Page 10 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

I didn’t expect death to be so exhausting.

A body tracked time differently when there were no breaths to draw, no heartbeat to thrum, no steady tick of a pulse in your veins.

Everything was too fast and too slow, as if I were trying to cling to consciousness with oil-slick hands.

I did not sleep, but every so often, I would find myself staring into the darkness and seeing my past life.

Traveling with my sister through the forest. Sailing with Eomin across the sea.

Sitting with a mysterious vampire stranger in a garden, the knife of my decision hanging over my throat.

It was as if every passing second drew me closer to my deaths.

My first death, with Malach’s mouth on my throat and blood on my lips.

My second one, with Atroxus’s ashes on my hands, Shiket’s blade through my chest, and Asar’s screams echoing in my ears.

Twin drains sucking my soul back, minute by minute.

And I would’ve just let them sweep me away, if Vincent hadn’t been there to grab my shoulders and give me a good shake, jerking me back to him with a cold, clipped, No time for that. Move.

Vincent was not good company. He made it very clear that he was not interested in conversation.

Not that I’d ever let that stop me before.

“They’re persistent things, aren’t they?” I chirped. “How many have we seen now? A dozen? Fifteen? I think I’ve lost track.”

Vincent grunted a nonresponse as he yanked his sword from another mutated souleater, which wailed a protest as it slithered back off into the dark.

The sound echoed, bouncing from direction to direction, sad and pained in a way that I tried not to hear.

It was a small one, at least. Vincent was impressively efficient at handling them, but the biggest of them left us no choice but to hide and hope they’d pass without any trouble.

Though, hiding and waiting was mostly my role, anyway.

I had no weapon, which made me useless—and Vincent made it clear he was uninterested in sharing how he’d gotten his all the way down here.

At the same time, I couldn’t help but be a little selfishly grateful that I didn’t have to look too closely at the souleaters, which more and more resembled the beings they had once been.

“You’d think that maybe they’d find somewhere more interesting to hunt,” I babbled on. “Can’t imagine that we’re all that appealing compared to the legions of souls back down there. Do you think it’s because of competition? Maybe they’ve been chased out by?—”

Vincent sheathed his sword and whirled to me.

“Dark Mother help me, girl, you never stop.”

I blinked. “That’s not true. I’m just?—”

“It is relentless.” He yanked his jacket back on.

The spatters of souleater blood were slowly fading—it never lasted long—though he scowled at the stain in disgust, like he could still feel its existence.

“Goddess help me understand why anyone would go through such lengths of breaking divine laws just to be subjected to this for the rest of their goddess-damned lives.”

This was, perhaps, the most words that Vincent had said to me since he first found me.

He didn’t raise his voice—a vampire king rarely had to.

Yet, the insult dug deeper into my heart than I would’ve expected it to, eliciting a brief whisper in the back of my mind: Good question.

Why would Asar go through so much for someone who had betrayed him?

I blinked away the image of Saescha kneeling beneath her eternal sun and chased after Vincent with a few quickened steps.

“You don’t have to do this at all,” I snapped. “I’m sure I can figure it out on my own.”

He scoffed, like this was a ridiculous idea unworthy of a response.

“I can, ” I insisted. “Just tell me what to look for and I’ll do it by myself. Then you can go?.?.?.”

What would Vincent be doing now if he wasn’t wandering around with me, making the intensity of his displeasure constantly clear?

I landed on, “.?.?.?do whatever it is you want to spend your afterlife doing. And I’ll be on my way. We’ll probably all be happier, right?”

“You cannot make the journey on your own.”

“I already survived one journey through the underworld, Vincent.”

He stopped short and turned, his icy gaze spearing me. “You did not survive. That’s why we’re here. And never address a king by their first name.”

I caught my laugh in my teeth when I realized he was not joking. “What do you expect me to call you? Highness? ”

He stared at me.

Oh, gods. He actually did. Sun fucking take me.

