Page 21 of House of Flame and Shadow

Even the herbs were familiar—had the Fae of this world introduced them to Midgard? Or were plants like thyme and rosemary somehow universal? Strewn across space?

Or maybe the Asteri had brought those herbs from their own home world and planted them on all their conquered planets.

She knew it was a stupid thing to contemplate. That she had way bigger things to consider than an intergalactic garden. But she quickly lost interest in eating, and thinking about everything else was … too much.

No one else came to see her. Bryce entertained herself by tossing peas from her stew into the grate in the center of the floor, counting the long seconds until she heard a faint plink, and then the hiss and roar of whatever lurked down there.

She didn’t want to know. Her imagination conjured plenty of options, all with sharp teeth and ravenous appetites.

She tried the door only once. It wasn’t locked, but a wall of black night filled the doorway, obscuring the hall beyond from sight. Blocking anyone from going in or out. She’d flared her starlight, but even it had muted in the face of that darkness.

Maybe it was some kind of fucked-up test. To see if she could get through their strongest powers and wards. To feel her out as an opponent. Maybe to see what the Horn—whatever was Made about it—could do. But she didn’t need to throw her starlight against that darkness to know it wasn’t budging. Its might thundered in her very bones.

Bryce scoured her memory for any alternative escape tactic, reviewing everything Randall had taught her, but none of it was applicable to getting through that impenetrable power.

So Bryce sat. And ate. And threw peas at the monsters below.

Even if she got out of here, she couldn’t get off-planet. Not without someone to power her up, activating the Horn in the process. And from Apollion’s hints, Hunt’s power was far more compatible with hers than most. Granted, Hypaxia had powered her up against the deathstalker, but there was no guarantee the witch-queen’s magic would have been enough to open a gate.

And did she need a gate to get home? Micah had used the Horn in her back to open all seven Gates in Crescent City, blocks away. When she’d landed here, there had been no gate-like structure nearby. Just a grassy front lawn, the river, and the house she could barely make out through the dense mists.

Only the dagger—and Azriel wielding it—had been there. Like that was where she’d needed to be.

“When knife and sword are reunited, so shall our people be,” Bryce murmured into the quiet.

To what end, though? The Fae were horrible. The ones here weren’t much different from the ones she knew, as far as she could tell. And the Fae on Midgard had proved their moral rot again this spring, locking vulnerable people out of their villas during the demon attack. Proved it with their laws and rules keeping females oppressed, little more than chattel. Bryce had twisted their rules against them at the Autumn Equinox to marry Hunt, but according to those same rules, she now technically belonged to him. She was a princess, for Urd’s sake, and yet she was still the property of the untitled male she’d married.

Maybe the Fae weren’t worth uniting.

But it still left her with the problem of getting off this planet—one of the few worlds to have ever succeeded in ousting the Asteri. Daglan. Whatever they were called.

Bryce leaned against a wall of the cell, knees to her chest, and tried to sort through it all, laying out the pieces before her.

Hours stretched on. Nothing came to her.

Bryce rubbed at her face. She’d stumbled into the home world of the Fae. The world from which the Starborn Fae—Theia and Pelias and Helena—had come. From which the Starsword had come, and where its knife had been waiting. If Urd had some intention in sending her here … she sure as fuck had no idea what it was.

Or how she’d get out of this mess.

* * *

“We shouldn’t have brought her with us,” Flynn murmured as they hurried through the stalls of the Meat Market, aiming for an alternate exit on the quieter side of the warehouse. “I fucking told you, Holstrom—”

“I ordered him to bring me,” Sigrid cut in, keeping pace beside Ithan, the sprites dimmed to a pale yellow as they hunched on her shoulders. Something in Ithan twinged at that—an Alpha, defending him. Taking the responsibility, even if it implied that he could be ordered. The Alphas he’d lived under for the past few years had used their power and dominance for themselves. Danika had used her position to support those under her, in her own brash way, but Danika was gone. He’d thought he’d never encounter another like her, but maybe—

“Sabine would have found us anyway,” Ithan said, “whether we were here or at the house. It was only a matter of time.”

They entered a long service corridor with a dented metal door at its other end, a half-assed EXIT painted on it in white lettering. Definitely not up to code. Though he doubted a city health and safety inspector had ever set foot in this warren of misery.

“Do we split up?” Dec asked. “Try to shake them that way?”

“No,” Marc said, claws glinting at his fingertips. “Their sense of smell’s too good. They’ll be able to tell which of us she’s with.”

As if in answer, howls rent the warehouse proper. Ithan’s entire body locked up. He knew the tenor of those howls. Prey on the run. He gritted his teeth to keep from answering, to clamp his responding howl inside his body.

Beside him, Sigrid was a live wire. Like the howls had triggered a response in her, too.

“So we make a run for it,” Flynn said. “Where do we rendezvous if we get separated?”

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