House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City)

by Sarah J. Maas

  Bryce had seen people’s boats tip. Would never forget Danika’s half-muffled pleading on the audio of the apartment building’s hall camera.

  Bryce hadn’t been willing to make the gamble that the boat might not reach the far shore. Not for Danika.

  She’d tossed a Death Mark into the Istros, payment to the Under-King—a coin of pure iron from an ancient, long-gone kingdom across the sea. Passage for a mortal on a boat.

  And then she’d knelt on the crumbling stone steps, the river mere feet behind her, the arches of the bone gates above her, and waited.

  The Under-King, veiled in black and silent as death, had appeared moments later.

  It has been an age since a mortal dared set foot on my isle.

  The voice had been old and young, male and female, kind and full of hatred. She’d never heard anything so hideous—and beckoning.

  I wish to trade my place.

  I know why you are here, Bryce Quinlan. Whose passage you seek to barter. An amused pause. Do you not wish to one day dwell here among the honored dead? Your balance remains skewed toward acceptance—continue on your path, and you shall be welcomed when your time comes.

  I wish to trade my place. For Danika Fendyr.

  Do this and know that no other Quiet Realms of Midgard shall be open to you. Not the Bone Quarter, not the Catacombs of the Eternal City, not the Summer Isles of the north. None, Bryce Quinlan. To barter your resting place here is to barter your place everywhere.

  I wish to trade my place.

  You are young, and you are weighed with grief. Consider that your life may seem long, but it is a mere flutter of eternity.

  I wish to trade my place.

  Are you so certain Danika Fendyr will be denied welcome? Have you so little faith in her actions and deeds that you must make this bargain?

  I wish to trade my place. She’d sobbed the words.

  There is no undoing this.

  I wish to trade my place.

  Then say it, Bryce Quinlan, and let the trade be done. Say it a seventh and final time, and let the gods and the dead and all those between hear your vow. Say it, and it shall be done.

  She hadn’t hesitated, knowing this was the ancient rite. She’d looked it up in the gallery archives. Had stolen the Death Mark from there, too. It had been given to Jesiba by the Under-King himself, the sorceress had told her, when she’d sworn fealty to the House of Flame and Shadow.

  I wish to trade my place.

  And so it had been done.

  Bryce had not felt any different afterward, when she’d been sent back over the river. Or in the days after that. Even her mother had not been able to tell—hadn’t noticed that Bryce had snuck from her hotel room in the dead of night.

  In the two years since, Bryce had sometimes wondered if she’d dreamed it, but then she’d look through the drawer in the gallery where all the old coins were kept and see the empty, dark spot where the Death Mark had been. Jesiba had never noticed it was gone.

  Bryce liked to think of her chance at eternal rest as missing with it. To imagine the coins nestled in their velvet compartments in the drawer as all the souls of those she loved, dwelling together forever. And there was hers—missing and drifting, wiped away the moment she died.

  But what Sabine had claimed about Danika suffering in the Bone Quarter … Bryce refused to believe it. Because the alternative—No. Danika had deserved to go to the Bone Quarter, had nothing to be ashamed about, whether Sabine or the other assholes disagreed or not. Whether the Under-King or whoever the Hel deemed their souls worthy disagreed or not.

  Bryce ran her hand through Hunt’s silken hair, the sounds of his breathing filling the room.

  It sucked. This stupid fucking world they lived in.

  It sucked, and it was full of awful people. And the good ones always paid for it.

  She pulled her phone from the nightstand and began typing out a message.

  She fired it off a moment later, not giving herself time to reconsider what she’d written to Ithan. Her first message to him in two years. His frantic messages from that horrible night, then his cold order to stay away, were still the last things in a thread that went back five years before that.

  You tell your Alpha that Connor never bothered to notice her because he always knew what a piece of shit she was. And tell Sabine that if I see her again, I will kill her.

  Bryce lay down next to Hunt, not daring to touch his ravaged back.

  Her phone buzzed. Ithan had written, I had no part in what went down today.

  Bryce wrote back, You disgust me. All of you.

