Page 102 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

I could have stayed there, in the welcome embrace of Morthryn and the even more welcome embrace of Asar—Asar, it was actually him —forever.

I couldn’t believe it had worked. I wasn’t even entirely sure what I had done. All I knew was that Asar was back and I felt alive and Morthryn was no longer collapsing around us. That, in this moment, felt like a victory.

If a very temporary one.

At last, we parted. Asar’s thumb lightly stroked back and forth over my cheek, like he couldn’t bear to stop touching me.

“I knew you would be back,” he murmured.

“If you’re trying to tell me that this was your plan,” I said, “it was an outlandish one.”

My hand pressed to his chest. The wound had closed, but the scar still remained, a jagged black line to add to his collection. I could feel the steady thrum beneath it. His mortal heart, the precious one I’d saved.

And the piece of the one that still gave him Alarus’s power.

The piece of the heart that also sat inside me.

Asar’s touch pressed to my chest, now, and I winced at the shock of pain. The reality of it—the unbelievable reality of it— struck me with a wave of dizziness. The pressure of the piece of divinity that sat beneath my ribs was staggering. It made it difficult to breathe. Each pulse burned.

But it was the divinity that had allowed me to save him.

Asar began to speak, but then, a fresh bolt of lightning cracked across the sky. The hair stood on my arms.

You feel it in the fabric of the world itself, when a god is near. When their rage is encroaching upon you.

Asar’s gaze lifted, looking past me, through the window. His face shifted. He began to pull me away?—

What remained of the windows shattered beneath a vicious gust of wind, sending Asar and me sliding back, shielding our faces against the razored burst of glass.

When I lowered my arm, Nyaxia hovered before us, hands spread, hair flying out behind her. The very universe itself trembled with her rage.

“What is this?” she roared. “I ask you to uphold your end of our bargain, and now, I come here to find you consorting with your challenger. A traitor .”

She hurled the word like a dagger. More windows shattered. Stone crumbled. The dead scattered, sinking back into the shadows in terror.

Cold fear fell over me.

I held a shred of divinity in me—whatever that meant. But I was no god, and the rage of one sent every primal instinct cowering.

Her eyes fell to me, and the hurt within them was as deadly as the anger. Suddenly, I understood—that so much of her anger now was not because of an army or an ally, but because Asar would never be Alarus, no matter whose heart sat in his chest.

Once again, she had attempted to reclaim him, and once again, she had been left alone.

“Shiket breathes down our throats,” she snarled. She thrust her hand to the sky, which swirled with rainbow fragments of light—evidence that more gods were near. “And yet, when I command you to raise an army to defend your home, you defy me.”

Asar straightened. He picked up the eye, embedded within his blade. Then the mask, which he held, rather than wearing it.

“The dead do not fight for you,” he said. “The dead belong to the kingdom of the underworld. The kingdom of Vathysia, the House of Death.”

“Raise them,” she commanded. “I gave you a gift you begged for. Raise them .”

“I will not, Dark Mother,” he said. “I will not collapse the underworld and damn the mortal world, with it. I will not force these lost souls from their rest to become weapons against their brethren.”

When was the last time Nyaxia had been so directly defied? Asar said this all so calmly, like it was mere fact. Fear clutched my throat.

And maybe it was this that tipped Nyaxia off—that made her realize the true nature of the change she had sensed. The true nature of what had drawn her here.

Her gaze shifted from Asar, to me.

I felt her heartbreak, as she realized what had happened.

And then, more powerful, her fury.

“What have you done? I gave you a gift. I gave you my husband’s heart. And what have you done with it? What have you?.?.?.”

Her voice trailed off. And then those eyes, galaxies deep, snapped to me.

The hurt and horror that spasmed across her face dug deep into my heart—or perhaps the part of Alarus’s heart that was in me. I felt the sudden, inexplicable urge to reach for her with the touch of a comforting lover.

“No,” she whispered. And then, louder. “No. I will not allow it. I will cut it out of you .”

She lunged for me.

Being a god, even a fraction of one, meant experiencing time differently. Seconds slowed. And in the space between them, the underworld answered my call before I even had to make it.

Asar was in front of me, the mask on his face and axe in his hand, the eye at its hilt glowing bright.

And in the same breath, the dead surrounded me—countless souls chancing Nyaxia’s rage to rise to my protection, slipping between the cracks in the floor and walls and ceiling.

“You will not touch her,” Asar said. He did not raise his voice. But the command shook the fabric between worlds. “Now you see who the army of the dead answers to.”

Nyaxia pulled back, shaken. A sneer flitted over her nose. “Who? Her?” She laughed, rough and cruel. Her gaze snapped to me, and protectively, the dead curled around me like the smoke of a funeral pyre.

“You naive fool,” she sneered. “You wish to bear the weight of a god’s heart? Try. You are but a mortal. What makes you think you can carry such a weight?”

Another stab of pain, this one deeper than the last. My hand, adorned with my Heir Mark, pressed to my chest. My brow furrowed.

Something wasn’t?.?.?.

Asar glanced at me again. This time, more alarmed than proud. I found myself leaning against his hold.

The sky churned. A roll of thunder shook the floor. Rainbow wisps of light curled in the air.

I barely noticed them. My chest tightened, tightened, tightened.

Nyaxia laughed. “You fancy yourselves godlings, do you? Well, now you have attracted the attention of my cousins. Let us see what they will want to do with?—”

She didn’t have to finish.

I sank slowly to my knees, clutching my chest, vision darkening.

And the last thing I saw was the night opening as the White Pantheon stepped through the sky.