It begged the question: If everyone knew that the Northern Rift and other Gates only opened to Hel, why did the Asteri bother to expend such resources in hunting for her? Bryce had landed in Hel—surely there was no need to order the mystics to find her.
Unless Bryce Quinlan had wound up somewhere other than Hel. A different world, perhaps. And if that was the case …
How long would it take? How many worlds existed beyond Midgard? And what were the odds of Bryce surviving on any of them—or ever getting back to Midgard?
The elevators opened into the dank dimness of the dungeons. Pollux prowled down the stone walkway, wings tightly furled. Like he didn’t want one speck of dirt from this place marring their pristine white feathers. “Is that why you’re keeping them alive? As bait for that bitch?”
“Yes.” Lidia followed the screams past the guttering firstlight sconces along the wall. “Quinlan and Athalar are mates. She will return to this world because of that bond. And when she does, she will go straight to him.”
“And the brother?”
“Ruhn and Bryce are Starborn,” Lidia said, heaving open the iron door to the large interrogation chamber beyond. Metal grated against stone, its shriek eerily similar to the sounds of torment all around them. “She will want to free him—as her brother and her ally.”
She stalked down the exposed steps into the heart of the chamber, where three males hung from gorsian shackles in the center of the room. Blood pooled beneath them, dribbling into the grate below their bare feet.
She shut down every part of her that felt, that breathed.
Athalar and Baxian dangled unconscious from the ceiling, their torsos patchworks of scars and burns. And their backs …
A constant drip sounded in the otherwise silent chamber, like a leaking faucet. The blood still oozed from the stumps where their wings had been. The gorsian shackles had slowed their healing to near-human levels—keeping them from dying entirely, but ensuring that they suffered through every moment of pain.
Lidia couldn’t look at the third figure hanging between them. Couldn’t get a breath down near him.
Leather whispered over stone, and Lidia dove deep within herself as Pollux’s whip cracked. It snapped against Athalar’s raw, bloody back, and the Umbra Mortis jolted, swaying on his chains.
“Wake up,” the Hammer sneered. “It’s a beautiful day.”
Athalar’s swollen eyes cracked open. Hate blazed in their dark depths.
The halo inked anew upon his brow seemed darker than the shadows of the dungeon. His battered mouth parted in a feral smile, revealing bloodstained teeth. “Morning, sunshine.”
A soft, broken rasp of a laugh sounded to Athalar’s right. And though she knew it was folly, Lidia looked.
Ruhn Danaan, Crown Prince of the Valbaran Fae, was staring at her.
His lip was swollen from where Pollux had torn out his piercing. His eyebrow was crusted with blood from where that hoop had been ripped out, too. Across his tattooed torso, along the arms above his head, blood and dirt and bruises mingled.
The prince’s striking blue eyes were sharp with loathing.
For her.
Pollux slashed his whip into Athalar’s back again, not bothering with questions. No, this was the warm-up. Interrogation would come later.
Baxian still hung unconscious. Pollux had beaten him into a bloody pulp last night after severing his and Athalar’s wings with a blunt-toothed saw. The Helhound didn’t so much as stir.
Night, Lidia tried, casting her voice into the moldy air between herself and the Fae Prince. They’d never spoken mind-to-mind outside of their dreaming, but she’d been trying since he’d arrived here. Again and again, she’d cast her mind toward his. Only silence answered.
Just as it had from the moment Ruhn had learned who she was. What she was.
She knew he could communicate, even with the gorsian stones halting his magic and slowing his healing. Knew he’d done so with his sister before Bryce had escaped.
Night.
Ruhn’s lip pulled back in a silent snarl, blood snaking down his chin.
Pollux’s phone rang, a shrill, strange sound in this ancient shrine to pain. His ministrations halted, a terrible silence in their wake. “Mordoc,” the Hammer said, whip still in one hand. He pivoted from Athalar’s swinging, brutalized body. “Report.”
Lidia didn’t bother to protest the fact that her captain was reporting to the Hammer. Pollux had taken the Harpy’s death personally—he’d commandeered Mordoc and the dreadwolves to find any hint of where Bryce Quinlan might have gone.