“Nothing beyond old songs of bloody battles and tremendous losses.”
“But the story … it rings true to you?” Bryce asked. “Immortal, vicious overseers once ruled this world, and you guys banded together and overthrew them?”
Their silence was confirmation enough.
Yet Rhysand shook his head, as if still not quite believing it. “And you think …” He met Bryce’s stare, his eyes once again full of that predatory focus. Gods, he was terrifying. “You believe the Daglan—these Asteri—want to come back here for revenge. After at least fifteen thousand years.” Doubt dripped from every word.
“That’s, like, five minutes for Rigelus,” Bryce countered. “He’s got infinite time—and resources.”
“What kind of resources?” Cold, sharp words—a leader assessing the threat to his people.
How to begin describing guns or brimstone missiles or mech-suits or Omega-boats or even the Asteri’s power? How to convey the ruthless, swift horror of a bullet? And maybe it was reckless, but … She extended her hand to Rhysand. “I’ll show you.”
Amren and Azriel cut him sharp looks. Like this might be a trap.
“Hold on,” Rhysand said, and vanished into nothing.
Bryce started. “You—you can teleport?”
“We call it winnowing,” Amren drawled. Bryce could have sworn Azriel was smirking. But Amren asked, “Can you do it?”
“No,” Bryce lied. If Azriel sensed her lie, he didn’t call her out this time. “There are only two Fae who can.”
It was Amren’s turn to start. “Two—on your entire planet?”
“I’m guessing you have more?”
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.