Page 18 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

M ische’s tears came for a long time. I was so grateful for those tears, paint strokes of mortality all over the constellation of her freckles.

Yes, she was still slightly transparent, though if you looked quickly you might not notice it.

And yes, I could smell the death on her—the true nature of what she was.

But those tears, and the way she scrunched up her entire perfect face around them, were all life.

Eventually, we decided that we’d had enough of crouching on the washroom floor. When I stood, I was so dizzy that I almost ended up right back on the ground, had Luce not steadied me.

Mische frowned. “You should stay in there longer.”

I waved this idea away, even though I was secretly unnerved by just how much her touch had taken from me.

I turned back to look at her and couldn’t help but pause.

Mische’s clothes, apparently, had not made it through the veil with her.

The exceptional details of her form that had been hidden when we were curled up on the floor now were on full display—the curve of her waist, the full swell of her breasts, the shadow of soft hair where her thighs met.

Over her shoulder, the open door to my bedchamber taunted me with just how easy it could be in another world to carry her to that bed, slide her thighs open, and worship there for the next few hours, days, or weeks.

Show her just how grateful I was to have her back in the way my words failed to.

Even now, through the haze of my splitting headache and the residual burn of her touch, I still thought:

Hell, might be worth it.

When I put my less honorable thoughts aside, I noted the slight ghostly sheen to her skin.

She looked much more solid now than she had before I gave her my blood, but I could still make out the outlines of the opposite wall through her form, and there was a shimmering gray pallor to the way light fell—or rather, didn’t fall—across her flesh.

Still, there was something comfortingly mortal about the faint flush across Mische’s cheeks.

“I should probably find some clothes,” she said.

Should wasn’t the word I would personally use, but I nodded as I turned to the bedchamber. The stain of death on Mische’s skin was a visceral reminder. I had no time to waste.

“Clothes,” I said, “and then I believe we have a lot to discuss.”

Morthryn, even in its pitiful state, still kept its liking to Mische. We found clothing in my dresser that perfectly fit her—a shirt, trousers, jacket, and pair of boots that I was certain I had never put there. As Mische dressed and I changed into dry clothes, we talked.

Mische told stories the way a painter flung colors across the canvas—with grand, artistic gusto, expressions bright, hands flying, voice rising and falling like a piano’s melody.

She told me of her time in the underworld, of her help from the Nightborn king—that, even I couldn’t make sense of—and her escape.

I couldn’t help but press my palm to Morthryn’s swollen, crooked floorboards as she described the degree of the underworld’s disrepair, like a parent soothing a sick child.

My storytelling was far duller, direct and factual. Still, Mische’s eyes grew wider and wider as I spoke. I barely made it through a sentence without her peppering me with questions, some of which I found myself evading.

I told her the details of the mission Acaeja had given me, and the task we would have to accomplish. But I couldn’t bring myself to share the specifics of what I had given up to make that deal. I could already feel her guilt, even though she left it unspoken. She didn’t need to carry this, too.

When we were done, even Mische was quiet. The full weight of what we were about to do settled over us both. Saying it aloud made it feel more real. And more ridiculous.

I watched Mische’s thoughtful brow lower over her eyes, then rise as her gaze slipped to me. A chill ran up my spine at the way she looked at me. Like she was taking me apart piece by piece, with a shadow of concern in the things she saw between them.

“Do you feel different?” she murmured.

Yes, was the simple answer. But I wasn’t sure how. Whatever power my divinity gave me loomed just at the corner of my eye, and I couldn’t capture the shape of it. And here, next to Mische, I felt more mortal than I ever had and, at the same time, more acutely aware of all that had changed.

“I feel more myself now that I’m here,” I said. True in all the ways that counted.

A smile tugged at her cheeks. As she perched on the edge of the bed, I watched the way the blankets shifted beneath her weight. The indentation wasn’t as defined as it should have been, like her form didn’t quite obey the laws of the physical world.

“And you, Iliae? How do you feel?”

Her expression dimmed. It took a moment before the smile, soft and lovely as the sunrise, returned.

“I feel more myself now that I’m here,” she said.

Of course, we understood each other’s half lies.

