Page 38 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

I threw myself after Mische, and was met only with a sheet of glass.

Beneath it, more souls collected so quickly that they crowded out my view of Mische and the souleater that had taken her.

The mask landed beside me with a crash and a cascade of water, thrown in Mische’s final act.

I barely looked at it. Instead, I clung to her rapidly fading presence.

The fleeting collision between the past and the present was fading.

I couldn’t use Gideon’s glyphs again. By the time I finished, Mische would be gone forever.

I lifted my hands and slammed them against the glass. I’d already broken through one veil to retrieve Mische. I would not hesitate to do it again.

CRACK.

Fractures exploded like lightning from my hands. The souls shivered with desperate delight against them.

From what felt like a million miles behind, Luce barked a frantic warning, just before an impact from behind sent me flying away from the cracks. The trapped souls beneath moaned in protest.

You are unwise, fallen one. The voice washed over me like a wave against the rocks. The underworld has taken her back to where she belongs.

The shark circled me, vacant eyes seeking my own. Its body was now dark and defined, nearly as solid as Luce’s.

“Unacceptable.” The only response, as Mische’s presence rapidly faded. “Retrieve her.”

There is only one who may command the guardians, and you are not he.

No. Not yet.

But I would be.

I was a well-read, well-studied person. I was well aware of the many dangers of handling god-touched items directly. Acaeja’s warning was never far from my mind, and I had no doubt that it had been a serious one.

I knew this.

But I did not care.

I spun to the mask, which lay upon the battered veil. It floated atop the water, perfectly still, producing not a single ripple. As if its power reduced all natural rules to mere suggestion.

I did not hesitate as I seized it and put it on.

The pain was extraordinary.

The pleasure was unbelievable.

{At long last,} a voice whispered, with piqued interest, {a new heir.}

The mask settled around my face as if molding to my skull, latching to my forehead and cheekbones and the angle of my nose.

I gasped, and my lungs filled not with air—not with life—but with death.

I could see the entire underworld. I could feel every soul that wandered there, every souleater that hunted them.

I could sense the turn of every path, the swing of every gate, every mountain peak or river current or wandering soul.

All of it at once, unencumbered by mortal senses or fallible flesh.

Someone was screaming, strangled and rough, and it took me a long moment to realize it was me.

I was doubled over in the water, head lowered against the glass.

I blinked away a fleeting memory of a woman with galaxies in her hair.

No. Freckles like cinnamon. Honey-brown eyes.

I pushed myself up to my hands and knees. Then to my feet. The cracking veil bowed beneath my weight. The guardian still circled me.

“I am the heir,” I said. “I bear the crown. Retrieve her.”

The guardian regarded me, continuing its path.

The voice snarled. {Remind them that one does not disobey the crown.}

“ I bear the crown .” My words did not sound like my own. “Retrieve her.”

The guardian hesitated, precious seconds slipping away.

She is already lost, it said ruefully. And the veil cannot bear more damage.

{Give them no option!} the voice commanded.

“I am the king of the dead,” I boomed, “and I command you to retrieve her. ”

Retrieve her. Retrieve her. Retrieve her.

The veil shook with my command. The compulsion reached into the past, across realms.

The guardian passed beneath me again, eternity groaning beneath its fins.

As you wish, Highness, it said, at last.

It raised its great head, and dove deep, deep, deep.

And then the glass shattered.

A rush of sound, of emotion, flooded around me. The wailing dead screamed in pain and joy, released into the land of the living. The guardian parted through them as if they were nothing, scattering bodies through the weightlessness of the water or slicing them into smoke.

I dove after it. My movements were strange—neither swimming nor striding. Reality simply accommodated my will. The weeping wounds of the broken underworld, freshly wrought, throbbed in my heart.

A great wail shook the room. I pushed through the dead to see them—the guardian and the souleater engaged in a vicious battle.

The guardian had grabbed the souleater’s snakelike tail in its golden jaws, and the souleater now twisted itself around to claw at the guardian’s body.

The guardian was quickly fading. It was a creature of the past, a mere shade of what it once had been at its peak, and I’d dragged it back into the present by force.

But it was still a product of divinity. Even a shade of its power, long dulled by time, was enough to shatter worlds.

The guardian sawed its teeth into the souleater, forcing it to open its jaws. Mische’s limp body floated free, and I dove for her.

I wrapped my arms around her as the souleater, its jaws and claws now both free, ripped the guardian in two. Its death cry echoed as I lunged for the surface, dragging Mische up to the shattered veil.

I dragged us to the edge of the pool. The cold air of mortality struck me like a wall. The two of us crumpled in a heap upon the tile floor. The woman beneath me felt so fragile. Weaker, even, than a living mortal.

I rolled over. A spectral depiction of a palace hung above me in flickering silver. No—not a palace. My palace.

My brow furrowed.

{Much has changed,} the voice said thoughtfully, {in all these years.}

“Asar.”

The woman’s voice was small. I sat up and turned to her. Her body wavered between solidity and ghostliness. She was slowly rolling over to push herself onto her hands and knees.

She looked so urgently, naggingly familiar. But I couldn’t remember?—

Mische.

Her name shattered the dam. Reality washed back over me as if I’d been plunged into ice water.

{Wait—} the voice started.

But I tore the mask off my face with a sickening rip , wincing as it took flesh with it—like it had been burrowing into bone. I knelt down next to Mische as she lifted her head. When I took her face in my hands, I didn’t care that it chipped away at my already pathetically depleted strength.

“You are such a fool,” I said.

“Just have to keep you alert,” she said with a weak laugh. She carefully extracted herself from my touch. Then she looked to the veil, and her face fell.

The pool that had once held the mask now swirled with glittering oblivion, framed by the razored shards of what little remained of the gate. Hands reached from within it, the dead on the cusp of figuring out how to pull themselves through.

The man who had spent centuries healing the hurts of the underworld wanted to weep at this sight. For a moment, I thought to myself, What have I just done?

I turned to the mask, which lay beside me. My own power now felt dull and useless, my body weak and unremarkable. But I had studied magical artifacts long enough to know that drunken cravings for power were generally a bad sign.

I used the edge of my cloak to slide the mask into my pack.

“Let’s go,” I said. “We have minutes before all this collapses, and less, surely, before Egrette sends the entire Shadowborn army after us.”

I got to my feet, wincing as a fresh waterfall of blood soaked my shirt.

Mische stood, too, wavering slightly. She grabbed her gloves and pulled her hood back up, covering her wet hair and hiding the worst signs of her condition.

Which, I realized with an uncomfortable jolt, looked much more dire than they had minutes ago.

She stared back at the shattered gate, roiling with the desperate dead.

“We’ll fix it,” she whispered. “Right?”

“We will fix it,” I vowed. Even though I was looking only at her.

The dead let out another distant wail, growing closer.

“Come,” I whispered. “We have to go.”

Mische wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and together, we fled back into the tunnels before they closed up behind us.