Azriel, without Rhysand to translate, watched in silence. Bryce could have sworn shadows wreathed him, like Ruhn’s, yet … wilder. The way Cormac’s had been.
Amren’s chin dipped. “Only the most powerful, but yes. Many can.”
As if on cue, Rhysand appeared again, a small silver orb in one hand.
“The Veritas orb?” Amren said, and Azriel lifted an eyebrow.
But Rhysand ignored them and extended his other hand, in which lay a small silver bean.
Bryce took it, peering at the orb he laid on the floor. “What are these?”
Rhysand nodded to the orb. “Hold it, think of what you want to show us, and the memories shall be captured within for us to view.”
Easy enough. Like a camera for her mind. She gingerly approached the orb and picked it up. The metal was smooth and cold. Lighter than it should have been. Hollow inside.
“Here goes,” she said, and closed her eyes. Pictured the weapons, the wars, the battlefields she’d seen on television, the mech-suits, the guns she’d learned to fire, the lessons with Randall, the power Rigelus had blasted down the hall after her—
She shut it off at that point. Before she leapt into the Gate, before she left Hunt and Ruhn behind. She didn’t want to relive that. To show what she could do. To reveal the Horn or her ability to teleport.
Bryce opened her eyes. The ball remained quiet and dim. She put it back on the floor and rolled it toward Rhysand.
He floated it on a phantom wind to his hand, then touched its top. And all that had been in her mind played out.
It was worse, seeing it as a sort of memory-montage: the violence, the brutality of how easily the Asteri and their minions killed, how indiscriminately.
But whatever she felt was nothing compared to the surprise and dread on her captors’ faces.
“Guns,” Bryce said, pointing to the rifle Randall fired in her displayed memory, landing a perfect bulls-eye shot in a target half a mile off. “Brimstone missiles.” She pointed to the blooming golden light of destruction as the buildings of Lunathion ruptured around her. “Omega-boats.” The SPQM Faustus hunted through the dark depths of the seas. “Asteri.” Rigelus’s white-hot power blasted apart stone and glass and the world itself.
Rhysand mastered himself, a cool mask sliding into place. “You live in such a world.”
It wasn’t entirely a question. But Bryce nodded. “Yes.”
“And they want to bring all of that … here.”
“Yes.”
Rhysand stared ahead. Thinking it through. Azriel just kept his eyes on the space where the orb had displayed the utter destruction of her world. Dreading—and yet calculating. She’d seen that look before on Hunt’s face. A warrior’s mind at work.
Amren turned to Rhys, meeting his stare. Bryce knew that look, too. A silent conversation passing between them. As Bryce and Ruhn had often spoken.
Her heart wrenched to see it, to remember. It steadied her, though. Sharpened her focus.
The Asteri had been here—under a different name, but they’d been here. The ancestors of these Fae had defeated them. And Urd had sent her here—here, not Hel. Here, where she’d instantly encountered a dagger that made the Starsword sing. Like it had been the lodestone that had drawn her to this world, to that riverbank. Could it really be the knife from the prophecy?
She’d believed that destroying the Asteri would be as simple as obliterating that firstlight core, yet Urd had sent her here. To the original world of the Midgardian Fae. She had no choice but to trust Urd’s judgment. And pray that Ruhn, that Hunt, that everyone she loved in Midgard could hold on until she found a way to get home.
And if she couldn’t …
Bryce examined the silver bean that lay smooth and gleaming in her hand. Amren said without looking at her, “You swallow it, and it will translate our mother tongue for you. Allow you to speak it, too.”
“Fancy,” Bryce murmured.
She had to find a way home. If that meant navigating this world first … language skills would be useful, considering the extent of bullshit still to be spun. And, sure, she didn’t trust these people for one moment, but considering all the questions they kept lobbing her way, she highly doubted they were going to poison her. Or go to such lengths to do so, when a slit throat would be way easier.
Not a comforting thought, but Bryce nonetheless popped the silver bean into her mouth, worked up enough saliva, and swallowed. Its metal was cool against her tongue, her throat, and she could have sworn she felt its slickness sliding into her stomach.
Lightning cleaved her brain. She was being ripped in two. Her body couldn’t hold all the searing light—
Then blackness slammed in. Quiet and restful and eternal.
No—that was the room around her. She was on the floor, curled over her knees, and … glowing. Brightly enough to illuminate Rhysand’s and Amren’s shocked faces.
Azriel was already poised over her, that deadly dagger drawn and gleaming with a strange black light.
