* * *
Hunt had no energy left to dwell on the fact that Holstrom seemed … leveled up. Older, more powerful somehow, even though he’d just seen the wolf. He didn’t fucking care about any of it as the wolf reached them and said to Bryce, “I was sent to give you this.” He handed her the rifle.
With shaking hands, Bryce took it. “Jesiba gave it to you?”
“No. I mean, yes, but …” Ithan’s eyes were wide. “There’s a bullet in there, full of the secondlight of the dead of Crescent City. Connor gave it to me. For you.”
“Connor?” Bryce swayed again, and Hunt caught her.
“There’s no time to explain,” Ithan said, “but the dead sent me to give you that rifle, and that bullet.” Ithan’s eyes shone bright. “Connor said to make it count, Bryce.”
Bryce looked down at the rifle in her hands, weighing it. Hunt asked, “What use is one bullet of secondlight against an Asteri?”
“Not against an Asteri,” Bryce said. “That bullet is a secondlight bomb.”
Ithan nodded, apparently getting what she meant more than Hunt did.
“I don’t have enough strength to teleport both of us back to the core,” Bryce said, and took Hunt’s hand. She pressed something cold into it.
Her words struck, and Hunt spat, “Fuck that.” His temper flared. “Fuck that, Bryce, let’s go blast that monster to Hel—”
“Get out of the palace,” Bryce warned, and teleported. Alone.
Taking the Godslayer Rifle with her, and leaving the Mask in Hunt’s hand.
* * *
She had one shot.
Last time, Lehabah had bought her the two seconds it cost to line up that shot.
This time, there was no fire sprite to save her. No synth to fuel her. Only training that Randall had hammered into her over the years. She sent a silent prayer of thanks to him.
One shot, straight down into the tunnel that Hunt had made, to blast apart the last of the crystal around the core and release all that firstlight.
She knew what lining up the shot would cost her. Knew that in the second it took to aim, Rigelus would launch his power at her, and there would be no wall of Hunt’s lightning to keep it at bay.
Bryce savored the whipping, wild wind around her as she teleported—one last time, propelling herself through the world.
She lifted the rifle to her shoulder, clicking off the safety, and then she was there in the core room, debris and crystal everywhere, her rifle already aimed at the hole in the center.
But Rigelus was not alone. The three other remaining Asteri now stood with him, the four of them a solid wall between Bryce and the firstlight core. At least another one was dead, if the slowing of the world a few minutes ago was any indication. But four remained.
Bryce’s finger stalled on the trigger. To waste the bullet on them—
“Don’t you want to know what you risk, before you act so recklessly?” Rigelus said smugly. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You destroy the firstlight core, and you destroy Midgard itself.”
96
Bryce didn’t lower the Godslayer Rifle. She kept it aimed at the Asteri’s feet. At the hole just behind them. To get close enough, she’d have to teleport right to them, and fire straight into the hole.
“That core is tied to Midgard’s very soul,” Rigelus said. “You destroy it, and this entire planet will wink out of existence.”
Bryce’s blood chilled. She might have called bullshit had it not been for Vesperus’s claims about the Cauldron.
“You made the core a kill switch for this world,” Bryce breathed.
The Asteri to Rigelus’s left—Eosphoros, the Morning Star—sneered, “To prevent rodents like you from getting any ideas about destroying us.”
“Our fate,” Rigelus said to Bryce, folding his hands in front of him almost beatifically, “is tied to that of this planet. You kill our source of nourishment, and you doom every living soul on Midgard as well.”
“And if I call your bluff?” Bryce demanded, buying whatever time she could to sort out all she’d heard and witnessed and endured—
“Then a darkness like none you have ever known shall devour this planet, and you will all cease to exist,” said the Asteri to Rigelus’s right—Hesperus, the Evening Star.
“So you’d rather die,” Bryce said, “than see any of us freed from you?”
“If we are denied our food, then we shall die; there is no purpose to your existence, if not to sustain us. You are chattel.”