This bitch knew everything.
“Let me fight Holstrom,” Tharion snapped.
“No,” the Viper Queen said with sweet venom. “Holstrom and the girl go into the ring, or the deal’s off.”
“You fucking—” Flynn started.
“I’ll do it,” Sigrid said, fingers curling into fists at her sides.
They all turned to the Fendyr heir. Ithan’s face twisted, a portrait of anguish.
Tharion noted that pain, and wished he’d never been born. His choices had led them here. His fuckups.
“Good,” the Viper Queen said to Sigrid, who bared her teeth at the snake. But the ruler of the Meat Market gave the wolf a serpent’s smile. “Looks like it might be your last night on Midgard. Maybe you should have gotten that wardrobe upgrade after all.”
* * *
Bryce stared at the hard-faced, beautiful female who could have rivaled the Hind for sheer badassery and beauty. Theia.
Silene’s next words only confirmed how alike the ancient Fae Queen and the Hind were:
But my mother, Theia, used the time she served the Daglan to learn all she could about their instruments of conquest. The Dread Trove, we called it in secret. The Mask, the Harp, the Crown, and the Horn.
From the corner of her vision, Bryce spied Nesta glancing her way at the last word.
The Horn had been sister to the Mask, and the Harp Nesta had mentioned. It had come from here, and worse, was part of some deadly arsenal of the Asteri—
And Theia.
The carving in the tunnel of the crowned, masked queen—Theia—flashed in Bryce’s memory. She’d been holding two instruments: a horn and a harp.
The Daglan, Silene went on, always quarreled over who should control the Trove, so more often than not, the Trove went unused. It was their downfall.
Was this it, then? Why she’d been sent to this world? To learn about this Trove—that it might possibly be the thing to destroy the Asteri? But Bryce could only watch as the vision showed Theia’s hands snatching the objects from black pedestals. Spiriting them away from the subterranean mountain holds where they were kept, using cave archways to move swiftly across the lands.
Caves like this one. Capable of moving people great distances in a matter of hours. Or an instant.
Snow drifted across the image, and then Theia was standing atop a mountain, a black monolith rising behind her.
“Ramiel,” Azriel whispered from behind them, from beyond the wards.
Theia embraced a handsome, broad-shouldered man amid the swirling snow.
My mother and father, Fionn, had kept their love a secret through the years, knowing the Daglan would find it amusing to tear them apart if they learned of the affair. But they were able to meet in secret—and to plan their uprising.
“Fionn …，” Azriel murmured, awe lacing his voice, “was your ancestor.”
Nesta turned from the vision, frowning toward Azriel. “You might as well come in,” she muttered, and pointed. Silver flame rippled in a straight line, spearing for Azriel. He didn’t flinch away, only tucking in his wings tightly as streams of smoke filtered up from the floor.
A path through the wards. The spells shimmered against the flames, as if trying to close in on the road she’d made, but Nesta’s power held them at bay.
Azriel inclined his head to Nesta as he stepped through that slender passage lined with silver flames, not one ounce of fear on his beautiful face. Only when Azriel had passed through did Nesta release her power, the wards slamming back into place in a shimmering rush, like a wave washing over the shore.
Bryce pointed to the hologram—to the golden-haired Fae male. “Who is he?” she asked quietly. There had never been any mention of Fionn in the histories of Midgard, the lore.
“The first and last High King of these lands,” Azriel breathed.
Before Bryce could contemplate this further, Silene went on, But my mother and father knew they needed the most valuable of all the Daglan’s weapons.
Bryce tensed. This had to be the thing that had given them the edge—
The snows around Ramiel parted, revealing a massive bowl of iron at the foot of the monolith. Even through the vision, its presence leaked into the world, a heavy, ominous thing.
“The Cauldron,” Nesta said, dread lacing her voice.
Not a useful weapon, then. Bryce braced herself as Silene continued.
The Cauldron was of our world, our heritage. But upon arriving here, the Daglan captured it and used their powers to warp it. To turn it from what it had been into something deadlier. No longer just a tool of creation, but of destruction. And the horrors it produced … those, too, my parents would turn to their advantage.