House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,284

face, her brother hadn’t known, either.

“Tell Ruhn I forgive him,” Bryce said, shaking again. Tears streamed down the prince’s face.

“I forgave him a long time ago,” Bryce said. “I just didn’t know how to tell him. Tell him I’m sorry I hid the truth, and that I only did it because I love him and didn’t want to take anything away from him. He’ll always be the better one of us.”

The agony on Ruhn’s face turned to confusion.

But Hunt couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t take another word of this. “Bryce, please—”

“Hunt.” The entire world went quiet. “I was waiting for you.”

“Bryce, sweetheart, just get back to your apartment and give me an hour and—”

“No,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She put her hand on her chest. Over her heart. “I was waiting for you—in here.”

Hunt couldn’t stop his own tears then. “I was waiting for you, too.”

She smiled, even as she sobbed again.

“Please,” Hunt begged. “Please, Bryce. You have to go now. Before more come through.”

She opened her eyes and got to her feet as true night fell. Faced the Gate halfway down the block. “I forgive you—for the shit with the synth. For all of it. None of it matters. Not anymore.” She ended the call and leaned Danika’s sword against the wall of the shelter alcove. Placed her phone carefully on the ground next to it.

Hunt shot from his seat. “BRYCE—”

She ran for the Gate.

87

“No,” Ruhn was saying, over and over. “No, no—”

But Hunt heard nothing. Felt nothing. It had all crumbled inside him the moment she’d hung up.

Bryce leapt the fence around the Gate and halted before its towering archway. Before the terrible black void within it.

A faint white radiance began to glow around her.

“What is that?” Fury whispered.

It flickered, growing brighter in the night.

Enough to illuminate her slender hands cupping a sparkling, pulsing light before her chest.

The light was coming from her chest—had been pulled from inside it. Like it had dwelled inside her all along. Bryce’s eyes were closed, her face serene.

Her hair drifted above her head. Bits of debris floated up around her, too. As if gravity had ceased to exist.

The light she held was so stark it cast the rest of the world into grays and blacks. Slowly, her eyes opened, amber blazing like the first pure rays of dawn. A soft, secret smile graced her mouth.

Her eyes lifted to the Gate looming above her. The light between her hands grew stronger.

Ruhn fell to his knees.

“I am Bryce Quinlan,” she said to the Gate, to the void, to all of Hel behind it. Her voice was serene—wise and laughing. “Heir to the Starborn Fae.”

The ground slid out from under Hunt as the light between her hands, the star she’d drawn from her shattered heart, flared as bright as the sun.

Danika knelt on the asphalt, hands interlocked behind her blood-soaked hair. The two gunshot wounds to her leg had stopped leaking blood, but Bryce knew the bullets remained lodged in her upper thigh. The pain from kneeling had to be unbearable.

“You stupid cunt,” the asp shifter spat at her, opening the chamber of his handgun with brutal precision. Bullets were on the way—as soon as his associate found them, that gun would be loaded.

The agony in Bryce’s injured arm was secondary. All of it was secondary to that gun.

The motorcycle smoldered thirty feet away, the rifle thrown even farther into the arid scrub. Down the road, the semitruck idled, its cargo hold filled with all those petrified animals on their way to gods knew where.

They had failed. Their wild rescue attempt had failed.

Danika’s caramel eyes met the asp shifter’s. The leader of this horrific smuggling ring. The male responsible for this moment, when the shootout that had taken place at a hundred miles an hour had turned on them. Danika had been steering the motorcycle, an arm looped through Bryce’s leg to hold her steady as she’d aimed her rifle. Taken out the asps’ two sedans full of equally hateful males intent on hurting and selling those animals. They’d been nearing the racing semi when the male before them had managed a shot to the motorcycle’s tires.

The motorcycle had flipped, and Danika had reacted with a wolf’s speed. She had wrapped her body around Bryce. And taken the brunt of the impact.

Her shredded skin, the fractured pelvis—all thanks to that.

“Bryce,” Danika whispered, tears running down her face now as the reality of this colossal fuckup set in. “Bryce, I love you. And I’m sorry.”

Bryce