Page 106 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

“ I t reeks. Even I can smell it, and I am dead. You must make an effort, Asar, to treat your nobles with more respect.”

Esme made a face, turning her nose up.

I stifled an almost-laugh and shot her a stern glance.

“Noble,” I said drily. “Is that what you are?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I am certainly no servant, Highness .”

“Esme, you are definitely a noble,” Mische chirped from the couch. “What’s the point in being a queen if I can’t make people as deserving as you nobles?”

Luce barked in agreement.

“It doesn’t work that way,” I muttered.

Esme looked pleased with herself. She bowed her head. “Why, thank you, Highness.”

Mische lifted her chin in a haughty stare. “You are quite welcome, Lady Esme.”

“Lady Esme,” I muttered. “Mother help us.”

Esme’s playful wit faded.

“You will have to come up with another way to curse,” she said. “I don’t believe the Dark Mother will be helping any of us anytime soon.”

It was a sobering thought.

We all looked down at the corpse in the center of the floor.

Esme was right. It did smell, even by the standards of dead bodies.

The man had been a guard along the border between the House of Death and the House of Shadow.

It wasn’t the first dead guard that had been sent to us.

It took a few weeks for us to repair Morthryn and the underworld, and to assert our control over the vampire cities that fell within our newly drawn—or more accurately, newly carved—borders.

Not everyone was happy about it. It was a challenging transition.

I was better at wooing the dead than the living.

It was Mische, of course, who had managed to win them over. The villages and cities that sat within the House of Death were some of the most religious in the House of Shadow, and in particular, they practiced the old ways. It went far in their eyes to be the heir of Alarus.

We had, so far, maintained a tenuous peace. But if Egrette’s propensity for kidnapping and murdering guards provided any indication, I got the distinct sense it would not stay that way for long.

But even more worrisome than the murder was the state of the body when it was returned. The blackened flesh peeling back from the corpse’s mouth and eyes could be the result of decay, if the body was old enough.

Could be.

Maybe.

“So?” I said to Esme. “What do you think?”

Esme was one of the most knowledgeable people I’d ever known, living or dead. One of the only souls I trusted to confirm my suspicions.

Her mouth thinned to a grim line. “That is no typical rot. I do not know what your sister is up to. But this?” She jabbed her finger at the corpse. “This is the start of something, and it is nothing good.”

Mische and I exchanged a concerned glance.

I’d spent long enough in the depths of the House of Shadow’s magical experimentation to know that it was nothing to dismiss.

I was mildly comforted that they no longer had Gideon—his body had been pulled out of the wreckage of the Nightborn palace, having sacrificed himself to deal out what he thought was the final, winning move of our game.

But even this was only a small reassurance.

Ryvenhaal still held dangerous secrets that could be leveraged to all kinds of unpleasant ends.

And in the House of Shadow, a dead body only proved so much.

Esme rolled her eyes and examined her ruby-painted fingernails.

“What are those faces for? Truly, what did you expect? You’ve broken the House of Shadow in two and thrown yourselves into the middle of a god war. Did you think that this would be easy?”

She was right, of course. Despite Acaeja’s protection, Nyaxia would not hesitate to take her vengeance, and that was only if the White Pantheon didn’t get to us first. Mische and I had Alarus’s heart, and we kept his eye and his mask safely guarded—thankfully, they were now much quieter than they had been.

But in the face of such adversaries, even that divine treasure trove seemed far too fragile.

“But let us put it all in perspective,” Esme said. “I, for one, prefer things now, god war or no. I am too glamorous to live in a pile of rubble and meet my end in the jaws of a souleater.”

I rubbed my temple and sighed. “Thank you, Esme. You do know how to stroke a king’s ego.”

“How do you think I got this?” she said, gesturing to the wound at the center of her chest. Then she looked at the corpse, her nose wrinkling. “Can we discard this thing now? The Nightborn will smell it the minute they step through the door, and what kind of hosts would that make us?”