Page 30 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

V incent stared at me from my bedchamber mirror, looking annoyed.

It was really, really not what I had been expecting to see.

I let out a yelp and lurched backward, nearly toppling over an ottoman. Luce let out a low growl, crouching back on her haunches.

Shortly after we returned to the Shadowborn castle, Asar disappeared again to go meet with Egrette.

She was demanding of his time, with the Melume nearly here—though a suspicious part of me wondered if that was because she was nervous about what he might do with it if left to his own devices.

He’d barely spoken on our way back to the city.

I was no fool. I knew our trip to Ryvenhaal had stuck with him, even though he refused to talk about the details.

That left Luce and me by ourselves with the notes we had retrieved from Ryvenhaal. But I found it difficult to focus. My exhaustion now clung stubbornly, no matter how much I rested. When I closed my eyes, I dreamed of the underworld.

Eventually, I had to drag myself upright. There was too much work to do to waste time.

That was when I saw the Nightborn king.

When I caught myself and turned back to the mirror, I half expected to see myself staring back, like the ghost had just been a stress-induced hallucination. And I did see myself, too—albeit a transparent version of myself. But beside me, sure enough, there was Vincent.

Not a hallucination, apparently.

“Sun fucking take me, Vincent,” I gasped, hand to my chest. “What are you doing there?”

“How many times must we discuss this? I said I would follow you. The Melume is near.” He gestured at the window—to the full moon hanging beyond it, tinted foreboding red. “The underworld is very close to the House of Shadow right now. I’m sure you feel it, too.”

Uneasily, I realized that I did, indeed, feel it.

I adjusted my robe around myself, closing the gap at my neckline. “That doesn’t mean that you should just go sneaking up on people in their bedchambers,” I grumbled.

“I am the greatest Nightborn king in Obitraen history. I go where I please.”

I felt another wave of deep sympathy at the thought of Oraya’s upbringing.

“I take it that your journey to Ryvenhaal brought you what you need for the Melume.” His face hardened. “Shame that I did not realize a century ago the kinds of things that the Shadowborn were hiding there. Quite a treasure trove, it seems. I could have made great use of that information in life.”

I disliked it when Vincent waxed romantic about that kind of thing.

“You were watching us in Ryvenhaal?” I said.

“I observed in the ways that I could. Ryvenhaal is close to the dead. You sensed that, surely.”

That was undeniable. Upon more consideration, it was unsurprising that Vincent had been able to peer through the veil there.

But then, at another thought, I frowned. Crossed my arms over my chest.

“What else did you?.?.?.?uh, observe ?”

He scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself. We are discussing matters that could lead to the destruction of the mortal plane and you’re concerned that I’m leering at you like a common?—”

“Gods, stop. Please.” The mere sound of Vincent saying the word “leering” in conjunction with the memory of what Asar and I had done in the Ryvenhaal library made me want to peel off my own skin and bury myself in the dirt.

“Alright, alright.” Leering. Ugh. “That’s enough of that. What’s so important that it made you turn up in my bedroom mirror?”

Vincent’s form wavered, slipping away and reassembling, as if I were seeing him through the snow-leaden gusts of a blizzard. I had to strain to barely make out the words the House of Night .

My brows shot up. “Wait. What?”

Now he enunciated clearly. “You must go to the House of Night.”

I had hoped I had heard him wrong. “Why?”

“I cultivated Alarus’s blood in my time as king,” he said.

“Blood that, at one time, had pumped through Alarus’s heart.

I realized it when you were in Ryvenhaal.

If any kingdom in Obitraes is powerful enough to find and house the heart of Alarus, it is the House of Night.

Go there. Take the blood. Use it to find the heart. ”

There was a certain note to his voice that made a pit form in my stomach. I’d heard it so many times, from so many different kings—even from Atroxus himself. Vincent spoke like a king faced with the opportunity to seize a powerful weapon.

But when I thought of the House of Night, I wasn’t thinking of god-touched weapons.

I was thinking of my best friends, and the dangers that followed Asar and me wherever we went—angry gods and beasts from the underworld and all other manner of terrible things that I refused to bring to their doorstep.

“The House of Night doesn’t have the blood anymore,” I said. “Oraya gave it to Nyaxia.”

To save Raihn. But I left that part out.

But at the sound of her name, indecipherable emotion flickered over Vincent’s face, before he pushed it away.

