Bryce whispered, voice thick, “It’s supposed to be green. I saw a land of green and sunlight.” Hunt lifted a brow, but her eyes—now a flat yellow—searched the mists. “The Under-King showed me the Pack of Devils after the attack on the city.” Her words shook. “Showed me that they rested here among shining meadows. Not … this.”
“Maybe the living aren’t allowed to see the truth unless the Under-King allows it.” She nodded, but he read the doubt tightening her ashen face. He said, “No sign of Emile, unfortunately.”
Bryce shook her head. “Nothing. Though I don’t know why I thought it’d be easy. It’s not like he’d be camped out here in a tent or something.”
Hunt, despite himself, offered her a half smile. “So we head to the boss, then.” He kept scanning the mists and earth for any hint of Emile or his sister as they continued on.
Bryce halted suddenly between two black obelisks, each engraved with a different array of those odd symbols. The obelisks—and dozens more beyond them—flanked what seemed to be a central walkway stretching into the mist.
She drew the Starsword, and Hunt didn’t have time to stop her before she whacked it against the side of the closest obelisk. It clanked, its ringing echoing into the gloom. She did it again. Then a third time.
“Ringing the dinner bell?” Hunt asked.
“Worth a shot,” Bryce muttered back. And smarter than running around shouting Emile’s and Sofie’s names. Though if they were as survival-savvy as they seemed, Hunt doubted either would come running to investigate.
As the noise faded, what remained of the light dimmed. What remained of the warmth turned to ice.
Someone—something—had answered.
The other being they sought here.
Their breath hung in the air, and Hunt angled himself in front of Bryce, monitoring the road ahead.
When the Under-King spoke, however, in a voice simultaneously ancient and youthful but cold and dry, the sound came from behind them. “This land is closed to you, Bryce Quinlan.”
A tremor went through Bryce, and Hunt rallied his power, lightning crackling in his ears. But his mate said, “I don’t get a VIP pass?”
The voice from the mist echoed around them. “Why have you come? And brought Orion Athalar with you?”
“Call him Hunt,” Bryce drawled. “He gets huffy if you go all formal on him.”
Hunt gave her an incredulous look. But the Under-King materialized from the mist, inch by inch.
He stood at least ten feet tall, robes of richest black velvet draping to the gravel. Darkness swirled on the ground before him, and his head … Something primal in him screamed to run, to bow, to fall on his knees and beg.
A desiccated corpse, half-rotted and crowned with gold and jewels, observed them. Hideous beyond belief, yet regal. Like a long-dead king of old left to rot in some barrow, who had emerged to make himself master of this land.
Bryce lifted her chin and said, bold as Luna herself, “We need to talk.”
“Talk?” The lipless mouth pulled back, revealing teeth brown with age.
Hunt reminded himself firmly that the Under-King was feared, yes—but not evil.
Bryce replied, “About your goons grabbing my sweet brother and dragging him into the sewer. They claimed they were sent by Apollion.” Hunt tensed as she spoke the Prince of the Pit’s name. Bryce continued, utterly nonchalant, “But I don’t see how they could have been sent by anyone but you.”
The Under-King hissed. “Do not speak that name on this side of the Rift.”
Hunt followed Bryce’s irreverence. “Is this the part where you insist you knew nothing?”
“You have the nerve to cross the river, to take a black boat to my shores, and accuse me of this treachery?” The darkness behind the Under-King shivered. In fear or delight, Hunt couldn’t tell.
“Some of your Reapers survived me,” Bryce said. “Surely they’ve filled you in by now.”
Silence fell, like the world in the aftermath of a boom of thunder.
The Under-King’s milky, lidless eyes slid to the Starsword in Bryce’s hand. “Some did not survive you?”
Bryce’s swallow was audible. Hunt swore silently.
Bryce said, “Why did you feel the need to attack? To pretend the Reapers were messengers of—the Prince of the Pit.” She clicked her tongue. “I thought we were friends.”
“Death has no friends,” the Under-King said, eerily calm. “I did not send any Reapers to attack you. But I do not tolerate those who falsely accuse me in my realm.”