In that brief lull in conversation, the silence fell over us both, smothering as the black, sunless sky. I shut my eyes hard, pushing away the sudden memory of my death. Deaths.

Malach’s teeth. Atroxus’s fire. Shiket’s sword.

Asar’s agonized pleas.

I shook my head and lifted my gaze just in time to see Vincent blinking, too, a shadow over his silver eyes. It was an expression I innately recognized. The twin to the one I was wiping off my face right now, too.

And this hit me with a knot of unease. None of this conversation seemed funny anymore.

“Do you feel it, too?” I said. “When it’s quiet?”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

“Yes, you do.”

Because I felt it, as he did. When I looked at Vincent, let myself reach toward his mind, I could sense the edge of his last moments. Raihn’s bloodstained face. The certainty it would be the last thing he saw. Until Oraya. Oraya, crouching in the colosseum sands, weeping over him.

All of that, in less than a second. I could never push further into his mind—it was too intangible beyond layers and layers of death. He was, after all, no longer among the living. Even the strongest Shadowborn mind magic couldn’t reach that far.

The look on Vincent’s face sent a shiver up my spine.

“Are you asking if I feel my death?” he said, voice lethal cold. “If I feel the moment that Rishan trash murdered me in front of—my kingdom?”

The catch in his voice was so subtle I almost didn’t notice it. Almost.

Rishan trash. I couldn’t count how many times I’d heard those insults levied at Raihn during our travels in the Hiaj territory. Before I could stop myself, I said, “Don’t call him that.”

In a blink, Vincent was in front of me, his form bigger, eyes brighter, teeth bared. He was terrifying. The final monstrous image before, I was certain, thousands of deaths.

“He deserves worse,” he snarled.

How much, I wondered, did Vincent know of what had happened in the mortal world since his death?

I could see very little of it from down here—glances in my dreams, reflections in the sky, always of places I knew well in life.

The Citadel, dark and uneasy beneath a sunless sky, the plants of the jungle slowly withering.

Sometimes, I saw Raihn and Oraya, rifling through papers in the office my room in the Nightborn palace had become, but every time I reached for them, they were gone.

I swallowed the sudden, terrible fear that I was making a mistake.

“I need to know the real reason why you’re doing this.”

Vincent hissed a laugh. “Are you afraid I’m out for vengeance, girl? Good. You should be. If I had lived?—”

“ Oraya rules the House of Night,” I said. “ Oraya. She rules ‘your’ kingdom now.”

The name hit Vincent like a bucket of cold water. We had been traveling all this time, and never once did he mention her. Her name was like poison. Too toxic to touch, and even the fleeting mention of her sent him withdrawing.

Instantly, his demeanor changed. Blink, and he was once again several strides ahead, back turned. “I don’t have time for?—”

But I matched his pace. “I need an answer. Because mark my words, Vincent, I will not help you hurt them. I don’t know how much you have seen of these last few years. But Oraya suffered for everything she has. She’s the one you’re hurting if you?—”

Vincent stopped short and whirled around.

“How dare you speak to me about her suffering,” he spat. “How dare you question my intentions. Look at yourself, girl. You betrayed the man who is about to end the world for you. And yet I am being asked to put her fate in your hands. Why do you deserve that?”

I opened my mouth?—

And I doubled over as the world went white.

The pain was unimaginable. It was as if my entire soul was being unraveled at the seams. If I’d had a stomach to empty, I would have been on my hands and knees in a pool of my own vomit. Instead, I just felt the ground, heaving.

“Mische. Mische. ”

I barely heard Vincent’s voice, or felt his hand when it grabbed my shoulder.

I lifted my head with great effort and looked to the shattered mountains in the distance, to the bleeding rivers and the broken sky.

The souls of the dead were moving faster than they usually were.

Frantic, even. Like they were running to something, or away from it.

The hum grew louder.

“What is wrong with you?” Vincent demanded.

I watched the souleaters scatter like ants in the shadow of a boot.

“Something isn’t—” I started.

The sky burst open like a rotting cyst.

Hell rained down over us.