Page 11 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

T he pain was unbearable. When I managed to open my eyes, I was on my hands and knees. A dull roar echoed in my ears, buried beneath a strangled sound that I realized came from me. My hand was clamped over my burning heart.

What had been so faint before that I wasn’t sure if it was a figment of my own desperation now was unmistakable. I felt her.

“Rise.” Acaeja’s voice seemed louder now, reverberating through the fabric of fate. “The others will sense the change. Shiket will know you escaped, and she will send her Sentinels after your lost lover.”

It seemed like something Acaeja could have mentioned before. Not that it would have changed anything. I got to my feet. The room was, indeed, shaking.

“Why is that happening?” I asked.

Acaeja’s smile gleamed in the trembling firelight. Strange, I thought, that none of the paintings or tapestries had ever depicted that her teeth were sharp as those of vampires.

“It is not painless when fate changes. I should think you of all souls would know this. Now go. You do not have much time. I can offer you a door to the ether between worlds. It is up to you to follow the path back to her before Shiket’s soldiers find her.”

I did not just swear away my mortality for Shiket to sweep in and grab Mische before I could get to her myself. The door on the opposite side of the room no longer was closed. Now, white smoke rolled across the wooden floor, fragments of lightning flashing within it.

A distant crash rang out. Acaeja did not flinch.

“That will be her,” she said. “Go, Asar Voldari. You agreed to play a game with high stakes. You do not get to waste your time as the cards are drawn.”

I begrudgingly had to admit that she was right about that.

I went to the door. Beyond it, ominous shadows danced, barely visible, in the mist. They painted the ghostly outlines of drifting landscapes—cities, mountains, the endless black of the sea, all rushing by like fish in a current.

And if I stared hard enough, I could almost see it, smell it.

The underworld. Morthryn’s broken peaks. The Descent’s rivers of blood.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Have you ever wondered how gods travel? This is the spira. The web that connects our world. Gods scale it as spiders do, independent of the physical rules of the mortal world.”

Whatever was beyond the door definitely felt divine. So divine that I found it hard to imagine it would not rip me apart.

As if she heard my thoughts, Acaeja laughed softly.

“You are no god. But you are no mortal, either. I can grant you the protection to traverse the spira now. The door will remain open only temporarily, but long enough for you to reenter once you retrieve your lover. If fate is on your side, you will survive it.”

I placed my hand over my heart—right over the dull throb that felt like Mische. Sounded like her, whispering, Faith is all we have.

Perhaps she’d been right about that all along.

And then I jumped.