Page 26 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

A booming thunderclap rang out. Lightning cut through the shadows, briefly illuminating the silhouettes of the dead before dissipating. A fresh wave of rain hammered against the large arched windows.

Gideon grimaced. “Vicious out there. I think you’ll be spending the day. Even the shadows won’t take a boat across the channel now. Here.”

The lift ground to a creaky halt. He led us out onto the balcony landing, then into a nook within the shelves. Inside it was a small table, two armchairs, and three walls lined with books.

“Now, since we’ve all decided to trust each other, tell me, Asar, what you are really looking for.”

I still wasn’t entirely convinced that Asar wasn’t about to end the conversation and walk out. But his gaze landed on me, and whatever he saw made his gaze soften.

He sat and gestured for me to do the same. Luce, begrudgingly, settled on her haunches.

“We are here,” Asar said stiffly, “to find information about relics of Alarus. His mask. His eye. His heart.”

Gideon soaked up those words with the delight of an addict sucking down smoke.

“Those aren’t any relics,” he said. “Those are remnants. How intriguing.”

“I’ve been sent on Egrette’s behalf,” Asar said.

“Oh, of course. I would never imagine otherwise.” A flash of sharp teeth. “It was always clear that there was something special about you, Asar. A pity that your father never truly recognized what it was.”

He rose and looked to the bookcases.

“You know already, I’m sure, about the Mask of Vathysia, baked into the bones of the Shadowborn castle.

What convenient timing for you to ask about it now, with the Melume so close.

The eye and the heart, however?.?.?.? that is more interesting.

There is great power in transitions. The transition point between life and death.

Between mortality and godhood. The moment a soul is created, and the moment it is destroyed. ”

He laid a book on the table with a mighty THUMP . Tendrils of shadow opened it, sending up a puff of dust. When it cleared, it revealed an ink drawing.

It depicted the gods murdering Alarus.

Vitarus and Shiket held him down, one at each arm.

Srana bore the blessed blade she had created to cut apart his body, already wet with his blood.

Ix, who had lured Alarus to this meeting, stood in the background, mouth covered in horror but eyes bright with pleasure.

Atroxus loomed over his captive brother, one hand cupping his face as if in affection, the other reaching for the blade that would take off his head.

My eyes lingered on Atroxus. It was a poor likeness, drawn by someone who had clearly never seen him.

And yet, the triumphant smirk on his face made him look just like the god who had chosen me and bedded me and cultivated me like a fine possession.

It was the exact same expression he had worn when he tried to raise an eternal sun over Obitraes, ready to kill millions to wipe away the inconvenient consequences of his betrayal.

He hadn’t looked like that when I’d driven that arrow through his throat, though.

“Everything a god touches is a source of great power,” Gideon said. “But the place of their death is the greatest of all. Even Srana could not craft a blade strong enough to dismember Alarus without some help.”

He tapped the page. Asar and I squinted at it.

The drawing was so faded that it was difficult to make out the details. Srana’s weapon appeared to be a cross between a blade and an axe, a curved blade on a long handle. And a knot of scribbled ink on the blade seemed to depict?—

“Is that an eye ?” I said.

“That is, some believe, the eye,” Gideon said. “Torn from Alarus as the final step to creating the weapon that could dismember him.”

I couldn’t help but cringe. Asar winced, too. I squinted at the drawing to see the faded smear of blood on Alarus’s hand, presumably where his eye had been ripped out.

“So we’re looking for a crown that is a mask and an eye that is an axe,” Asar muttered. “Gods are straightforward as ever.”

“Some say that the White Pantheon could not destroy the eye when they dismembered Alarus. That the weapon was cursed in Alarus’s final spite, unable to be handled by the White Pantheon. If it exists, it may still remain at the site of his murder in the deadlands.”

“The deadlands?” I squeaked.

The deadlands—the realm that sat between the mortal and divine worlds—were accessible only through the House of Blood.

Great.

Gideon let out a psh . “You’ve always appreciated a challenge, Asar. Surely this is no exception.”

“What about the heart?” I said.

Gideon’s smirk flickered, and for the first time, I sensed just the barest edge of his emotions—frustration, like I’d hit upon a nerve.

“You aren’t the first to ask,” he said. “Many have searched for it. If it exists, it would be a remarkable source of power. Look at what the House of Night was able to do with a few broken teeth and a drop of divine blood. But alas.” He leaned back in his chair.

“The heart has not been written of in any scripture I can find, new languages or old. Perhaps it was destroyed. It has been two thousand years, and flesh is flesh, divine or no.”

Even Gideon did not seem to believe this. Asar certainly didn’t. If the heart had been destroyed, we were in trouble.

“And the mask?” Asar said. “Where in the palace is it stored? Theoretically. Of course.”

“ Theoretically, one would have to navigate the Palace of Vathysia at the height of the Melume. It has changed quite a lot in the last two-thousand-odd years.” Gideon set aside the open book and slid another out from beneath it.

“You might find this helpful. Maps of Vathysia, from before its fall, including what documentation still exists of the palace as it once was.”

But instead of passing the book to Asar, he held it, long fingers caressing the scratched, aged leather.

His gaze fell to me.

“But enough business,” he said. “Mische, it isn’t often I meet someone that my stone-hearted protégée clearly is so fond of. Tell me more about yourself.”

Tell me. Tell me. Tell ? —

I caught my answer halfway up my throat. I had never told him my name.

Asar was on his feet, his hand on my shoulder.

“That’s enough,” he snapped.

“It gets lonely here. Is it a crime to look for some conversation?”

“That isn’t a conversation. It’s an evaluation.”

Gideon cocked his head. The birds flitted in a panic from window to window.

“You must be tired,” he said. “I won’t be offended if you have little energy for socialization.”

He slid the book across the table.

A crack of lightning illuminated the harsh angles of Gideon’s face, the purple glow of Asar’s scars, the elegant skyline of the Shadowborn castle sitting upon the cliffs in the distance. Gideon gazed out the window, hands threaded in his lap.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said softly. “There is a certain peace in a tempest that you can only appreciate from its center. But it will pass soon enough. Your old chambers are ready for you, Asar, if you two would like to get some rest.”