Page 44 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

I had been skeptical that the tonic would work on me, all things considered. But I remembered nothing after stepping onto the little boat. Just dark and dreams.

I dreamed of Saescha’s face—her face in her final moments of life, and then as a wraith, desperate for Atroxus’s light in the Descent.

I dreamed of Asar’s, his eyes distant and unfamiliar.

I dreamed of Raihn’s, agonized and relieved, before I betrayed him.

I dreamed of a vision Atroxus once showed me, a beach covered in corpses, myself kneeling among them.

And I dreamed of a god I’d never met, bearing a mask of copper, watching me with skeptical interest.

Tell me, he murmured, leaning close, who are you?

I opened my mouth to respond?—

And let out an ugly groan.

That certainly was no dream. The sound startled me, because it was too real.

Sun fucking take me. I felt terrible. Absolutely terrible.

“—home for the next few hours,” a gruff voice was saying.

I forced my head up. My vision swam. I couldn’t make out anything through the soupy smudges. I felt like I was splitting in two across worlds. One foot in death, one in life.

A hard, cold nose nudged my face.

Time to wake up, Luce urged.

I blinked hard. The smog cleared slowly. The ghosts scattered like fish in a disrupted pond.

I was slumped on a low, dusty couch. Asar was beside me, groggily dragging himself back to consciousness, with Luce now on top of him nuzzling his cheek.

We were in what appeared to be a small, run-down apartment, or perhaps a boarding house room.

Instantly, I knew we were in the House of Blood.

The furniture was far different than the ornate velvets and metals of the House of Shadow, or the sleek silks of the House of Night.

It was all carved from wood with accents of bone and tarnished metal.

The chairs were low to the ground, covered with slightly malformed red pillows.

A small dining table and two chairs were in one corner of the room, a door to a modest washroom in another, and a bed surrounded by a wooden platform sat against the wall.

None of it seemed to have been occupied in the last fifty years.

A fine layer of dust coated every surface.

Our Bloodborn sailor knelt by the hearth, summoning a fire, which doused the cobweb-dusted interior in light. Still, I shivered violently, and the fire didn’t seem to help at all.

“You can wait here for your escorts,” he said as he rose. “My time with you is done.”

He sounded relieved, which was a little insulting considering that we were unconscious the entire time. Surely our company couldn’t have been that terrible.

Still, I noticed that his clothes were now much dirtier than I remembered. How long had our journey been? I found it difficult to unscramble my memories.

While I could barely sit up, Asar was already standing.

We were both still wearing our torn, bloodstained finery from the ball.

His hair was smooshed up on one side at an angle I might have teased him about if I’d been less groggy.

He patted it down as his gaze shot to me, taking quick assessment of my condition, then Luce’s, and then, finally, landing on the pack—which held the precious mask.

He stared at it for a long moment, then ripped his gaze away, only for it to linger—as if involuntarily—on me again.

Whatever he saw made a line of worry form between his brows.

“How long will we wait?” he asked our escort.

The man was already halfway to the door. “A few hours. A few days. I was your keeper, not theirs. Don’t worry, Shadowborn. You’ll be safe here. We have our ways of keeping the gods’ eyes from things better left unseen.”

He smiled, revealing sharp, bloodstained teeth. “Good luck!” Then with a wave that somehow seemed a bit sarcastic and the click of a lock, he left us alone.

Asar tried the doorknob, only to confirm what we already knew. We were locked in.

I stood, swaying slightly. Maybe it was a blessing that I was feeling more dead than I had, because even in this state, spending gods-knew-how-long unconscious in a corset made my ribs brutally sore.

I went to the single cracked window and peered outside.

We were surrounded by water. Jagged mountains and snow-dusted hills rose against the horizon.

A cluster of small buildings stood at a distant shore, barely more than shacks.

The moon was silver again, nestled comfortably among the stars.

Still, all of it seemed a bit duller than it once had been, as if still mourning the dance partner of the sun.

“We’re very far north,” Asar said, looking out beside me. “We’ve traveled a long way.”

We had. Yet the events of the Melume felt like they had just happened. I could still feel the hands of the dead on my skin.

Luce trotted into the next room and flopped over in front of the hearth, letting out an exhausted groan, like she hadn’t slept in days.

