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Dec nodded. “We’ve got you covered, Lidia.” The name seemed to trip Dec up, but he got over it and said, “We’ll protect your kids. Just do what you have to do, and we’ll be where you need us.”

She nodded back, eyes glittering. “Thank you.”

Hunt glanced to Bryce, who was watching all this silently. Not a good sign.

Lidia noted Bryce’s look and said, “You remember the way to their throne room?”

“Yes,” Bryce said, and faced Hunt. “The wings were all still there a couple weeks ago—let’s hope Rigelus hasn’t redecorated.”

“He won’t have touched them,” Lidia answered. “He abhors change.”

The words hung in the air. Hunt swallowed against the dryness in his throat. They were doing this. He was doing this.

Hadn’t he learned his fucking lesson twice now? With the Fallen, then with recent events? To go back for a third helping …

“I remember,” Bryce said quietly—just to him, even with the others listening. “Every movement of Micah’s sword when he cut off your wings. How there was nothing we could do to stop him—stop them. I remember how they sold you back to Sandriel, and that time, too, there was nothing we could do to stop them. I remember every fucking moment of it, Hunt.” Her eyes glimmered with pure rage and focus. “But today we finally fucking stop them.”

Hunt held his mate’s stare, and let her courage be his courage, let her strength be his guiding light.

“I promised myself that day Micah cut off your wings,” Bryce said, still just for him, “that they’d pay for it. For what they’ve done.” Starlight flickered around her head in a shadow of that crown of stars.

No one spoke. Bryce got to her feet, heading for the back doors of the van. The world, the Asteri, the end waited beyond.

She looked back at all of them. Her eyes met Hunt’s.

And Bryce said before she stepped into the light, “Through love, all is possible.”

88

It was too easy to get into the Asteri’s palace. Lidia knew every entrance, but even with her unrivaled knowledge, it was too easy for them to get in through the service doors that led to the extensive garbage-processing dock.

Too easy to slip down one of the reeking chutes and land in a trash room a level below.

But only when the four of them were in the tiny, malodorous closet on the sublevel did they pause. Look at each other.

“Good luck,” Ruhn said to his sister, perhaps for the last time.

But Bryce smiled gently, softly, and though she had been all fierce determination in the van a few minutes ago, it was love in her face now as she said to him, “You brought so much joy into my life, too, Ruhn.”

He remembered, then, saying those words to her before she’d vanished through the Gate. You brought so much joy into my life, Bryce. It felt like a lifetime ago.

She said nothing more, and Ruhn had no words in him as Bryce, Athalar in tow, cracked open the door and slipped out.

Ruhn waited a moment in silence with Lidia, the reek of the trash threatening to send his meager breakfast of bread and olive oil back up. He met Lidia’s stare in the dimness, though.

And while she might need to be the Hind today, might need to become that stone-cold female again, he leaned in to brush his mouth to hers. Only once, and then he whispered, at last naming that feeling he hadn’t dared acknowledge until now, “If I don’t get the chance to tell you later … I love you.”

Lidia blinked, golden eyes glimmering. “Ruhn.”

But he didn’t wait for a response or a refusal or a denial. He eased open the door an inch and peered into the hallway.

“Clear,” he murmured, drawing his handgun. With any luck, Dec was doing his job.

Praying that the Asteri, distracted with trying to tamp down the effects of Bryce and Hunt’s message, wouldn’t even consider that Hel was about to be unleashed in their own home, Ruhn stepped into the hall, Lidia right behind them.

And then, wreathed in his shadows as they stole through the heart of the empire, they began the hunt to find her sons.

* * *