House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City Series)

Bryce and Nesta pushed through the tunnel for hours, tense silence filling the space between them again. Worse than before.

It was typical, Bryce realized, of her interactions with the Fae she knew from her own world. She didn’t know why it somehow … disappointed her to realize it.

They paused once, Nesta wordlessly tossing her a water canteen along with a roll of dark bread.

“You brought provisions,” Bryce said around a mouthful of the faintly sweet, moist roll. “Seems weird, considering you intended to bring me right back to the cell.”

Nesta only swigged from her canteen. “I had a feeling I might be running around after you for a while.”

“Long enough to need to stop to eat?” Their gazes met, Nesta’s silvered in Bryce’s starlight.

“We don’t know these caves. I prepared for anything.”

“Not the Wyrm, apparently.”

“You’re alive, aren’t you?”

Bryce couldn’t help her snort. “Fair enough.”

There was no more talk after that.

It was possible they could walk right into a dead end and have wasted miles and hours down here. But the tunnel seemed … intentional. And Bryce wasn’t about to pose a question about the potential fruitlessness of their trek if it would make Nesta try to drag her back to the cave-in to wait to be dug out.

She was getting her way—for better or worse.

Bryce was deep enough in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the fork in the tunnel until she’d nearly passed the tunnel that veered to the right. She drew up short, the halt of Nesta’s footsteps behind her telling her the warrior had done the same.

Bryce tugged the neck of her T-shirt down to reveal more of her starlight, illuminating the two options gaping before them.

To the left, the tunnel continued, old, rough rock walls curving into the gloom.

To the right … Around the natural archway, an array of stars and planets had been carved, crowned at its apex by a large setting or rising sun. Bryce’s star glowed brighter as she faced it, guiding her there.

She could dimly make out more scenes of violence and bloodshed covering the walls inside the tunnel.

“I’m going to take a guess and say let’s go right.” Bryce sighed, covering her star again with her shirt.

“Very well,” Nesta said, and strode for the archway.

Bryce lunged before Nesta could clear it, grabbing the warrior by the back of her collar. With a twirl and a flash, Nesta was on her, sword at Bryce’s throat. Its metal was impossibly cold.

Bryce held up her hands, trying not to breathe too loudly, to bring her skin into any more contact with that horrific blade than necessary. “No—look.” She nodded as minutely as she could to the carvings in the tunnel just beyond the archway.

Nesta didn’t remove the blade, which seemed to throb against Bryce’s skin, like the sword was alive and aware. But Nesta’s gaze shifted to where Bryce had indicated.

“What is it?”

“Those carvings,” Bryce breathed. “Back home, my job is to look at ancient art, to study it and sell it, and … never mind, that’s not really relevant. I just mean I’ve seen a lot of ancient Fae artwork, and that stuff on the walls—it’s spelling out a warning. So if you want to get impaled by a bunch of rusty spears, keep walking.”

Nesta blinked, head angling, more feline than Fae. But the sword lowered.

Bryce tried not to gasp in relief as that icy metal left her skin, her soul. She never wanted to endure anything like it again.

Nesta either didn’t know or didn’t care about the sword’s impact on Bryce as she surveyed the carvings. The one closest to them.

A female, clearly Fae nobility from the ornate robes and fancy jewelry, stared out from the wall. As if she were addressing an audience, welcoming the newcomers to the tunnel. She was young and beautiful, yet stood with a presence that seemed regal. Long hair flowed around her like a silent river, framing her delicate, heart-shaped face.

Bryce shook off the last of her dread and translated the inscription. “Her name was Silene.”

Nesta peered at the writing beneath the image. “That’s all it says?”

Bryce shrugged. “Old-school Fae. Lots of fancy titles and lineage. You know how they liked to preen.”

Nesta’s lips quirked upward. Bryce motioned at the embossed panels that continued onward.

“The warning is in the story she’s telling here,” Bryce said.

A field of corpses had been carved into the wall, a battlefield stretching ahead. Crucifixes loomed over the battlefield, bodies hanging from them. Great, dark beasts of scales and talons—the ones from the pit beneath her cell, she realized with a shudder—feasted on screaming victims. Blood eagles were splayed out on stone altars.

“Mother above,” Nesta murmured.

“Those holes along the corpses there—the ones that look like wounds … I’d bet anything there are mechanisms in them to send weapons at passersby,” Bryce said. “As some fucked-up ‘artistic’ way of making the viewer experience the pain and terror of these Fae victims.”

Bryce could have sworn something like surprise and embarrassment—that perhaps the warrior herself hadn’t spotted the threat—crossed Nesta’s face.

“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.”