Hunt rallied his lightning. Prayed to every god, even if they’d mostly fucked him over until this point. The power of his lightning was familiar, yet suddenly foreign. Helfire, Apollion had called it.
Answers—at long last, answers about why he was what he was, about why he and no one else had the lightning. Even the thunderbirds, made by Hel, had been hunted to extinction by the Asteri. With Sofie’s death, they were truly gone.
Though the Harpy’s resurrection—another thing that was his fucking fault—suggested that the Asteri now had other methods of raising the dead.
Only if they could get their hands on more of his lightning. He’d sooner die.
“One …，” Hunt breathed, and lifted a hand wreathed in lightning.
Lord of Lightning, the Oracle had called him.
“Two …”
Had the Oracle seen what he was, where his power came from, that day?
You remind me of that which was lost long ago. The thunderbirds, hunted to extinction.
Was that the wind ruffling her parka, or was Bryce shaking as she waited for the blow? Hunt didn’t give himself a moment to reconsider. To halt.
“Three.”
He launched a spear of lightning at his mate.
76
As it had that day at the Asteri’s palace, when she had leapt from her own world to another, Hunt’s lightning lanced through Bryce’s back, through the Horn, into the star on her chest—and out into the Gate.
Ember shouted in fear, and even Randall stumbled back a step, but Hunt let his lightning flow into Bryce, kept a steady stream of it surging between them.
“Open,” Bryce said, her voice carrying on the wind. A sliver of darkness began to spread in the middle of the Gate.
Hunt funneled more lightning into her, and the sliver widened, inch by inch.
The Northern Rift had been fixed on Hel—until now. Until his power had passed through not only the Horn on Bryce, but the star on her chest, too—that link to a different world. Reorienting the Gate, as it had that day in the Eternal Palace, to open elsewhere. That was their theory, at least. No one had ever tried to manipulate the Northern Rift to open somewhere other than Hel, but— “That’s enough, Hunt,” Ember warned.
Hunt ignored her and sent another spike of power into his mate. Bryce’s hair floated up, snow and ice drifting with it, but she maintained an eerie calm until the void filled the entirety of the massive Gate.
Hunt cut off his lightning, running to where Bryce stood before the wall of darkness.
Darkness—flecked by starlight.
A female with golden-brown hair sat in an armchair before a fireplace on the other side of it. All that darkness was the starry night beyond her windows.
And her face was a portrait of pure shock as Bryce lifted a hand in greeting and said, “Hello, Nesta.”
* * *
The River Queen sat in a chair before a computer panel in the control room connected to the west air lock, a makeshift throne in the sterile, utilitarian space. The tech who operated the computer had vacated the chamber in a near-sprint at the queen’s snapped command.
Tharion was well aware that the air lock could be easily hosed down to remove any and all traces of blood. A body flushed out through it would go straight to the sobeks circling outside like Reapers.
If Sathia noted those details, if she understood that she and Tharion had been brought here purely for the convenience of getting rid of his corpse, she didn’t let on.
His wife simply curtsied, a graceful swoop downward, at odds with her casual leggings and white sweater, the cashmere now streaked with dirt and torn along the bottom hem. “Your Majesty,” Sathia said, her voice cultured yet unthreatening. “It is an honor to meet you.”
The River Queen’s dark eyes swept over Sathia. “Am I supposed to open my arms to the female who usurped my daughter?”
Sathia didn’t so much as flinch. “If my union with Tharion has brought you grief or offense, then I offer my wholehearted apologies.”
A beat, too long to be comforting. Tharion lifted his gaze to the River Queen and found her watching him. Her gaze was cold, cruel. Unimpressed.
“I take it,” the River Queen said, “you want something very badly from me, if you have come back to risk my wrath.”
Tharion bowed his head. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“And yet you have brought your wife—for what? To soften me? Or as a shield to hide behind?”
“Considering she’s barely up to my chest,” Tharion said dryly, “I don’t think she’d make much of a shield.”