He noted the darkness leaking from the blade and blinked. It was the most shock Bryce had seen him display.
“Put it away, you fool,” Amren said. “It sings for her, and by bringing it close—”
The blade vanished from Azriel’s hand, whisked away by a shadow. Silence, taut and rippling, spread through the room.
Bryce stood slowly—as Randall and her mom had taught her to move in front of Vanir and other predators.
And as she rose, she found it in her brain: the knowledge of a language that she had not known before. It sat on her tongue, ready to be spoken, as instinctual as her own. It shimmered along her skin, stinging down her spine, her shoulder blades—wait.
Oh no. No, no, no.
Bryce didn’t dare reach for the tattoo of the Horn, to call attention to the letters that formed the words Through love, all is possible. She could feel them reacting to whatever had been in that spell that set her glowing and could only pray it wasn’t visible.
Her prayers were in vain.
Amren turned to Rhysand and said in that new, strange language—their language: “The glowing letters inked on her back … they’re the same as those in the Book of Breathings.”
They must have seen the words through her T-shirt when she’d been on the floor. With every breath, the tingling lessened, like the glow was fading. But the damage was already done.
They once again assessed her. Three apex killers, contemplating a threat.
Then Azriel said in a soft, lethal voice, “Explain or you die.”
2
harion’s blood dripped into the porcelain sink of the hushed, humid bathroom, the roar of the crowd a distant rumble through the cracked green tiles. He breathed in through his nose. Out through his mouth. Pain rippled along his aching ribs.
Stay upright.
His hands clenched the chipped edges of the sink. He inhaled again, focusing on the words, willing his knees not to buckle. Keep standing, damn you. He’d taken a beating tonight.
The minotaur he’d faced in the Viper Queen’s ring had been twice his weight and at least four feet taller than him. He had a hole in his shoulder leaking blood down the sink drain thanks to the horns he hadn’t been fast enough to avoid. And several broken ribs thanks to blows from fists the size of his head.
Tharion loosed another breath, wincing, and reached for the small medkit on the lip of the sink. His fingers shook, fumbling with the vial of potion that would blunt the edge of the pain and accelerate the healing his Vanir body was already doing.
He chucked the cork into the trash can beside the sink, atop the wads of bloodied cotton bandages and wipes he’d used to clean his face. It had somehow been more important than addressing the pain—the hole in his shoulder—that he should be able to see his face, the male beneath.
The reflection wasn’t kind. Purple smudges beneath his eyes matched the bruises along his jaw, the cuts on his lip, his swollen nose. All things that would fade and heal swiftly enough, but the hollowness in his eyes … It was his face, and yet a stranger’s.
Tharion didn’t meet his own gaze in the mirror as he tipped back the vial and chugged it. Silky, tasteless liquid coated his mouth, his throat. He’d once done shots with the same abandon. In the span of a few weeks, everything had gone to shit. His whole fucking life had gone to shit.
He’d given up everything he was and had been and ever would be.
He’d chosen this, being chained to the Viper Queen. He’d been desperate, but the burden of his decision weighed on him. He hadn’t been allowed to leave the warren of warehouses in the two days since arriving—hadn’t really wanted to, anyway. Even the need to return to the water was taken care of for him: a special tub had been prepared below this level with water pumped in directly from the Istros.
So he hadn’t been in the river, or felt the wind and the sun, or heard the chatter and rhythmic beats of normal life in days. Hadn’t so much as found an exterior window.
The door groaned open, and a familiar female scent announced the identity of the new arrival. As if at this hour, in this bathroom, it could be anyone else.
The Viper Queen had a crew of fighters. But the two of them … she treated them like prized racehorses. They fought during the prime-time slots. This bathroom was for their private use, along with the suite upstairs.
The Viper Queen owned them. And she wanted everyone to know it.
“I warmed them up for you,” Tharion rasped over a shoulder at Ariadne. The dark-haired dragon, clad in a black bodysuit that accentuated her luscious curves, turned toward him.
Tharion and Ariadne were required to look sexy and stylish, even as the Viper Queen bade them to bloody themselves for the crowd’s amusement.
Ariadne halted at a sink a few feet away, surveying the angles of her face in the mirror as she washed her hands.
“Still as pretty as ever,” Tharion managed to tease.
That earned him a sidelong assessment. “You look like shit.”
“Nice to see you, too,” he drawled, the healing potion tingling through him.
