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It was light, but it wasn’t quite the same as the power she’d possessed before. She couldn’t figure it out, didn’t have the time to explore its nuances, as she got to her feet and beheld the faint shimmer filling the chamber they’d fallen into. The one that had been hidden a level below the star.

A sarcophagus made of clear quartz lay in the center of the space. And inside it, preserved in eternal youth and beauty, lay a dark-haired female.

Bryce’s mind sped through possibilities. This place had once been an Asteri palace before Theia had claimed it. And in the tunnel carvings, made by Silene to depict her mother’s teachings …

Evil always waited below them.

What if Silene had never realized what, exactly, Theia had meant? That it wasn’t just a metaphor?

That here, literally right under them, slumbering in that forgotten coffin …

Here lay the evil beneath.

24

Bryce’s breath came fast and shallow as she surveyed the crystal coffin in the center of the otherwise empty chamber.

There were no doors into the room. As far as she could discern, the only entrance was through the ceiling that had just collapsed beneath them.

In the crystal sarcophagus, the female lay preserved with unnerving detail.

No, not preserved. Her slim chest rose and fell. Sleeping.

The hair on the back of Bryce’s neck rose.

One of the inmates she’d been warned not to release from the Prison. Some ancient, strange being held down here, in a cell beneath their feet, so dangerous she’d been encased in crystal—

That crystal coffin revealed the features of the sleeping female: humanoid, pale-skinned, and slender. Her silky golden gown accentuated every delicate curve of her body.

Bryce had never seen skin that pale. It glowed like a full moon. Her dark hair … it was too dark, somehow. It didn’t reflect the light at all. It shouldn’t have existed in nature.

And—was she wearing lipstick? No one had lips that vibrantly red. Blow Job Red, Danika had once quipped about a similar shade Bryce had worn.

“What have you done?” Azriel rasped, and Bryce twisted to find him on his feet, wings tucked in, Nesta leaning against him as if wounded, Ataraxia dangling from her grip. The male now held the Starsword at the ready, Truth-Teller gripped in his other hand.

He must have had some sort of Starborn blood in him, then—a distant ancestor, maybe. Or maybe his possession of the knife somehow allowed him to also bear the Starsword.

As if in answer to Azriel’s question, the female in the coffin opened her eyes. They were a crushing blue—and they glowed.

Bryce tried to scramble away, but she remained frozen in place as the female’s gaze slid toward hers. As those red lips curved upward in a small smile that held no joy. As the female lifted a long, slender hand to the lid of the crystal sarcophagus and said, “Release me, slave.”

Even muffled by the crystal, the voice was cold, merciless.

“Have you lost your senses?” Nesta seethed at Bryce, hobbling a step closer.

“I didn’t mean to open a cell—” Bryce started.

“This isn’t one of the cells,” Azriel snarled. “We didn’t even know this chamber existed.”

The female in the coffin ignored their arguing. “How long have I slumbered?” Again, she pushed against the crystal of her sarcophagus.

Or had it been a cage?

Azriel growled at Bryce, “Did you know she was down here?”

Bryce didn’t take her eyes off the coffin and the monster within it. “No.”

The female in the coffin banged on the lid, its dull thump echoing off the dark stone walls. “Slave, do as you are told.”