She took the notebook on the desk and slid it into the inside pocket of her athletic jacket.
Then she nudged the prism on the desk a few inches to the side, angling it toward the device across the room. The one the Autumn King said might be able to recapture the light, possibly with more power added to it. But what if light blasted from either prism, meeting in the middle? What would happen in the collision of all that magic?
All that smashing light, those little bits of magic bashing into each other, would produce energy. And fuel her up like a battery.
She hoped.
“Only one way to find out,” she muttered to herself.
With a prayer to Cthona, she sent twin beams of light arcing around the prisms, shooting straight into them.
Twin bursts of that light flared from either prism, gunning for each other. Bands of light falling into darkness, her power stripped to its most elemental, basic form. They shot for each other, and where they met, light and darkness and darkness and light slamming into each other—
Bryce stepped into the explosion in the heart of it.
Stepped into her power.
It lit her up from the inside, lit up her very blood. Her hair drifted above her head, pens and papers and other office detritus flowing upward with it.
Such light and darkness—the power lay in the meeting of the two of them. She understood it now, how the darkness shaped the light.
But all that colliding power … it was the boost she needed.
With a parting middle finger to the floor at her feet and the Autumn King sulking beneath it, she teleported out of the villa to the place she wanted to be the most.
Home. Wherever that was in Midgard.
Because her home was no longer just a physical place, but a person, too.
Silene had claimed as much when she spoke of Theia and Aidas—their souls had found each other across worlds, because they were mates. They were each other’s homes.
And for Bryce, home was—and always would be—Hunt.
* * *
Exhaustion weighed so heavily on Ruhn that despite his aching neck, he couldn’t be bothered to shift into a more comfortable position in the chair. Machines beeped endlessly, like metal crickets marking the passing of the night.
He had a vague sense of Declan replacing Flynn. Then Dec left and it was Flynn again.
He didn’t know what woke him. Whether it was some hitch in the machine or some shift in the cadence of her breathing, but … a stillness went through him. He cracked his eyes open, sore and gritty, and looked to the bed.
Lidia still lay unconscious. Ghastly pale.
Lidia.
No answer. Ruhn leaned over his knees and rubbed his face. Maybe he could crash on the tiled floor. It’d be better than contorting himself in the chair.
“Morning,” Flynn said. “Want some coffee?”
Ruhn grunted his assent. Flynn clapped him on the back and slipped out, the door hissing open and shut.
Gods, his whole body hurt. His hand … He examined the thin, strangely pale fingers, the lack of tattoos or scars. Still weak. Like it was still rebuilding the strength stored in his immortal blood on the day of his Drop.
He flexed his fingers, wincing, then slowly sat up and rolled his neck. He was on his third rotation when he looked at the bed and noticed Lidia staring at him.
He went wholly still.
Her golden eyes were hazy with pain and exhaustion, but they were open, and she was … she was …
Ruhn blinked, making sure he wasn’t dreaming.
Lidia rasped, “Am I dead or alive?”
His chest caved in. “Alive,” he whispered, hands beginning to shake.
Lidia’s lips curled faintly, like it took all her effort to do so. The weight of it hit him—of what she was and who she was and what she had done.
The Hind lay before him—the fucking Hind. How could he feel such relief about someone he hated so much? How could he hate someone whose life mattered more to him than his own?
Her glazed eyes shifted from his. Glanced around the windowless room, taking in the machines and her IV. Her nostrils flared, scenting the room beneath the antiseptics and various potions. Something sharpened in her stare. Something like recognition.
Then Lidia asked very quietly, “Where are we?”
The question surprised him. She’d planned this escape. Had her injury affected her mind? Gods, he hadn’t even thought about the potential damage from going without oxygen for so long. Ruhn said softly, “On the Depth Charger—”
She moved.
Tubing and monitors came flying off her, ripped from her arm so fast blood sprayed. Machines blared, and Ruhn couldn’t act quickly enough to stop her as she leapt out of the bed, feet slipping on the floor as she hurtled to the door.