It could only mean one thing. The Mask had been trying to tell him, but he refused to believe it. He wouldn’t believe it for one second.
But the portal was closing, getting smaller and smaller, and—
A glowing, black figure filled it. Then another.
Aidas and Apollion.
Their power grabbed the edges of the portal and held it a little wider. Held it open a moment longer.
And with what little strength he had left, Hunt threw a desperate, raging, blazing-hot rope of lightning toward Apollion. The only being on Midgard who could handle his power.
Apollion caught it, in that humanoid form once more, and pulled.
Aidas flared with black light, pushing back against the sealing portal, against Urd’s wishes. Hunt was close enough to see the princes’ strained faces, Apollion’s teeth flashing as he dragged Hunt by his lightning, inch by inch, closer and closer. Aidas was sweating, panting as he fought to keep the portal open—
And then Ruhn was there. Starlight flaring. Pushing back against the impossible. Lidia was beside him, crackling with fire.
Tharion. Holstrom. Flynn and Dec. A fire sprite, her small body bright with flame. Isaiah and Naomi.
So many hands, so many powers, from almost every House.
The friends they’d made were what mattered in the end. Not the enemies.
Through love, all is possible.
It was love that was holding the portal open. That held it open until the very end, until Hunt and Bryce were through, crashing into the dirt of Midgard, the blue sky filling his sight and all that beautiful air filling his lungs—
The portal shut, sealing the black hole and all of space behind it.
The Asteri were gone.
Hunt was out of the mech-suit in a heartbeat, shattering the metal panel, swinging down to where Bryce lay on the ground. She wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing.
And he finally let the Mask say the word he’d been ignoring since he’d grabbed her in the depths of space.
Dead.
99
“It was too long,” Declan was saying as Hunt worked on Bryce’s heart, his lightning slamming into her, over and over. “She was without oxygen for too long, even for Vanir. There’s nothing my healing magic can do if she’s already—”
Hunt blasted his lightning into her chest again.
Bryce arced off the ground, but her heart didn’t start beating.
Their friends were gathered around them, shadows to his grief, this unfathomable pain.
Get up, he willed the Mask, willed her. Get the fuck up.
But it did not respond. Like one final fuck you, the Mask tumbled off his face. As if her Made essence had faded from him with her death.
“Bryce,” he ordered, voice cracking. This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening to him, not when they’d been so close—
“Blessed Luna, so bright in the sky,” Flynn whispered, “spare your daughter—”
“No prayers,” Hunt growled. “No fucking prayers.”
She couldn’t be dead. She had fought so hard and done so much …
Hunt crashed his lightning into her heart again.
It had worked before. That day of the demon attack in the spring—he’d brought her back to life.
But her heart did not answer this time.
Rigelus had used his gods-damned lightning to resurrect the Harpy—why the fuck didn’t it work now? What had Rigelus known about Hunt’s own power that Hunt didn’t?
“Do something,” Hunt snarled up at Apollion and Aidas. “You’ve got a black hole in your fucking mouth—you’ve got all the power in the galaxy,” he spat at the Prince of the Pit. “Save her.”
“I cannot,” Apollion said, and Hunt had never hated anything more than he hated the grief in the prince’s eyes. The tears on Aidas’s face. “We do not have such gifts.”
“Then find Thanatos,” Ruhn ordered. “He goes around calling himself the Prince of Souls or whatever bullshit. Find him and—”
“He cannot save her, either,” Aidas said softly. “None of us can.”
Hunt looked down at his mate, so still and cold and lifeless.
The scream that came out of him shook the very world.
There was nothing but that scream, and the emptiness where she had been, where the life they were supposed to have had together should have been. And when his breath ran out, he was just … done. There was nothing left, and what the fuck was the point of it all if—
A gentle hand touched his shoulder. “I might be able to try something,” said a female voice.
Hunt looked up to find Hypaxia Enador somehow standing beside him, the Bone Crown of the House of Flame and Shadow atop her shining black curls.