Page 20 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

V incent looked disappointed in me. The expression made me even more sympathetic to Oraya’s complexes. It really dug right into your chest.

“I didn’t expect you to come this close to death again this quickly,” he said.

I tried to rub my eyes, but I had no body. It was as if we were suspended in intangible darkness.

“How are you?—”

“I told you I would follow you. And you’ve drifted closer to death now.” He cocked his head, peering into the haze. “I cannot see everything, but what I do see already looks?.?.?.?suboptimal.”

He made the word suboptimal feel like a grave personal insult.

“We’re just getting started,” I said defensively.

But he raised a hand, unmoved by excuses.

“You cannot let the Shadowborn queen end your journey here. And she will, if you make the wrong move. Or, you can use her to secure a path directly to what you need most.”

“Asar is the rightful king of the House of Shadow,” I said. “He has a Mark. Everyone can see it.”

“All the more reason for her to execute him. But you’re alive now because she would prefer to do it before the subjects she’s failing to control.

She is a woman, after all, and the Shadowborn have never been fond of that quality in a ruler.

You will need access to the House of Shadow to complete your task.

Use the scant tools you have at your disposal. ”

“Tools?” I repeated. I was finding it hard to think.

Vincent looked frustrated. “You carry a piece of the god of death in you. And your lover has more power than he has even begun to understand. Use it.” He leaned closer. “Stop thinking like an acolyte and start thinking like a vampire.”

My eyes opened.

A pack of predators stared at me.

More than I could count—Shadowborn and Bloodborn.

Some of the Shadowborn were dressed in court finery, bosoms heaving over velvet corsets and muscles highlighted in tailored brocade.

Others donned the formal uniforms of the Shadowborn military—long green leather jackets, the Shadowborn crest staring from their lapels.

The Bloodborn lingered together at the edges of the room, their eyes hungrier, their forms leaner, clad in their sharply tailored uniforms of white and red.

Elias stood in front of me, flanked by guards.

I was in the ballroom of the Shadowborn castle, my hands bound.

A sea of vicious finery spread out before me.

Columns of black metal and gleaming bronze framed the room, painstakingly crafted in the likeness of thorny vines.

Windows of intricate stained glass depicted the most brutal legends from Shadowborn history.

A blade-sharp breeze tugged at my jacket, and I noticed that the windows along the far wall had all been removed and the velvet curtains ripped out—a triumphant victory over the sun that would never rise.

Twists of darkness writhed at the edges of my vision, and at first, I thought they were an aftereffect of my unconsciousness. But when I scanned the crowd, I saw the shadows intermingled with the guests, too. They seemed?.?.?.?oddly humanoid.

But that was low on my list of concerns right now.

My hood was still, thankfully, secure—though I didn’t know how easy it would be to tell what I was, if someone looked closely enough.

I tilted my head and breathed a too-quick sigh of relief to see Asar beside me.

His wrists were bound too, and a writhing blindfold of shadow wrapped around the top half of his face, leaving only the strong profile of his nose and chin uncovered.

Advanced Shadowborn magic—a level of security that I, apparently, didn’t warrant.

He stood, but his posture was slightly slumped. He wasn’t conscious, not truly.

Under Asar’s tutelage in the Descent, I’d learned how to wield my Shadowborn power. But I’d never mastered the art of mind speak. Still, now, I had no choice but to try.

Asar! I prodded. But I got no response.

“What an intriguing surprise,” a woman purred.

Oh gods, I knew that voice. I slowly faced forward.

I’d been in this room once before, presented as a gift to Raoul on his birthnight, only for Asar to save me just before execution. Now, I was being presented to his daughter—Asar’s half sister, and my former would-be executioner, Egrette.

She sat upon the Shadowborn throne, a chair of black steel and bronze roses.

The back of it extended up against the windows, all the way to the House of Shadow crest rendered in stained glass.

She wore a gown of green and gold. Emerald fabric wrapped around her waist and draped over her bust. Her long chestnut hair cascaded in smooth waves over her shoulders, the Shadowborn crown perched atop it.

Several figures were seated at a table beside the dais—clearly, an honored position. A beautiful dark-haired woman I recognized as Egrette’s mother, several Shadowborn nobles in unmistakably fine clothing, and?—

At this, I blinked hard in confusion.

A fair-haired man wearing a white suit, a black cigarillo between his fingers, giving me a curious smirk. Septimus, prince of the House of Blood. The very same man who had once attempted to help Raihn and Oraya’s rivals overthrow the House of Night.

He looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see him, though he seemed much more amused about it. He leaned back in his chair with lazy curiosity as Egrette smiled at us and descended the dais steps.

“Excellent work, General,” she said. “You have returned my long-lost brother to us for his final justice.”

Behind me, incessant barking rose to a pitch.

Luce. “Will someone shut that thing up?” a guard snapped.

I tried to turn around, only for a blunt impact to force my head forward again.

I ducked my chin, shying away from it—not because of the pain, which I barely felt, but because one wayward touch would expose what I was.

My mind worked quickly.

Egrette stood before Asar, who was still motionless.

I recognized a performance when I saw one, even one this good.

Every movement, from the delicate step down the dais to the predatory twitches of her expression, was designed to exude authority.

But her lingering stare at Asar’s hands was all genuine—at the lines of ink over them, tangling with his scars.

His Heir Mark. Though the Shadowborn style of dress usually commanded long sleeves, Egrette’s had been shortened, revealing red ink on her hands and forearms, too.

Shit. So it was as we had feared, when in the Descent—Egrette had an Heir Mark too, just as Asar did.

But how? We had theorized that if she did have one, it would be because Asar was closer to death than life.

But he was in the land of the living now.

How could the House of Shadow end up with two simultaneous Heirs?