Her nostrils flared delicately. It wasn’t wise to taunt a dragon. But he’d been on a hot streak of making stupid decisions lately, so why stop now?
“You have a hole in your shoulder,” she said without taking her gaze from his.
Tharion peered at the ghastly wound, even as his skin knitted closed, the sensation like spiders crawling over the area. “Builds character.”
Ariadne snorted, returning to her reflection. “You know, you throw around your attraction to females quite a bit. I’m starting to think it’s a shield.”
He stiffened. “Against what?”
“Don’t know, don’t really care.”
“Ouch.”
Ariadne continued examining herself in the mirror. Was she hunting for herself—the person she’d been before coming here—as well? Or maybe the person she’d been before the Astronomer had trapped her inside a ring and worn her on his finger for decades?
Tharion had done what the Viper Queen had asked regarding Ari: he’d woven a web of lies to his Aux contacts about the dragon being commandeered for security purposes. So the Viper Queen didn’t technically own Ari as a slave—Ari remained a slave owned by someone else. She just … lived here now.
“Your adoring public awaits,” Tharion said, grabbing another cotton wipe and holding it under the running water before beginning to clean the blood from his bare chest. He could have jumped in one of the showers to his left, but it would have stung like Hel on his still-mending wounds. He twisted, straining for the particularly nasty slice along his left shoulder blade. It remained out of reach, even for his long fingers.
“Here,” Ariadne said, taking the wipe from his hand.
“Thanks, Ar—Ariadne.” He’d almost called her Ari, but it didn’t seem wise to antagonize her when she’d offered to help him.
Tharion braced his hands on the sink. Ariadne dabbed along the wound, wiping up blood, and he clenched the porcelain hard enough for it to groan beneath his fingers. He gritted his teeth against the stinging, and into the silence, the dragon said, “You can call me Ari.”
“I thought you hated that nickname.”
“Everyone seems inclined to use it, so it might as well be my choice for you to do so.”
“Was that your thinking when you abandoned my friends right before a deathstalker attacked them?” He couldn’t keep the bite from his voice, antagonizing her be damned. “Everyone expected the worst of you, so why not just be the worst?”
She snorted. “Your friends … you mean the witch and the redhead?”
“Yes. Real honorable of you to ditch them.”
“They seemed capable of looking after themselves.”
“They are. But you bailed all the same.”
“If you’re so invested in their safety, perhaps you should have been there.” Ari tossed the wipe in the trash and grabbed another one. “Who taught you to fight, anyway?”
He let the argument drop—it’d get them nowhere. He couldn’t even have said why he’d felt inclined to bring it up now, of all times. “Here I was, thinking you didn’t care to know anything about me.”
“Call it curiosity. You don’t seem … serious enough to be the River Queen’s Captain of Intelligence.”
“Such a flatterer.”
But embers sparked in her eyes, so Tharion shrugged. “I learned how to fight the usual way: I enrolled in the Blue Court Military Academy after school, and have spent the years since honing those skills. Nothing cool. You?”
“Survival.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but the dragon turned on a booted heel. “Ari—” he called before she could reach the door. “We didn’t, you know.”
She turned, eyebrows rising. “Didn’t what?”
“Expect the worst of you.”
Her face twisted—rage and sorrow and a drop of shame. Or maybe he was imagining that last bit. She didn’t answer before stalking out.
The dripping of his blood again filled the bathroom.
Tharion waited until the potion patched most of the holes in his skin, and didn’t bother tugging the upper half of the black bodysuit on before following the dragon back to the heat and smells and light of the fighting ring.
Ari was just getting started. With impressive calm, she squared off against three male lion shifters, the enormous cats circling her with deadly precision. She turned with them, not letting the lions get behind her, her skin beginning to glow with molten scales, her black eyes flickering red.
Across the pit, the one-way window that peered over the ring reflected the glaring spotlights. But Tharion knew who stood on the other side of it, amid the plush finery of her private quarters. Who watched the dragon fight, assessing the intensity of the crowd’s roar.
“Traitor,” someone hissed to his left.
Tharion found two young mer males glaring at him from the risers above. Both clutched beers and had the glazed look of guys who’d already downed a few.
Tharion gave them a bland nod and faced the ring again.
“Fucking loser,” the other male spat.
Tharion kept his eyes on Ari. Steam rippled from the dragon’s mouth. One of the lions lunged, swiping with fingers that ended in curved claws, but she ducked away. The concrete floor singed where her feet had been. Preliminary blast marks.
“Some fucking captain,” the first male taunted.