Page 54 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

W e’re close now,” Sylina said softly. “The threads are converging.”

The only sound was our horses’ hoofbeats over cracked stone paths as we wound through what once had been bustling streets.

This city was more condensed than the one into which we had first arrived, the roads narrow and buildings flowing into each other, as if the entire town had once been a single continuous structure, rising into the sky like a mountain.

Alarus’s death site stood at the top—even more grand, and even more mournful, than it had looked from a distance.

Up close, the building did indeed resemble a colosseum.

What a humiliating cruelty. To execute Alarus on the grandest stage of a discarded world, in front of an audience of ghosts. It was the kind of spite that was left out of scriptures and history books.

{The cruelty of small minds,} a bitter voice sneered. {They will pay for it one day.}

Everything had gone deathly silent, as if the ruins themselves held their breath in anticipation.

Even the dead did not follow here. The horses walked slower, perhaps to navigate the narrow, cracked streets, or perhaps because they had no interest in going to the death site of a god.

Mische’s horse trailed farthest behind, head low, hooves dragging.

Soon, the road narrowed in front of us to a single stone gate. A towering wall stretched out on either side, circling, it seemed, the colosseum. Atrius craned his neck and squinted up at the columns looming over us, then swung his leg over his horse.

“Time to dismount,” he said.

“Why?” Mische said, as we all obeyed. Her horse let out a groan as she slid off her body.

Atrius didn’t answer. He drew his sword, then stroked his horse’s nose, murmuring something to it in a language I didn’t understand—the lost tongue of the Bloodborn, perhaps. With gentle hands, he slid his steed’s bridle off, letting it fall with a melodic clink to the ground.

Then he stepped back, lifted his blade, and drove it through his horse’s chest.

I jerked backward as a spray of blood spattered our faces. Mische let out a wordless cry of horror. Even Luce flinched in surprise.

Atrius still whispered under his breath, and he didn’t let go of his hilt, even as the animal fell slowly to its knees.

He twisted the blade. Thickening red mist, the horse’s blood under the control of Bloodborn magic, hovered around them both.

He was, I knew, manipulating blood within the horse’s body, too, using it to enhance his strike.

“Rest, my friend,” he murmured, as he finally pulled his sword free.

Blood gushed from the wound, but when Atrius lifted one hand, it smoothed into a silky wave as he guided it from the animal’s body.

The horse moaned as it sank to the ground, but it didn’t thrash or fight. Atrius had been efficient.

Sylina bowed her head as if in prayer. But Mische cried, horrified, “What are you doing?”

The horse had stopped twitching. The blood now circled Atrius in a steady, floating river, and he uncapped the canteen at his hip and guided the stream into it.

“The gate demands a blood sacrifice.” He gestured to the stone door.

The carvings that adorned it, sure enough, had begun to fill with red, as if the door was hungrily sucking up what had spilled.

“And besides, where we are going is no place for horses. They’ve served us well, but their journey is over. ”

But Mische shook her head, stepping protectively closer to the mare. “They went to hell for us. And in reward, we just kill them?”

“Each of us needs to make a blood sacrifice to pass.”

“She deserves better than to be somebody’s sacrifice.” Her fingers dug into the blanket beneath her saddle, like it was taking all her self-control not to throw her arms around the horse. The poor creature barely seemed aware of her surroundings anymore, swaying, knees nearly buckling.

The hard truth was that she was not going to last either way. All this time with Mische on her back, sapping her life bit by bit, had taken its toll.

Atrius capped his canteen. I watched, ready to step in if he reprimanded her, but he looked at Mische with genuine pity. Apparently, she could melt even Bloodborn hearts.

“You were Turned, yes? In some ways, the Bloodborn have more in common with humans than we do with other vampires. We understand impermanence.” He knelt and stroked his dead horse’s neck, lashes lowered in respect.

“The curse that the Dark Mother placed upon us takes much from us. We’re born knowing that we will die too young, and with little dignity.

This is why the Bloodborn see no shame in death.

The greatest gift we can offer is a life that serves those who come after us, and the greatest gift we can be given in return is a death with dignity.

There is no sadness in that. I’ll give her a quick, painless end. As she deserves.”

