But then she’d seen their father’s cruelty. Seen how that Starborn gift gave her brother just the slightest edge against that fucking monster. Seen the pride her brother denied but undoubtedly felt at being Starborn, blessed and chosen by Urd.

She couldn’t bring herself to tell Ruhn the truth. Even after things fell apart, she hid it. Would never tell anyone—anyone at all. Except Danika.

Blue skies and olive trees filtered back in, color returning to the world as Bryce hid the last of her starlight inside her chest. Danika still trembled on the asphalt.

“Danika,” Bryce said.

Danika lowered her hands from her face. Opened her eyes. Bryce waited for the terror her mother had warned about, should someone learn what she bore. The strange, terrible light that had come from another world.

But there was only wonder on Danika’s face.

Wonder—and love.

Bryce stood before the Gate, holding the star she’d kept hidden within her heart, and let the light build. Let it flow out of her chest, untethered and pure.

Even with the void mere feet away, Hel just a step beyond it, a strange sense of calm wended through her. She’d kept this light a secret for so long, had lived in such utter terror of anyone finding out, that despite everything, relief filled her.

There had been so many times these weeks when she was sure Ruhn would realize it at last. Her blatant disinterest in learning about anything related to the first Starborn, Prince Pelias and Queen Theia, had bordered on suspicious, she’d feared. And when he’d laid the Starsword on the table in the gallery library and it had hummed, shimmering, she’d had to physically pull back to avoid the instinct to touch it, to answer its silent, lovely song.

Her sword—it was her sword, and Ruhn’s. And with that light in her veins, with the star that slumbered inside her heart, the Starsword had recognized her not as a royal, worthy Fae, but as kin. Kin to those who had forged it so long ago.

Like called to like. Even the kristallos’s venom in her leg had not been able to stifle the essence of what she was. It had blocked her access to the light, but not what lay stamped in her blood. The moment the venom had come out of her leg, as Hunt’s lips had met hers that first time, she’d felt it awaken again. Freed.

And now here she was, the starlight building within her hands.