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The arguing parties slowly sat on the stone benches, quietly listening to Theia.

And when she had finished, the humans revealed their own discovery—one that showed us our doom.

As a lone human woman stood from the crowd, Bryce reminded herself to keep breathing, to steady herself—

The Asteri had infected the water we consumed with a parasite. They’d poisoned the lakes and streams and oceans. The parasites burrowed their way into our bodies, warping our magic.

Holy gods.

The Asteri created a coming-of-age ritual for all magical creatures who had entered Midgard, and their descendants. A blast of magic would be released and then contained—and then fed to the Asteri. It was a greater, more concentrated dose than the seeds of power they’d sucked off us for years in the Tithe. They spun it into a near-religious experience, explained it away as a method to harness energy for fuel, and had been feeding off it ever since.

“The Drop,” Bryce whispered, dismay rocking through her. She knew Nesta and Azriel were staring at her, but she couldn’t look away from the memory.

Should anyone with power opt out of the ritual, the parasites would suck immortals dry until they withered away to nothing—like humans. It would be dismissed as old age. Lies were planted about the dangers of performing the ritual in any place other than one of the Asteri’s harvesting sites, where the power could be contained and filtered to them, and to their cities and their technology.

Bryce was going to be sick.

The Asteri’s hold on the people of her world wasn’t merely based in military and magical might. These parasites ensured that they fucking owned each person, their very power. Their tyranny had wormed itself into the blood of every being on Midgard.

The humans had learned this—the Asteri had been careless in spilling knowledge around them, because without magic, the humans were unaffected. And they’d watched in smug silence while we, their gleeful oppressors, had unwittingly become oppressed. With one sip of water from this world, we belonged to the Asteri. There was no undoing it.

The despair nearly broke us then and there.

At last, Bryce could truly relate. She’d gone somewhere far away from her body. Listened as if from a distance as the last acts of this damned history played out.

But we convinced the humans to trust us. And my mother began reaching out to some of those Fae who had followed us into Midgard—those she hoped she could trust.

In the end, my mother had ten thousand Fae willing to march, most hailing from our dusk-bound lands. And when my mother fully opened the doorway to Hel, Aidas and his brothers brought fifty thousand soldiers with them.

I do not have the words for the war’s brutality. For the lives lost, the torment and fear. But my mother did not break.

The Asteri mounted their counteroffensive swiftly, and wisely put Pelias in charge of their forces. Pelias knew my mother and her tactics well.

And though Hel’s armies fought valiantly, our people with them, it was not enough.

I was never privy to the story of how my mother and Prince Aidas became lovers. I know only that even in the midst of war, I had never seen my mother so at peace. She told me once, when I marveled at our luck that the portal had opened to Aidas that day, that it was because they were mates—their souls had found each other across galaxies, linking them that fateful day, as if the mating bond between them was indeed some physical thing. That was how deeply they loved each other. And when this war was over, she promised me, we would go to Hel with Aidas. Not to rule, but to live. When this was over, she promised, she would spend the rest of her existence atoning.

She did not get to fulfill that promise.

“Too bad,” Nesta said pitilessly.

But Bryce had moved beyond words. Beyond anything other than pure despair and dread.

Word came from the enemy right before they attacked in the dead of night: Surrender, and we would be spared. Fight, and we would be slaughtered.

Our camp had been erected high in the mountains, where we thought the winter snows would protect us from advancing enemies. Instead, we were cold and hungry, with barely any time to ready our forces. Aidas had returned to Hel to recruit more soldiers, so we were spending a rare night with our mother alone.

Hel did not have the chance to come to our aid. My mother did not even bother to try to open a portal to their world. Our forces on Midgard were already depleted—the new recruits wouldn’t be amassed for days. We begged her to open the portal anyway, to at least get the princes’ help, but my mother believed it would do little good. That what was coming that night was inevitable.

“Fool,” Nesta said again, and Bryce nodded numbly.

But my mother didn’t ask us to fight.

A bloodied Theia pressed the Horn into Helena’s hands, and urged Silene to take the Harp and the dagger. She kept the Starsword for herself.

The place where we had first entered this world was nearby. We’d been camping here in part so that my mother could eventually open a portal again and recruit more Fae to fight. She still did not understand much about voyaging between worlds—she wasn’t sure, if she opened a portal in another spot, if it would open to a different place in our world. So she’d gambled on our entry point in Midgard opening precisely into our court once more. From there, she’d planned to take the tunnels that leapt across the lands and build Fae armies. Even knowing they’d opposed her before, knowing they’d probably refuse her or kill her, she had no other options.

But there was no time for that now.