Page 105 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

T ogether, Mische and I walked Morthryn’s halls.

I had been so preoccupied caring for her, praying that she’d awaken, that I hadn’t taken any time to survey the damage.

It was extensive. My heart—both of them, mortal and divine—hurt to look at it.

Though the collapse of the underworld had been stopped, Morthryn still moaned silently in pain.

Windows had been shattered. Cracks decimated ancient mosaic floors.

Arched doorways bowed under the pressure of holding up the sagging building.

And yet, despite the pain and the damage, I could hear something else, too: hope.

We stopped in the great library. It was the most heavily damaged of the rooms—the walls singed, the floor cracked, the books burnt. My gaze fell to the piano in the corner of the room. It was damaged, the wood cracked and half the keys covered in soot, but it still stood.

The very spot where Mische had lured me. Where she had cut out Alarus’s heart, and given me back my own.

Both of them throbbed now.

We were silent, staring at it.

Finally, Mische said quietly, “It doesn’t feel real.”

It didn’t. It felt like a dream.

Mische touched her hair, as if remembering. “You left me a crown. An eye. A heart. In the underworld. How did you know to do that?”

{Some knowledge transcends logic,} the heart whispered, so distantly I thought maybe I imagined it.

I didn’t know how to explain it. “A part of me knew. Even if it wasn’t logical. The underworld called to me, and it just felt?.?.?.?right.”

To leave those pieces of my power for someone. Because I knew that someone needed it.

And that was the power that allowed Mische to confront me. That allowed her, ultimately, to cut out Alarus’s heart.

I turned to her. My gaze fell to the triangle of smooth skin at the neckline of her button-down shirt. There was no scar. No outward sign of what had happened. That was, after all, the magic of gods.

“I think?.?.?.” I spoke slowly. Memories from that time, when I was myself but not myself, were distant and blurry, like a dream I was rapidly forgetting. “I think I expected you to take it from me. Use it for yourself.”

“You wanted me to sacrifice you.”

“I wanted you to take the power that you deserved more than I ever had.” I brushed a stray curl behind her ear. “I always knew you would be an amazing queen.”

Mische’s hand slid into mine.

“I told you that strength is measured by the sacrifices we refused to make,” she said softly. “You were mine.”

I squeezed her hand back, my response silent but unmistakable: And you were mine.

Mische turned to the great glass windows and the balcony beyond.

The windows had all been shattered. The night, still eternally dark, lay beyond them, framed by twinkling shards.

The crack in the earth, the one that Acaeja had created to carve out her territory, snaked off toward the horizon, separating Vathysia—the House of Death—from the House of Shadow.

The House of Death. Our kingdom.

The thought was dizzying.

“I told you one time that I thought you would make a good king,” Mische said. “I still believe it. Now, you can prove it.”

Sun take me, I definitely was mortal again. Because at this, I felt like I was about to vomit. A distinctly mortal sensation.

I took a few steps toward the balcony, looking out at the landscape below.

Churning sea separated Morthryn from the mainland, and then townships and farms and cities, rolling fields and steep cliffs, mansions and shacks.

Now under our control—and protection—in the face of great, terrible uncertainty.

I was suddenly so afraid.

It was a new, different kind of fear. Because I’d spent my entire life in the comfortable understanding that I was capable only of destruction—that any good I could offer the world would have to come at the cost of my own sacrifice. I was content with that. It was a simple equation.

“Almost seems like it would have been easier to die in my grand final gesture,” I muttered.

But Mische, of course, saw right through my wry joke.

“That’s the cost of a future, Warden,” she said. “It’s hard work, to make the choice to do better every single night for the rest of your life. Maybe that’s why acolytes are always so obsessed with dying in a fiery blaze of martyrdom.”

Maybe. But I was glad Mische hadn’t. And looking at her now, her face tilted to the horizon, moonlight on her cheeks and her eyes bright with hope, I was glad I hadn’t, either.

A distant bark rang out down the hall. We turned to see Luce bounding toward us. Mische’s face lit up.

“Luce!” she shrieked, and Luce didn’t even slow down before leaping onto her. The two fell down together, rolling around like hogs in the mud.

I watched, arms crossed, amused.

“She wasn’t this happy to have me back,” I remarked. “Shameless turncoat.”

But I couldn’t find it in myself to be bitter about it.

They collected themselves, though Luce’s tail still whipped back and forth with all the force of a flag in monsoon winds. “I missed you,” Mische said, rubbing her head. And Luce nuzzled her cheek in a way that unmistakably replied, I missed you, too.

“Where have you been?” I asked her. “It’s been hours.”

And then I heard another voice down the hall:

“Mother help us, what has happened to this place? It is a disgrace. If I wanted to live in squalor, I could have stayed where I was and saved myself the walk.”

My brows rose. “Esme?”

She appeared in the doorway, looking generally displeased. She wore the same elaborate dress that she had died in, her hair immaculately piled atop her head, and her low neckline still proudly bore the wound that had killed her.

Mische’s face lit up. She jumped to her feet. “You’re back!”

Esme gave us both a critical once-over. Maybe one might have expected some kind of emotional reunion, considering that we hadn’t known if Esme was—well, alive wasn’t the right word, but safe—and she hadn’t known if we were, either.

But that person would not have known Esme at all.

“You look terrible,” she declared. “And you live in a dump. And now I hear we are supposed to call you a king?”

I could not hold back my smile.

She scowled at me. “Why are you looking at me like that, Asar? You have work to do.”

“I’m just happy to see you, Esme. That’s all.”

“Oh, psh. You are going soft. You thought Malach and his ilk managed to get me? Or a few torn veils? Some mutated souleaters?” She clicked her tongue and shook her head, insulted by the very thought.

“All it did was slow me down a little. You certainly did not make it easy for me. But I made it back.” She touched Morthryn’s cracked wall with the closest thing she had ever displayed to affection.

“I am still a prisoner of this place, after all.”

And for all her complaints, I knew that like me, Esme would have it no other way.

Together, we surveyed Morthryn—our sad, crumbling home, but our home nonetheless.

Mische said at last, “How do we repair all this?”

I slipped my hand back into hers. “One glyph at a time, I suspect.”

“Move quickly,” Esme grumbled. “You both owe me a new house.”