  Ithan didn’t reply, and she put her phone on silent before she let out a long breath and leaned her brow against Hunt’s shoulder.

  She’d find a way to make this right. Somehow. Someday.

  Hunt’s eyes cracked open, pain a steady throb through him. Its sharpness was dulled—likely by some sort of potion or concoction of drugs.

  The steady counterweight that should have been on his back was gone. The emptiness hit him like a semitruck. But soft, feminine breathing filled the darkness. A scent like paradise filled his nose, settled him. Soothed the pain.

  His eyes adjusted to the dark enough to know that he was in Bryce’s bedroom. That she was lying beside him. Medical supplies and vials lay next to the bed. All for him, many looking used. The clock read four in the morning. How many hours had she sat up, tending to him?

  Her hands were tucked in at her chest, as if she had fallen asleep beseeching the gods.

  He mouthed her name, his tongue as dry as sandpaper.

  Pain rippled through his body, but he managed to stretch out an arm. Managed to slide it over her waist and tuck her into him. She made a soft sound and nuzzled her head into his neck.

  Something deep in him shifted and settled. What she’d said and done today, what she’d revealed to the world in her pleading for him … It was dangerous. For both of them. So, so dangerous.

  If he were wise, he’d find somehow to pull away. Before this thing between them met its inevitable, horrible end. As all things in the Republic met a horrible end.

  And yet Hunt couldn’t bring himself to remove his arm. To avoid the instinct to breathe in her scent and listen to her soft breathing.

  He didn’t regret it, what he’d done. Not one bit of it.

  But there might come a day when that wouldn’t be true. A day that might dawn very soon.

  So Hunt savored the feel of Bryce. Her scent and breathing.

  Savored every second of it.

  63

  “Is Athie okay, BB?”

  Bryce rubbed her eyes as she studied the computer screen in the gallery library. “He’s sleeping it off.”

  Lehabah had cried this morning when Bryce had trudged in to tell her what had occurred. She’d barely noticed that her leg had no pain—not a whisper. She’d wanted to stay home, to care for Hunt, but when she’d called Jesiba, the answer had been clear: No.

  She’d spent the first half of the morning filling out job applications.

  And had sent each and every one of them in.

  She didn’t know where the Hel she would end up, but getting out of this place was the first step. Of many.

  She’d taken a few more today.

  Ruhn had picked up on the first ring, and come right over to the apartment.

  Hunt had still been asleep when she’d left him in her brother’s care. She didn’t want anyone from that fucking legion in her house. Didn’t want to see Isaiah or Viktoria or any of the triarii anytime soon.

  Ruhn had taken one glance at Hunt’s mutilated back and gagged. But he’d promised to stay on the pills-and-wound-care schedule she laid out for him.

  “Micah went easy on him,” Ruhn said when she stopped by at lunch, toying with one of his earrings. “Really fucking easy. Sabine had the right to call for his death.” As a slave, Hunt had no rights whatsoever. None.

  “I will never forget it as long as I live,” Bryce answered, her voice dull. Th
e flash of Micah’s sword. Hunt’s scream, as if his soul was being shredded. Sabine’s smile.

  “I should have been the one to shut Amelie up.” Shadows flickered in the room.

  “Well, you weren’t.” She measured the potion for Ruhn to give Hunt at the top of the hour.

  Ruhn stretched an arm over the back of the sofa. “I’d like to be, Bryce.”

  She met her brother’s gaze. “Why?”

  “Because you’re my sister.”

  She didn’t have a response—not yet.

  She could have sworn hurt flashed in his eyes at her silence. She was out of her apartment in another minute, and barely reached the gallery before Jesiba had called, raging about how Bryce wasn’t ready for the two o’clock meeting with the owl shifter who was ready to buy a marble statuette worth three million gold marks.

  Bryce executed the meeting, and the sale, and didn’t hear half of what was said.

  Sign, stamp, goodbye.

  She returned to the library by three. Lehabah warmed her shoulder as she opened her laptop. “Why are you on Redner Industries’ site?”

  Bryce just stared at the two small fields:

  Username. Password.

