“How do you propose we get through, then?” A weighted question. A test.
Like Hel would Bryce freeze again. She held out a hand. “Pass me something heavy. I’ll see if I can trigger the mechanism to fire.”
Nesta sighed, as if annoyed again. Bryce turned to her, about to snap something about having a better idea, when Nesta lifted an arm. Silver flame wreathed her fingers. Bryce backed away a step.
It was fire but not fire. It was like ice turned into flame. It echoed in Nesta’s eyes as she laid her hand on the stone wall. Silver fire rippled over the carvings.
Mechanisms clicked—and misfired. Rusty metal bolts shot from the walls. Or tried to. They barely cleared the wall before they melted into dust.
Nesta’s power shivered down the walls, disappearing into the dark. Faint clicking and hissing faded away into the gloom; the sound of the traps turned to ashes.
Nesta met Bryce’s stare. The fire wreathing her hand winked out, but the silver flame still flickered in her eyes. “You have my gratitude” was all Nesta said before striding ahead.
* * *
Later, Bryce and Nesta again dined on hard cheese and more of that dark bread, their resting place a small alcove in the tunnel wall. Bryce’s starlight still provided the only glow, muted through her T-shirt. It was cold enough that she looked with envy at Nesta’s dark cape, wrapped tightly around the warrior.
She distracted herself by peering at the carvings etched into the walls: Fae kneeling before impossibly tall, robed humanoids, glowing bits of starlight in their upraised hands. Magic. An offering to the crowned creatures before them. One of the beings was reaching a hand toward the nearest Fae, her fingers stretching toward that offered light.
Bryce’s stomach twisted as she noted that behind the supplicating Fae, chained humans lay prostrate on the earth, their crudely carved faces a sharp contrast to the otherworldly, pristine beauty of the Fae. Another bit of fucked-up artistry: Humans were little more than rock and dirt compared to the Fae and their godlike masters. Not even worth the effort of carving them. Present only for the Fae to lord their power over them, to crush the humans beneath their heels.
From far away, Rigelus’s voice sounded in Bryce’s memory. The Asteri had once given the humans to the Vanir to have someone to rule over, to keep them from thinking about how they were hardly better off, all of them slaves to the Asteri. It continued on Midgard today, this false sense of superiority and ownership. And it seemed it existed in this world as well.
Nesta finished her cheese, gnawing it right down to the rind, and said without looking at Bryce, “Your star always glows like that?”
“No,” Bryce said, swallowing down the bread. “But down here, it seems to.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I wanted to find out: What it’s leading me toward in this tunnel. Why it’s leading me there.”
“Why you stumbled into our world.” Rhysand or the others must have filled Nesta in on everything before siccing her on Bryce.
Bryce motioned to the tunnel and its ancient carvings. “What is this place, anyway?”
“I told you earlier: We don’t know. Until you crept past the beasts, even Rhys didn’t know this tunnel existed. He certainly didn’t know there were carvings down here.”
“And Rhysand is … your king?”
Nesta snorted. “He’d like to be. But no. He’s the High Lord of the Night Court.”
Bryce arched a brow. “So he serves a king?”
“We have no kings in these lands. Only seven courts, each ruled by a High Lord. Sometimes a High Lady beside them.”
A rock skittered in the distance. Bryce twisted toward it, but—nothing. Only darkness.
She found Nesta watching her carefully. Nesta asked, “Why not let me get impaled earlier? You could have let me walk right into a trap and run.”
“I have no reason to want you dead.”
“Yet you ran from the cell.”
“I know how interrogations tend to end.”
“No one was going to torture you.”
“Not yet, you mean.”
Nesta didn’t reply. At the sound of another scuff in the darkness, Bryce whipped her head to it and found Nesta watching her once more.
“What is that?” Bryce asked quietly.
Nesta’s eyes gleamed like a cat’s in the dimness. “Just the shadows.”
10
Tharion knew this wouldn’t end well. Not with Flynn and Dec pointing guns at the Hind, Marc’s claws gleaming and poised to shred flesh. Not with Holstrom crouched, teeth bared, angled in front of Sigrid. The Fendyr heir glanced between them all with predatory assessment, understanding a threat at hand but not what it was.