One more item lay in the bottom of the open dresser drawer that had provided Mische’s clothes. I reached in and closed my hand around leather.

“For you, I assume,” I said, and handed it to her.

Black gloves, extending all the way to the elbow, in just Mische’s size.

“It’s probably for the best,” I said. “To hide your?.?.?.?state.”

She sighed—a wonderfully alive affectation—and put them on. I watched the beautiful expanse of her last visible skin disappear beneath worn leather.

“I used to wear gloves just like these,” she said. “To hide the burns. But now?.?.?.”

Her voice trailed off. But I knew what she meant: I wish I didn’t have to.

I stood and extended my hand to her. After a brief hesitation, her fingers folded around mine, now safely concealed in fabric.

A poor substitute for skin. But it was something.

“One benefit,” I said.

Mische’s mouth curled. “I guess that counts.”

Mische, Luce, and I walked the halls of Morthryn. Mische protested when she saw how slowly I was moving—the effects of her touch still lingered, frustratingly—but we didn’t have time to sit around.

Morthryn’s pitiful state twisted like a blade in my gut.

My old apartment was exactly as I had left it so long ago, and yet, so different, bowing under the weight of Morthryn’s accelerated decay.

It was nothing special by the measure of the Shadowborn castle.

It had been, after all, my exile. But it had also been my home. It was still my home.

I had met Esme for the first time in this hall, a wraith who had refused to move on to the Descent. She had been so transparent she’d been barely visible in the shadows, but still had delighted in showing me all Morthryn’s secrets.

Back then, I’d been hanging on to life by a single fraying thread of will. The thought of clinging to it for centuries longer seemed so exhausting that I was on the cusp of severing it myself.

But Esme would have no sulking.

“They may tell you this place is a prison,” she had told me, “but they only call it a cage because their minds are too small to see what it truly is.”

“And what is that?” I’d replied, unconvinced.

She had spread out her arms. “It is a bridge to endless possibilities. It is the gate to the kingdom of the dead. It is a refuge for those who have nothing else. And perhaps, my disgraced prince, it can be a refuge for you, too, if you allow it to be.”

I hadn’t believed her then. But her words had given me enough purpose to get through the next night, and the next. I began to hear the whispers in the walls. And then the next thing I knew, centuries had passed and Morthryn had become not just my ward, but my companion.

It dawned on me only now that there had been many reasons why that had been true, even if I didn’t know it at the time. Alarus’s blood ran in my veins. No wonder that his home became mine, too.

Now, the hallways were silent.

“How did it get so?.?.?.?bad? So quickly?” Mische was whispering, even though we were the only ones here.

“Morthryn is a gate to the underworld. Whatever decay is accelerating down there would be felt here, too.” I paused at one of the arches. The glyphs along its metal were dull, no longer glowing, and the eye at its apex covered in dust. No more inmates.

Morthryn never should have been a prison—it had been built thousands of years ago as a temple to Alarus and a bridge to the underworld.

It was grotesque to use it as a place to dump criminals when it should have been treated with reverence.

But the House of Shadow took great pride in the infamy of their torturous jail.

If Morthryn had been emptied, that meant that they’d swiftly had to turn their focus elsewhere.

We reached my office doors. A deep gouge ran through the mahogany, slicing straight through the eye of Alarus at their center. I pushed them open.

“Holy fucking gods,” Mische gasped.

My study had been ransacked. The shelves had been picked over, labels ripped and glass cases smashed, discarded artifacts scattered across the tile floor.

Precious pieces of magical history had been stripped like they were common jewels.

When I stepped forward, I heard a clink beneath my boot and looked down to see a broken frame.

A piece of scripture that was more than four thousand years old, from the priests of Alarus back before Nyaxia had even been born.

It was downright desecration.

“Asar. Look.”

The note of fear in Mische’s voice made me turn. She stood in front of the windows. An ocean breeze swept her hair back. The glass had shattered, revealing a star-dotted night sky framed by jagged glistening shards. The moon was a dark circle against the velvet night.

I’d memorized this view over thousands of nights sitting in this office. The bay, peaceful under silver moonlight. The pointed spires of the capital skyline in the distance, lit up with the bustling glow of the city. The lush rolling hills and flourishing foliage of the gardens below.