  She typed in dfendyr. The cursor hovered over the password.

  Someone might be tipped off that she was trying to get in. And if she did get access, someone might very well receive an alert. But … It was a risk worth taking. She was out of options.

  Lehabah read the username. “Does this somehow tie in to the Horn?”

  “Danika knew something—something big,” Bryce mused.

  Password. What would Danika’s password be?

  Redner Industries would have told her to write something random and full of symbols.

  Danika would have hated being told what to do, and would have done the opposite.

  Bryce typed in SabineSucks.

  No luck. Though she’d done it the other day, she again typed in Danika’s birthday. Her own birthday. The holy numbers. Nothing.

  Her phone buzzed, and a message from Ruhn lit up her screen.

  He woke up, took his potions like a good boy, and demanded to know where you were.

  Ruhn added, He’s not a bad male.

  She wrote back, No, he’s not.

  Ruhn replied, He’s sleeping again, but seemed in good enough spirits, all things considered.

  A pause, and then her brother wrote, He told me to tell you thanks. For everything.

  Bryce read the messages three times before she looked at the interface again. And typed in the only other password she could think of. The words written on the back of a leather jacket she’d worn constantly for the last two years. The words inked on her own back in an ancient alphabet. Danika’s favorite phrase, whispered to her by the Oracle on her sixteenth birthday.

  The Old Language of the Fae didn’t work. Neither did the formal tongue of the Asteri.

  So she wrote it in the common language.

  Through love, all is possible.

  The login screen vanished. And a list of files appeared.

  Most were reports on Redner’s latest projects: improving tracking quality on phones; comparing the speed at which shifters could change forms; analyzing the healing rates of witch magic versus Redner medicines. Boring everyday science.

  She’d almost given up when she noticed a subfolder: Party Invites.

  Danika had never been organized enough to keep such things, let alone put them in a folder. She either deleted them right away or let them rot in her inbox, unanswered.

  It was enough of an anomaly that Bryce clicked on it and found a list of folders within. Including one titled Bryce.

  A file with her name on it. Hidden in another file. Exactly as Bryce had hidden her own job applications on this computer.

  “What is that?” Lehabah whispered at her shoulder.

  Bryce opened the file. “I don’t know. I never sent invites to her work address.”

  The folder contained a single photo.

  “Why does she have a picture of her old jacket?” Lehabah asked. “Was she going to sell it?”

  Bryce stared and stared at the image. Then she moved, logging out of the account before running up the stairs to the showroom, where she grabbed the leather jacket from her chair.

  “It was a clue,” she said breathlessly to Lehabah as she flew back down the stairs, fingers running and pawing over every seam of the jacket. “The photo is a fucking clue—”

  Something hard snagged her fingers. A lump. Right along the vertical line of the L in love.

  “Through love, all is possible,” Bryce whispered, and grabbed a pair of scissors from the cup on the table. Danika had even tattooed the hint on Bryce’s fucking back, for fuck’s sake. Lehabah peered over her shoulder as Bryce cut into the leather.

  A small, thin metal rectangle fell onto the table. A flash drive.

  “Why would she hide that in her coat?” Lehabah asked, but Bryce was already moving again, hands shaking as she fitted the drive into the slot on her laptop.

  Three unmarked videos lay within.

  She opened the first video. She and Lehabah watched in silence.

  Lehabah’s whisper filled the library, even over the scratching of the nøkk.

  “Gods spare us.”

  64

  Hunt had managed to get out of bed and prove himself alive enough that Ruhn Danaan had finally left. He had no doubt the Fae Prince had called his cousin to inform her, but it didn’t matter: Bryce was home in fifteen minutes.

  Her face was white as death, so ashen that her freckles stood out like splattered blood. No sign of anything else amiss, not one thread on her black dress out of place.

  “What.” He was instantly at the door, wincing as he surged from where he’d been on the couch watching the evening news coverage of Rigelus, Bright Hand of the Asteri, giving a pretty speech about the rebel conflict in Pangera. It’d be another day or two before he could walk without pain. Another several weeks until his wings grew back. A few days after that until he could test out flying. Tomorrow, probably, the insufferable itching would begin.