Tears welled up in Mische’s eyes. “She deserves better than any of this.”

A humorless smile twisted his mouth. “So do we all. And yet, here we are, making the best of the hand we were dealt.”

I laid a comforting hand at the small of Mische’s back.

She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, but she didn’t protest further.

She would mourn her companion—Saescha, as she had dubbed her, a name that I knew held such painful significance in this moment—but she understood reality.

Atrius held true to his word. Mische stroked the mare’s face as he killed her, and Mische and I led her soul through the open door to the underworld.

Quick and painless.

But still unfair.

The gates found our sacrifices acceptable.

We gave some of the horses’ blood to the deadlands, saved the rest for our own stores, and continued on foot.

The roads were steep, and in worse condition than the ones into the city.

Sparkling white frosted the rocks and the long-abandoned iron fences lining the road.

Above us, the shards of different worlds in the sky all seemed to point toward us—all those glowing cracks leading right to this spot.

Atrius frowned up at them, suspicious.

“Can any of you explain that?” he said.

“Magic flows,” Sylina said. “It has to pool somewhere.”

“And what better focal point than the death site of a god,” I muttered.

I had a terrible headache, and it grew worse with every step.

A garbled buzz rose in the back of my head—like an angry avalanche of words rushing by too quick.

The mask at my side nagged at me. Soon, sweat rolled down my back.

Heat throbbed from under the earth. Odd, considering that the deadlands had, until now, been so cold.

Atrius was the first to crest the top of the path leading into the colosseum. When he did, he stopped short. Sylina joined him, then Mische, Luce, and I.

We all stared down. I shielded my face from a burst of heat.

The pit below resembled a spoked wheel. Stone lined with arches encircled a large, sandy floor.

The spectators’ stands were now crumbling, stepped seats reduced to piles of brick, but the stage itself was in surprisingly good condition.

Statues guarded over each of the towering columns along its edge, their hands outstretched.

Some were blindfolded, and others wore masks that covered their entire faces.

I didn’t recognize the figures. Perhaps they were some other lesser gods from thousands of years past, now long discarded like this realm had been.

Yet, for all the building’s beauty, it was hard to look at anything but the damage at its center.

Massive, glowing cracks all ran down the spiraling stairs to the center of the stone floor, where they converged in a twisted silhouette that almost resembled a figure, limbs spread, lying flat on the ground.

No, not just lying. Held down there by force, as his kin dismembered him.

A strange metal structure had been built over the cracks. It didn’t match the architectural style of the rest of the majestic, ancient building. It was crafted of gleaming copper, arching over the widest of the cracks. The flames surged beneath it. Fresh smoke plumed from towering bronze chimneys.

“What?.?.?.?is that?” Mische asked.

No one answered, because no one knew. But the voice in the back of my head hissed, {Desecration.}

I rubbed my temple and muttered, “Let’s just go.” I was suddenly very eager to get this over with.

We started down the stairs, walking gingerly as the decaying steps wobbled beneath our feet. With each one, the heat grew more unbearable. The faces of long-forgotten gods stared down at us, doused with a fiery red glow.

At the bottom, a grand arch opened up before us, leading into the sands of the pit.

I paused for a reason I couldn’t identify. My hand pressed against the rusted metal gate.

And suddenly, I was two thousand years in the past.

I should not have come.

The gravity of this decision strikes me now. Gods do not often admit their own mistakes, not even to themselves. But I feel that certainty now: I should not have come.

Vitarus and Shiket hold my hands down, binding them with blessed chain. Ix watches silently, bloody tears streaming down her cheeks, but her lips are twisted with a hungry smile.

I came unarmed, like they told me to. My left hand bleeds, gold blood seeping into the sands. They pried away my only remaining weapon. And now, the flames of her forge behind her, Srana forges her blessed axe. She meets my gaze, clockwork eyes tick, tick, ticking in calculation.

I think, perhaps she will be the one to speak in my favor.

But she looks away, and she pulls the blade from the fire—a blade she had prepared for this specific task, a blade that is now strengthened with the great power I have.

Atroxus takes the weapon from her. He leans over me, the smile bright and hungry on his face.

