Bryce’s breathing turned so jagged that she could barely think as she tumbled alone through the darkness.
They were in the Asteri’s palace. In their sacred, forbidden archives.
And she was … in a stairwell?
Bryce took steadying inhales as she surveyed the spiral staircase, crafted entirely of white quartz. Firstlight glimmered, golden and soft, lighting the carved steps downward. At her back was a door—the other side of the one they’d watched Sofie walk through on the surveillance footage.
The one labeled with the number Sofie had etched into her biceps.
Bryce began to creep down the stairs, her black utility boots nearly silent against the quartz steps. She saw no one. Heard no one.
Her heart raced, and she could have sworn the veins of firstlight in the quartz throbbed with each beat. As if in answer.
Bryce halted after a turn in the stairs and assessed the long hallway ahead. When it revealed no guards, she stepped into it.
There were no doors. Only this hall, perhaps seventy feet long and fifteen feet wide. Likely fourteen feet, to be a multiple of seven. The holy number.
Bryce scanned the hall. The only thing in it was a set of crystal pipes shooting upward into the ceiling, with plaques beneath them, and small black screens beside the plaques.
Seven pipes.
The crystal floor glowed at her feet as she approached the nearest plaque.
Hesperus. The Evening Star.
Brows rising, Bryce strode to the next pipe and plaque. Polaris. The North Star.
Plaque after plaque, pipe after pipe, Bryce read the individual names of each Asteri.
Eosphoros. Octartis. Austrus.
She nearly tripped at the penultimate. Sirius. The Asteri the Prince of the Pit had devoured.
She knew what the last plaque would say before she reached it. Rigelus. The Bright Hand.
What the Hel was this place?
This was what Danika had felt was important enough for Sofie Renast to risk her life for? What the Asteri had wanted to contain so badly they’d hunted Sofie down to preserve the secret?
The crystal at her feet flared, and Bryce had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, as firstlight, pure and iridescent, ruptured.
She squeezed her eyes shut, dropping into a crouch.
But nothing happened. At least, not to her.
The firstlight faded enough that Bryce cracked open her eyes to see it shooting up six of the pipes.
The little black screens beside each plaque flared to life, filled with readings. Only Sirius’s pipe remained unlit. Out of commission.
She went rigid as she read the Bright Hand’s screen: Rigelus Power Level: 65%.
She whirled to the next plaque. The screen beside it said, Austrus Power Level: 76%.
“Holy gods,” Bryce whispered.
The Asteri fed on firstlight. The Asteri … needed firstlight. She looked at her feet, where light flowed in veins through the crystal before funneling into the pipes. The quartz.
A conduit of power. Exactly like the Gates in Crescent City.
They’d built their entire palace out of it. To fuel and harness the firstlight that poured in.
She’d studied Fury’s rough map of the palace layout. This area was seven levels below the throne room, where the Asteri sat on crystal thrones. Did those thrones fill them with power? In plain sight, they fueled up like batteries, sucking in this firstlight.
Nausea constricted her throat. All the Drops people made, the secondlight the dead handed over … All the power of the people of Midgard, the power the people gave them … it was gobbled up by the Asteri and used against its citizens. To control them.
Even the Vanir rebels who were killed fighting had their souls fed to the very beasts they were trying to overthrow.
They were all just food for the Asteri. A never-ending supply of power.
Bryce began shaking. The veins of light wending beneath her feet, glowing and vibrant … She traced them down as far as she could see through the clear stone, into a brilliantly shining mass. A core of firstlight. Powering the entire palace and the monsters that ruled it.
This was what Sofie had learned. What Danika had suspected.
Did the Asteri even possess holy stars in their chests, or was it firstlight, stolen from the people? Firstlight that they mandated be given over in the Drop to fuel cities and technology … and the overlords who ruled this world. Secondlight that was ripped from the dead, squeezing every last drop of power from the people.
Cut off the firstlight, destroy this funnel of power, get people to stop handing over their power through the Drop in those centers that funneled off their energy, stop the dead from becoming secondlight …
And they could destroy the Asteri.