Even more perplexing, up close, the difference between the two Marks was stark.

Both adorned their hands and forearms in red ink—and some white, in Asar’s case—but the styles contrasted wildly.

Egrette’s Mark was delicate, swirls and curves that evoked the painterly strokes of shadow magic or the elegance of Shadowborn architecture.

Meanwhile, Asar’s was harsher, more organic, like roots or lightning—a complement to his scars—and while Egrette’s ended in whorls around her long fingers, Asar’s bore the eye of Alarus on the backs of both his hands.

Egrette’s, I also noticed, didn’t flicker as Asar’s did.

Still, she did not seem to find this much of a comfort. I felt her uneasiness like ripples upon the surface of a pond. Just as Vincent said, Asar’s reappearance was both a threat and an opportunity to show off her power to her new, bloodthirsty court.

She spread her arms. “The Wraith Warden,” she boomed.

“Exiled necromancer, traitor, and deserter of Nyaxia herself. We have been searching for him for months, and now, he is here.” She turned to her spectators, bearing bloody fangs.

“Perfect timing, as we all gather at the call of our Dark Mother. She has given us a mission to spread her vengeance to all that have defied her. How appropriate, to start that mission by punishing a traitor. Shall we show him what happens to those who defy the crown?”

Hisses of approval rose from the blood-drunk nobles. I had no doubts that Egrette had used Asar’s absence to paint him a traitor.

Elias held out a jeweled dagger, and Egrette took it with all the grace of a debutante accepting the hand of a suitor, before whirling back to Asar.

Oh no, this was not good.

Blood still soaked through Asar’s jacket where Elias had stabbed him—still beaded at the mark my teeth had left in his wrist. If Egrette wanted to kill Asar now, when he was still suffering from the weakness of my feeding, she probably could—it was probably the only time she could. Perhaps even she sensed that.

I needed Asar to be the most terrifying version of himself. I needed him to be the version of himself that I had seen through the veil. More god than mortal.

I needed him to use the power that even he didn’t understand.

And I needed him to do it now .

Think like a vampire, Vincent had said. But he didn’t know me at all.

This wasn’t thinking like a vampire. This was thinking like an acolyte.

Because I knew how to get Asar to do what I needed him to, and it meant leveraging the same tool I’d once wielded to force Raihn to seize his own potential, too: myself.

“Stop!” I screeched. “Don’t hurt him!”

I let my voice crack with frantic fear. It was a performance uncomfortably close to the truth.

Hundreds of vampire stares shifted to me, and I tried not to shrink under them. I prayed that the hood and Asar’s spell of illusion would hold up. But at least I was insignificant. No one here would be looking too closely at me, other than to laugh at the pawn in Asar’s story.

Egrette paused. I felt her magic prodding at me like a carrion bird picking at a carcass, and I opened my mental doors just wide enough to show her what I felt for Asar.

It didn’t have to be a performance. That was real, and it offered Egrette something interesting: the opportunity for greater cruelty.

“Ah, I remember you,” she said. “You were just a broken little bird when I last saw you. How surprising that you survived his journey.”

Oh, if only she knew.

“Don’t hurt him,” I begged. “P-please, don’t hurt him. I wanted to run away but h-h-he insisted on coming back?—”

“Oh, my.” She smirked at the crowd as if sharing an inside joke. “What is this? A love story?”

The nobles chuckled. Even the Bloodborn, who had seemed disinterested, glanced at each other in amusement. All but Septimus, who watched with an intrigued stare as he exhaled a plume of smoke.

Egrette reached for my face, and I jerked away from her touch in a way that hopefully passed as fear.

“To those of you who do not know,” she said to her audience, “this is the murderer of my dear older brother, Malach, who was slaughtered in the House of Night. Slaughtered, no less, by one he had Turned himself.” She laughed, glittering and deadly.

“Should we be surprised by this? Asar has always been happy to take Malach’s leftovers.

His blade, his title, and now, his Turned whore. ”

I knew that her words were engineered for entertainment, and I was intentionally participating in the show. Still, they stung more than I expected.

“P-p-please,” I wept. “You can take me—punish me. I deserve it more—I—I?—”

Egrette’s dark eyes glistened, seizing the idea that I offered to her on a gilded platter.

“What a thought,” she said. “Perhaps you should go first. What do you think?”

The Shadowborn nobles, now invested, leaned forward in their seats. Egrette had them rapt. The cruelty is always the game, Raihn used to tell me. You just have to know how to play into their rules.

Well, look at me now. He’d be proud.

Egrette had now made up her mind. I was to be a part of Asar’s punishment, a set piece in her display of dominance.

“Awaken him,” she said to Elias, who shot me a more uncertain glance. But he obeyed, unraveling the shadows that clustered around Asar’s eyes.

The rest happened so quickly. The Shadowborn guards seized my arms and forced my shoulders back, presenting my chest. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Asar gasp and fall to his knees as the spell was stripped, still disoriented. Too slow.

Asar, get up! I urged silently, even though I wasn’t sure if he could hear me at all.

Egrette smiled, dagger glinting in the moonlight. “At last, justice for Malach.”

Would the knife kill me? Probably not—but it would reveal what I was, which didn’t seem much better. And what if the blade was enchanted, as Elias’s had been?

A tiny, tiny voice in the back of my head now whispered, Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, Mische.

Luce’s distraught barks peaked. I tried one last time to reach for Asar’s mind. Asar, I think it’s time to ? —

Egrette raised the blade.

And just as she began to bring it down, the room plunged into an eerie, static silence. The candles snuffed out. The room fell to slow, ominous darkness, shadows painting across my vision like bandages winding around and around and around us all.

And a voice, quiet and booming at once, said, “Get your hands off my wife.”