“You’ve guarded us a long way, Luce,” I told her. “You deserve some rest.”

She grunted her agreement, rolling belly-up, already halfway to snoring.

Asar placed the pack on the table. It was a standard Shadowborn bag, in plain black leather, fine enough but unremarkable. No one would ever guess what it held.

He unclasped the flap.

“Don’t touch it,” I said quickly.

He nodded, lifting a hand to show me his gloves. Then he slid the mask from the bag and placed it on the table.

A shiver swept over me. The shadows lurched forward, as if reaching for it.

Maybe part of me had felt that it would simply evaporate when the Melume was over, like all the other ghosts of the past. But no.

There it was. Alarus’s face stared up at us in decorated bronze, engraved with countless ancient glyphs that swirled over it like churning waves.

They moved across its surface so slowly that I found myself questioning if I was imagining it.

The carvings gave off a very slight glow, which seemed to subtly shift from white to silver to black to purple.

It reminded me of something that I couldn’t place.

Not until I looked at Asar and saw his scars gleaming with that exact same light.

Then my gaze drifted down to his Mark, visible between the hem of his sleeve and the edge of his glove. The organic strokes of ink were a near-perfect sibling to the flowing lines of glyphs on the mask’s surface.

“For thousands of years, even the scholars thought that this could never be retrieved,” Asar murmured. “And yet. Here it is.”

The crown to Alarus’s lost kingdom. The crown to the House of Death.

A yawning hunger opened up in my chest, and I tamped down hard on it. Another wave of dizziness struck me. My mouth was dry.

Gods, I was starving .

“Sun take us,” I muttered. “I can’t believe we pulled that off. I can’t believe we did all that .”

I swayed a little, leaning against a table, and I could feel Asar’s gaze, sharp and protective, taking in every wobble.

“You need blood,” he said.

“No, I need to get this dress off.” I attempted to reach for the laces, first by reaching from above, then by twisting around my waist. It was no use.

I’d been tied into this thing by a small army of shadow servants, provided so generously by Egrette, and it seemed like it would take magic just as advanced to get me out of it.

“Here.”

I felt Asar’s presence behind me. The comforting scent of ivy fell over me.

His hands worked at my back, and the pressure released. I wished I breathed, so I could celebrate with a fresh gulp of air.

“Thank the gods,” I muttered.

But as soon as the words left my lips, they just reminded me that we were in no position to thank the gods for anything.

I swayed slightly.

“Hold on to the couch,” Asar said, sensing my weakness immediately. “This will take a minute.”

He continued working at the laces. I leaned over the couch to grip the back.

My voice was rough as I said, “We just made so, so many enemies.”

My head spun at the thought of it. Shiket, who had gone so far as to cross into Nyaxia’s territory. Nyaxia, once she inevitably learned that we’d stolen the mask. The House of Shadow, ready to take their vengeance.

“Fine,” Asar said. “Let them come for us.”

He loosened another loop.

Then he added, more softly, “You were incredible, Iliae. Absolutely incredible.”

Incredible felt like the wrong word for it. Yes, I had felt powerful standing in front of the Dusk Window, the entire realm of the dead ready to heed my call.

But any pride I felt in that disappeared when I thought of Raihn’s devastated face. I had succeeded in wielding the power that had evaded me for so long, but it felt like such a cruel victory.

I just shook my head. “No. I don’t think so.”

Another loop.

I knew Asar saw exactly what I was thinking.

“You were protecting him.”

“He’ll never forgive me. Never.” And could I blame him? I had violated him, and the only reason the compulsion had even worked was because I knew his mind so well. A lifetime of friendship, weaponized.

But I didn’t regret it, and that felt the worst of all.

I turned my head slightly. I could barely see Asar out of the corner of my eye, head lowered, brow creased in focus. He worked at my corset laces the way he had worked at the broken gates of Morthryn.

I had seen the way he’d looked at the House of Shadow burning. I had felt his guilt, just as he had felt mine.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “About what happened to the House of Shadow.”

A barely there flinch rippled. “It will recover. Probably with a vengeance, largely directed at us.”

“I know. But it was still your home.”

“It wasn’t. It had never wanted me. But?.?.?.”

His voice trailed off. He undid another tie of my corset, and I now had to hold the dress up to keep it from falling.