  He remembered every miserable second from the first time he’d had his wings cut off. All the surviving Fallen had endured it. Along with the insult of having their wings displayed in the crystal palace of the Asteri as trophies and warnings.

  But she first asked, “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.” Lie. Syrinx pranced at his feet, showering his hand with kisses. “What’s wrong?”

  Bryce wordlessly closed the door. Shut the curtains. Yanked out her phone from her jacket pocket, pulled up an email—from herself to herself—and clicked on an attached file. “Danika had a flash drive hidden in the lining of her jacket,” Bryce said, voice shaking, and led him back to the couch, helping him to sit as the video loaded. Syrinx leapt onto the cushions, curling up beside him. Bryce sat on his other side, so close their thighs pressed together. She didn’t seem to notice. After a heartbeat, Hunt didn’t, either.

  It was grainy, soundless footage of a padded cell.

  At the bottom of the video, a ticker read: Artificial Amplification for Power Dysfunction, Test Subject 7.

  A too-thin human female sat in the room in a med-gown. “What the fuck is this?” Hunt asked. But he already knew.

  Synth. These were the synth research trials.

  Bryce grunted—keep watching.

  A young draki male in a lab coat entered the room, bearing a tray of supplies. The video sped up, as if someone had increased the speed of the footage for the sake of urgency. The draki male took her vitals and then injected something into her arm.

  Then he left. Locked the door.

  “Are they …” Hunt swallowed. “Did he just inject her with synth?”

  Bryce made a small, confirming noise in her throat.

  The camera kept rolling. A minute passed. Five. Ten.

  Two Vanir walked into the room. Two large serpentine shifters who sized up the human female locked in
alone with them. Hunt’s stomach turned. Turned further at the slave tattoos on their arms, and knew that they were prisoners. Knew, from the way they smiled at the human female shrinking against the wall, why they had been locked up.

  They lunged for her.

  But the human female lunged, too.

  It happened so fast that Hunt could barely track it. The person who had edited the footage went back and slowed it, too.

  So he watched, blow by blow, as the human female launched herself at the two Vanir males.

  And ripped them to pieces.

  It was impossible. Utterly impossible. Unless—

  Tharion had said synth could temporarily grant humans powers greater than most Vanir. Powers enough to kill.

  “Do you know how badly the human rebels would want this?” Hunt said. Bryce just jerked her chin toward the screen. Where the footage kept going.

  They sent in two other males. Bigger than the last. And they, too, wound up in pieces.

  Piles.

  Oh gods.

  Another two. Then three. Then five.

  Until the entire room was red. Until the Vanir were clawing at the doors, begging to be let out. Begging as their companions, then they themselves, were slaughtered.

  The human female was screaming, her head tilted to the ceiling. Screaming in rage or pain or what, he couldn’t tell without the sound.

  Hunt knew what was coming next. Knew, and couldn’t stop himself from watching.

  She turned on herself. Ripped herself apart. Until she, too, was a pile on the floor.

  The footage cut out.

  Bryce said softly, “Danika must have figured out what they were working on in the labs. I think someone involved in these tests … Could they have sold the formula to some drug boss? Whoever killed Danika and the pack and the others must have been high on this synth. Or injected someone with it and sicced them on the victims.”

  Hunt shook his head. “Maybe, but how does it tie in to the demons and the Horn?”

  “Maybe they summoned the kristallos for the antidote in its venom—and nothing more. They wanted to try to make an antidote of their own, in case the synth ever turned on them. Maybe it doesn’t connect to the Horn at all,” Bryce said. “Maybe this is what we were meant to find. There are two other videos like this, of two different human subjects. Danika left them for me. She must have known someone was coming for her. Must have known when she was on that Aux boat, confiscating that crate of synth, that they’d come after her soon. There was no second type of demon hunting alongside the kristallos. Just a person—from this world. Someone who was high on the synth and used its power to break through our apartment’s enchantments. And then had the strength to kill Danika and the whole pack.”