“There is always something left to cultivate,” he said. “Our work to find and distill the blood that went far beyond that. She—” His voice caught, ever so slightly. “Any Nightborn ruler would know that. They will have the blood. Mark my words.”

Our work. Vincent spoke of Alana, Oraya’s mother—a follower of Acaeja who had used her spellcasting knowledge to help him distill the blood of Alarus.

But a lump rose in my throat. Elias had said it, too, when we were in the Descent.

That the House of Night was holding some powerful divine weapon.

I hadn’t wanted to believe it then, and I didn’t want to believe it now.

Not after I’d seen firsthand in the Nightborn war what terrible things weapons created from Alarus’s remains were capable of.

I didn’t want to believe that after all that, Raihn and Oraya would turn around and leverage that power again.

I swallowed hard.

“Raihn and Oraya are already outside of Nyaxia’s favor,” I said. “She didn’t even call upon the House of Night for her army. They’re already in danger. I can’t bring them this.”

A wrinkle flitted over Vincent’s nose. “And I am supposed to adjust our plans just because that Turned traitor is unworthy of keeping Nyaxia’s favor?”

Turned traitor. Raihn.

“The Turned traitor is the king of the House of Night.”

“Do not try to endear him with what he stole,” Vincent sneered.

“He is your daughter’s husband,” I snapped.

Vincent’s cold rage fell over me like ice. “He is my murderer . And if I was alive, he would pay for it.”

I stepped abruptly back. It was rare that I felt naive—I was an optimist, but that didn’t make me unrealistic. Still, now, I felt suddenly foolish for ever thinking that Vincent could be motivated by something greater than his desire for power.

“Think like a vampire,” I said coldly. “Is that what that means? I won’t bring this to their doorstep. They won’t survive it, and I won’t be the reason for that.”

“You don’t have a choice,” he shot back. “ We do not have a choice. If you fail, the House of Night will cease to exist. We don’t have the luxury of cowardice?—”

“Cowardice.” I choked a laugh. “You’re trying to tell me that you’re doing this to protect your kingdom. But you won’t even speak Oraya’s name. She deserves that much from you, after what you put her through.”

Vincent stilled. He was silent for so long that I wondered if perhaps he had begun to fall back to the underworld.

But at last he said, between gritted teeth, “My words are useless to her. My actions may not be.”

“Words are never useless. And neither is compassion. This isn’t just about us.”

“You cannot be afraid to use the power you have at your disposal. Not with this much at stake.”

“We should all be afraid of power. Anyone who isn’t doesn’t deserve to wield it.

This could destroy them , Vincent.” When I blinked, I saw it so vividly.

The House of Night was already weak. They would crumble if the House of Shadow came for them, or worse, if the White Pantheon did.

Nyaxia might not bother to protect them. And then what?

Perhaps Vincent might see that outcome as Raihn’s deserved punishment. But it was my greatest nightmare.

Vincent had started some argument I barely heard, but I shook my head. “No. There are other ways to find the heart. I’m not going there.”

And then I grabbed the blanket from the bed and threw it over the mirror, cutting Vincent off before he could say another word.

“This will all need to go perfectly, ” Asar said.

His tone did not sound particularly confident.

I gave him a bright smile. “I’m not worried at all.”

I was definitely worried.

He gave me a look that said he knew I was, too.

We sat in the middle of our chamber floor, books and papers scattered around us.

Most were maps and illustrations of Vathysia, including those of the palace as it had existed in those days.

Others were diagrams and documentation of spell work, glyphs thousands of years old, predating the existence of Obitraes.

Luce, bored of us, slept belly-up by the fire. I sat cross-legged among the piles of parchment. And Asar stood rod straight, arms crossed, and paced with the exacting relentlessness of a military commander.

“Show me the path again,” he barked.

I sighed, but closed my eyes and recited the directions to the mask yet again, for the hundredth time. The layout of the palace would be confusing at the height of the Melume, when the past would be fully transposed over the present.

I would have to make the trip alone. Asar and Egrette would need to conduct the spell to usher the beginning of the ceremony into the castle.

It was traditionally performed by the Shadowborn heir, and since Asar also bore Heir Marks, Egrette was not willing to risk the possibility that she might try alone and fail in front of allies and enemies alike.

The Melume would last all night, but the window that would open the castle up to the past, when the veil was thinnest, would last only for a few minutes.