Page 41 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

I felt Mische’s magic before I saw it. Even the Sentinel I was fighting felt it, because they paused halfway through their strike to turn to the dais.

When I looked to her, I knew I would remember that image for the rest of my life.

Mische, standing in front of the Dusk Window, her torn dress billowing out behind her, black silk hood pinned around her face, hands outstretched like a mother’s waiting arms as the shadowy forms of the dead poured out around her.

I thought, Damn masks and eyes and hearts and divine missions. This is what a true goddess looks like.

A sight so stunning that it made the entire damned world stop mid-breath.

And then, it all crashed down around us like a toppled wine glass.

The dead were eager. The veil was already damaged. And now, they had been released straight into a room full of blood and flesh and sex and death. Everything they craved.

The Sentinel didn’t know what to make of it.

I seized upon its distraction, driving my blade through its gut—a strike that would do little to hurt them, I knew, but it would buy me time.

Mische toppled from the dais, her form swallowed beneath the avalanche of writhing shadows.

Wraiths, when released into the world above, were even further removed from their mortal selves than they were in the Descent.

The creatures that poured into the ballroom were wretched mimicries of what they once had been.

Their limbs were twisted and deformed, bending the wrong way or not at all.

Their faces were distorted, eyes too large, mouths too wide, some missing features altogether.

They moved more like shadows through leaves than living beings.

And they were hungry. Starving.

The light of divinity, the contrast in every way to the darkness of the Descent, was the most appealing to them of all.

Brilliant, Mische. Absolutely fucking brilliant.

I didn’t intend the thought for anyone but myself. But I still heard her amused reply:

I think that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.

Goddess help me, I was proud of her. My chest hurt with it.

The Sentinel lurched away from me as a slew of dead piled upon it. I seized this window of freedom and ran.

To the door, I told her.

I had to dodge and weave to avoid the wraiths.

But Mische slipped free of them easily. Indeed, sometimes it seemed almost as if they were protecting her, which was intriguing.

She was, after all, already dead. She had offered them a bridge to the living, and now that they had an entire buffet of life spread out before them, they were more than happy to gorge themselves on that offering instead.

The open door, agonizingly close and yet frustratingly far away, loomed ahead of me. The sky was brighter now, swirling with approaching divinity. Nyaxia would be here any moment.

It was then, when I was inconveniently distracted by impending divinity, that she found me.

A wall of darkness rose up before me. And within it, stepping through the chaos with cold, singular focus, was Egrette.

She was utterly calm, in eerie contrast to the tumult unfolding around her.

Her dress was torn and bloody, her elaborate hairstyle half-undone, the crown crookedly clinging to her head.

Her exposed Heir Marks were covered with the black of vampire blood.

And though her kingdom collapsed around her, she looked only at me.

I felt her rage. More surprising, her pain, fresh and deep. It startled me just how familiar that feeling was.

I had felt it after Mische’s death. I felt it even now.

Egrette knew how to shield her mind. She didn’t care to. I understood that, too.

She stood firmly between me and freedom.

“The mask is already gone,” I said. “Let me pass without trouble and I won’t bring any more to you.”

But even as the words left my mouth, I realized that this had nothing to do with the mask.

“All our lives, we have been playing a game, Asar. We fight over a chair, over a crown, over a kingdom. Fine.” Her mouth, full of blood, twisted.

“But it is not a game anymore. I will never forgive you for killing him. Not tonight. Not a thousand nights from now. And not the night I stand over your corpse.”

After all this time, it really never had occurred to me that Egrette had actually loved Elias.

But here, on this night of mirrors, I saw another version of myself reflected in her grief—the villain in her story. The resentful bastard brother who had betrayed her, butchered his own mentor, slaughtered her lover, and sacrificed his own kingdom and hers.

I raised my blade. Reached to the darkness, which now so easily met my call, swirling around my sword.

“Just let me walk away,” I said.

But I knew in this moment that she would never stop hunting me.

I bit back a silent curse. I could handle Egrette, but it would take time we didn’t have. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mische running through the crowd. And behind her, an odd movement upon the dais?—

Egrette lunged for me.

Just as a souleater burst through the Dusk Window.

Its body squeezed and contorted through the frame. The metal snapped, sending the Window toppling. The beast flapped and writhed as it tumbled onto the ballroom floor like a beached shark, so drunk on its gluttonous luck it didn’t even care it was on dry land.

The wraiths scattered in panic. A wave of the dead rose up in perfect timing to Egrette’s distraction, pushing her across the floor.

Mische seized the opportunity and barreled toward me, gown streaking out behind her, and for a moment I thought maybe she actually was flying, because she looked every bit the phoenix.

“Come on!” she shrieked, dragging me toward the door.

But I hesitated.

Egrette freed herself from the dead and whirled to me. She was several strides away, and even surrounded by such death, her stare found me immediately.

End her, a part of me insisted. She will never stop coming for you. End her right now.

But Mische gave me another rough push, punctuated with Luce’s frantic bark from ahead. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

The gods and the dead alike were at our heels. There was no more time.

I turned away and fled into the night.