“You were always so arrogant, brother,” he said. “I warned you. You gave up your crown, your heart, your eye. All for her. And now look at all you have destroyed.”

He is so foolish. He believes he is destroying a threat. But he is too arrogant to see that he is creating a greater one.

I think of my wife. Her kiss goodbye still burns on my mouth. Somewhere far away, she holds my final gift to her. I grieve that I will never get to see what she will become, and the fact that she needs to become it at all.

One day, Atroxus will regret this.

He brings the blade down ? —

“Asar!”

Pain.

For a moment, disoriented, I thought that I was feeling Atroxus’s killing blow. Instead, I realized that the sharp throb was from Mische’s touch, pressed to either side of my face.

Her eyes were worried, but when I blinked, she relaxed and released me.

“Put that down,” she said.

I looked down to see the pack in my hands. The flap was open, like I’d been about to remove the mask.

I blinked in surprise. “When?—”

“I turned around and you had it.” She stepped back, sliding her gloves back on. “Sorry about your face. I had to get your attention.”

I touched my cheek. The remnants of Mische’s touch still stung. “No need to apologize.”

That was unnerving.

{You will need me,} the mask whispered.

You’re growing tedious, I told it, and let the bag hang at my hip again.

We were now in the pit at the center of the stands, though, unsettlingly, I didn’t remember walking there.

The metal structure now stood over us. I raised my eyes and briefly saw this view as Alarus had in his final moments—with Srana standing there, his eye in her hands, making his greatest asset into the weapon that would end him.

“It’s a forge,” I said.

A forge for Srana’s magic, designed to harness the power that convened at Alarus’s death site.

It was far more advanced than any built by human practitioners of Srana’s arts, and a much more complex structure than what I had seen in my vision.

So much so that at first I didn’t even recognize it as a forge at all.

The outskirts of the pit were cluttered with statues, though not ancient ones like those carved into the stone.

These were gleaming metal with too-long limbs of gears and pipes, like marionette versions of Shiket’s Sentinels.

Other creations were scattered, seemingly discarded, in the sand, too—blades, knives, crossbows, and a pile of cylindrical machines that I’d never seen before, like bladeless spears.

Mische touched one of the copper columns of the forge, only to let out a hiss and yank her hand away. It was blessed by the White Pantheon. Toxic to her, as a wraith.

“This hasn’t been here for two thousand years,” she said. “I think this is newer.”

Atrius was quiet, striding along the edges of the pit, gazing at the weapons. Sylina’s hands ran over the walls, like she was searching for something.

My eyes narrowed as I watched them. They seemed unsurprised by any of this. As if they’d known what to expect when we got here.

But before I could speak, a blinding light flashed. No, two lights—one, bright orange, from the cracks beneath the earth, and another from the sky, as the lines of the spira lit up with blinding white. Wisps of ethereal colors swirled overhead, blotting out the glimpses of the mortal realm.

The hair prickled at the back of my neck as I watched the sky.

{You were warned,} the voice remarked.

Luce barked a warning and dragged Mische backward just as a burst of flame surged from the forge. Behind me, Sylina let out a gasp, and when I tore my gaze from the sky, she was leaning heavily against the wall.

“I can’t—I can’t see,” she choked out. “The threads are gone. I can’t see.”

What did it mean if the threads of fate themselves had gone dark?

A distant sound quivered in the air, quiet at first.

Tick tick tick tick?.?.?.

Atrius whispered something to Sylina, helping her upright, shooting an alarmed glance to the sky.

“Arm yourself,” I barked, drawing my sword. Mische did the same. Luce growled at the sky.

The ticking grew faster. Faster.

Tickticktickticktick?.?.?.

I knew that sound. I’d heard it before.

The sky roiled with wisps of rainbow light.

A god.

A god was here.

Click click tick, click click tick, as the machinery above us shifted, collapsed, reformed.

And when all that gleaming copper snapped into a perfect circle, at its center was Srana, clockwork eyes observing us with methodical precision. A smile spread over her face, revealing teeth of polished brass as mechanical limbs opened behind her—wings, legs, a terrible combination of both.

“Hello again, fallen one,” she said. “How fascinating that after everything, you would still come to this spot.”