?”
The female’s red-painted lips curved upward. It wasn’t a reassuring sight. “Why are you covered in blood that is not your own?”
Score: one for the female.
Bryce knew her blood-soaked clothes, now stiff and dark, and her blood-crusted hands did her no favors. It was the Harpy’s blood, and a bit of Lidia’s. All coating Bryce as a part of a careful game to keep her alive, to keep their secrets safe, while Hunt and Ruhn had—
Her breath began sawing in and out. She’d left them. Her mate and her brother. She’d left them in Rigelus’s hands.
The walls and ceiling pushed in, squeezing the air from her lungs.
Rhysand lifted a broad hand wreathed in stars. “We won’t harm you.” Bryce found the rest of the sentence lurking within the dense shadows around him: if you don’t try to harm us.
She closed her eyes, fighting past the jagged breathing, the crushing weight of the stone above and around her.
Less than an hour ago, she’d been sprinting away from Rigelus’s power, dodging exploding marble busts and shattering windows, and Hunt’s lightning had speared through her chest, into the Gate, opening a portal. She’d leapt toward Hel—
And now … now she was here. Her hands shook. She balled them into fists and squeezed.
Bryce took a slow, shuddering breath. Another. Then opened her eyes and asked again, her voice solid and clear, “What world is this?”
Her three interrogators said nothing.
So Bryce fixed her eyes on the female, the smallest but by no means the least deadly of the group. “You said the Old Language hasn’t been spoken here in fifteen thousand years. Why?”
That they were Fae and knew the language at all suggested some link between here and Midgard, a link that was slowly dawning on her with terrible clarity.
“How did you come to be in possession of the lost sword Gwydion?” was the female’s cool reply.
“What … You mean the Starsword?” Another link between their worlds.
All of them just stared at her again. An impenetrable wall of people accustomed to getting answers in whatever way necessary.
Bryce had no weapons, nothing beyond the magic in her veins, the Archesian amulet around her neck, and the Horn tattooed into her back. But to wield it, she needed power, needed to be fueled up like some stupid fucking battery—
So talking was her best weapon. Good thing she’d spent years as a master of spinning bullshit, according to Hunt.
“It’s a family heirloom,” Bryce said. “It’s been in my world since it was brought there by my ancestors … fifteen thousand years ago.” She let the last few words land with a pointed glance at the female. Let her do the math, as Bryce had.
But the beautiful male—Rhysand—said in a voice like midnight, “How did you find this world?”
This was not a male to be fucked with. None of these people were, but this one … Authority rippled off him. As if he was the entire axis of this place. A king of some sort, then.
“I didn’t.” Bryce met his star-flecked stare. Some primal part of her quailed at the raw power within his gaze. “I told you: I meant to go to Hel. I landed here instead.”
“How?”
The things far below the grate hissed louder, as if sensing his wrath. Demanding blood.
Bryce swallowed. If they learned about the Horn, her power, the Gates … what was to stop them from using her as Rigelus had wanted to? Or from viewing her as a threat to be removed?
Master of spinning bullshit.She could do this.
“There are Gates within my world that open into other worlds. For fifteen thousand years, they’ve mostly opened into Hel. Well, the Northern Rift opens directly into Hel, but …” Let them think her rambling. An idiot. The party girl most of Midgard had labeled her, that Micah had believed her to be, until she was vacuuming up his fucking ashes. “This Gate sent me here with a one-way ticket.”
Did they have tickets in this world? Transportation?
She clarified into their silence, “A companion of mine gambled that he could send me to Hel using his power. But I think …” She sorted through all that Rigelus had told her in those last moments. That the star on her chest somehow acted as a beacon to the original world of the Starborn people.
Grasping at straws, she nodded to the warrior’s dagger. “There’s a prophecy in my world about my sword and a missing knife. That when they’re reunited, so will the Fae of Midgard be.”
Master of spinning bullshit, indeed.
“So maybe I’m here for that. Maybe the sword sensed that dagger and … brought me to it.”
Silence. Then the silent, hazel-eyed warrior laughed quietly.
How had he understood without Rhysand translating? Unless he could simply read her body language, her tone, her scent—
The warrior spoke with a low voice that skittered down her spine. Rhysand glanced at him with raised brows, then translated for Bryce with equal menace, “You’re lying.”
Bryce blinked, the portrait of innocence and outrage. “About what?”
“You tell us.” Darkness gathered in the shadow of Rhysand’s wings. Not a good sign.
She was in another world, with strangers who were clearly powerful and wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. Every word from her lips was vital to her safety and survival.
“I just watched my mate and my brother get captured by a group of intergalactic parasites,” she snarled. “I have no interest in doing anything except finding a way to help them.”
Rhysand looked to the warrior, who nodded, not taking his gaze off Bryce for so much as a blink.
“Well,” Rhysand said to Bryce, crossing his muscled arms. “That’s true, at least.”
Yet the petite female remained unmoved. In fact, her features had tightened at Bryce’s outburst. “Explain.”