That he still believed Bryce was responsible for the Harpy’s death was only because Athalar and Ruhn hadn’t revealed that it was Lidia who’d murdered the Harpy. They knew who she was, and only the fact that she was vital to the rebellion kept them from spilling her secrets.
For a moment, with Pollux turned away, Lidia let her mask drop. Let Ruhn see her true face. The one that had kissed his soul and shared her own with him, their very beings melding.
Ruhn, she pleaded into his mind. Ruhn.
But the Fae Prince did not answer. The hate in his eyes did not lessen. So Lidia donned her Hind’s mask once again.
And as Pollux pocketed his phone and angled his whip anew, the Hind ordered the Hammer in the low, lifeless voice that had been her shield for so long now, “Get the barbed wire instead.”
PART I
THE DROP
1
Bryce Quinlan sat in a chamber so far beneath the mountain above that daylight must have been a myth to the creatures who dwelled there.
For a place that apparently wasn’t Hel, her surroundings sure appeared like it: black stone, subterranean palace, even-more-subterranean interrogation cell … The darkness seemed inherent to the three people standing across from her: a petite female in gray silk, and two winged males clad in black scalelike armor, one of them—the beautiful, powerful male in the center of the trio—literally rippling with shadows and stars.
Rhysand, he’d called himself. The one who looked so much like Ruhn.
It couldn’t be coincidence. Bryce had leapt through the Gate intending to reach Hel, to finally take up Aidas’s and Apollion’s repeated offers to send their armies to Midgard and stop this cycle of galactic conquest. But she’d wound up here instead.
Bryce glanced to the warrior beside Ruhn’s almost-twin. The male who’d found her. Who’d carried the black dagger that had reacted to the Starsword.
His hazel eyes held nothing but cold, predatory alertness.
“Someone has to start talking,” the short female said—the one who’d seemed so shocked to hear Bryce speak in the Old Language, to see the sword. Flickering braziers of something that resembled firstlight gilded the silken strands of her chin-length bob, casting the shadow of her slender jaw in stark relief. Her eyes, a remarkable shade of silver, slid over Bryce but remained unimpressed. “You said your name is Bryce Quinlan. That you come from another world—Midgard.”
Rhysand murmured to the winged male beside him. Translating, perhaps.
The female went on, “If you are to be believed, how is it that you came here? Why did you come here?”
Bryce surveyed the otherwise empty cell. No table glittering with torture instruments, no breaks in the solid stone beyond the door and the grate in the center of the floor, a few feet away. A grate from which she could have sworn a hissing sound emanated.
“What world is this?” Bryce rasped, the words gravelly. After Ruhn’s body double had introduced himself in that lovely, cozy foyer, he’d grabbed her hand. The strength of his grip, the brush of his calluses against her skin had been the only solid things as wind and darkness had roared around them, the world dropping away—and then there was only solid rock and dim lighting. She’d been brought to a palace carved beneath a mountain, and then down the narrow stairs to this dungeon. Where he’d pointed to the lone chair in the center of the room in silent command.
So she’d sat, waiting for the handcuffs or shackles or whatever restraints they used in this world, but none had come.
The short female countered, “Why do you speak the Old Language?”
Bryce jerked her chin at the female. “Why do you?”
The female’s red-painted lips curved upward. It wasn’t a reassuring sight. “Why are you covered in blood that is not your own?”
Score: one for the female.
Bryce knew her blood-soaked clothes, now stiff and dark, and her blood-crusted hands did her no favors. It was the Harpy’s blood, and a bit of Lidia’s. All coating Bryce as a part of a careful game to keep her alive, to keep their secrets safe, while Hunt and Ruhn had—
Her breath began sawing in and out. She’d left them. Her mate and her brother. She’d left them in Rigelus’s hands.
The walls and ceiling pushed in, squeezing the air from her lungs.
Rhysand lifted a broad hand wreathed in stars. “We won’t harm you.” Bryce found the rest of the sentence lurking within the dense shadows around him: if you don’t try to harm us.
She closed her eyes, fighting past the jagged breathing, the crushing weight of the stone above and around her.