Page 59 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

T he blast sent the ground trembling. Gearwork soldiers stumbled and clattered against each other. A wall of white flame burst from the crack. Srana dropped me and snapped upright with a symphony of ticks and chimes.

Mische rose from the forge.

She was doused in the white of the flames and the darkness of the shadows.

At her heels, the dead climbed from the crack.

Her hair flew out behind her. Her eyes were bright white, her skin glowing a bronze that rivaled the sun itself.

The flames of the forge and the shadows of the dead whorled around her like a ball gown of divinity. She didn’t walk, she simply ascended.

In her hands was the axe—a creation of steel and hatred and divine power, with the eye of Alarus forged into its center, glowing red, staring straight into the heart of the underworld itself.

A relic beyond anything any mortal had ever witnessed.

Once, the sight of it would have brought the collector in me to my knees.

But when my knees hit the ground now, it wasn’t for the eye.

It was for her.

I wanted to bury myself before her. I wanted to cut myself open for her, let her take whatever she wanted, and treasure the scars for the rest of my pathetic life.

Her glowing gaze met mine.

Then reality crashed over me—the fire, the dead, and Srana, her face drawn into divine rage, rushing to close the space between us.

I would worship later. Now, I leapt for her. My hands opened, and I called to every force, living or dead or divine, who cared to answer.

Mische extended her hands to pass me the axe.

My hands fell over hers, and for just a second, I was startled by just how solid they felt.

Then she pushed the axe into my arms, and I was no longer thinking at all.

{Ah,} a new voice whispered. {Now, you?.?.?.?you look familiar.}

It was said that the eye of Alarus was all-seeing—that it allowed him to map the paths between the living and the dead.

What the legends didn’t say was how overwhelming it was to see everything, everything, all at once.

Inflating lungs and decaying flesh and would-be fetuses growing in the womb, nothing but a few wisps of tissue.

Bones and breath and burial tears. All of it, all of it, rushing through me.

So much meaning that it became meaningless.

It was like I was waking up for the first time in my entire life.

Or like a part of me was dying, crying out in the dark.

Mische released the weapon and fell backward. The bright light drained from her eyes, leaving behind that golden brown.

Srana, with a roar of rage, dove for me. “I grow tired of this,” she snarled.

TICKtick TICKtick TICKtick, as gears and gears and gears built beneath her, raising her up.

With a careless shove, she threw Mische aside.

I watched her form, so newly fragile, tumble against twisted metal of the forge.

My grip tightened around the handle of the axe. My blood filled the rivulets of the design that spiraled up its length, leading to the eye.

{Srana does not yet fear you,} the eye whispered. {But she will.}

I let Alarus’s power overtake me.

Yes. She would fear me.

“ Do not touch her .”

The words shook the columns, the metal. They made the flames surge and dance in this monument to a two-thousand-year-old betrayal.

I lunged for Srana, and brought the axe down upon her.

Metal dented, twisted, crumpled. She fell back, righting herself in a cascade of glinting light. But I saw her shock. Her eyes click, click, click ed as her pupils adjusted, reevaluating.

{She has always done that,} the eye said. {Analyzed what she is too small to understand.}

She had looked that way when she had cut out this very eye and forged it into a coward’s weapon. A weapon she wouldn’t even wield herself.

And she had the gall to believe she could rule the White Pantheon.

No. She was a weak traitor. Just like the others.

Srana fell back, attempted to collect herself. But I raised my hand, and the dead surged for her, dragging her down to the sand.

Only now did her curiosity give way to true fear.

{Good,} the eye hissed.

“Release me!” she shrieked, as I stalked toward her.

I laughed.

How powerless she now looked.

TI-ti-TI-ti as gears jammed, locked.

Shadows fell in waterfalls down the bloody walls. A screech rang out as Srana attempted to claw across metal to drag herself free.

I saw Srana standing over the body of a dead mortal woman with all the indifference deserving of a dead pest.

I saw Srana’s face looming over mine, those eyes click, click, click ing away, holding out the weapon crafted from her betrayal.

I saw Srana forging the chains that would bind a girl with galaxies in her hair through her torture.

“No,” I snarled. “No, Srana. I will not release you.”

The darkness whipped around us both, suspending me over her. She sprawled out in a mass of twisted metal. With a jerk of my hand, the shadows dragged her across the floor, inch by inch, until she was directly beneath me.

The heady elation of revenge flooded me. My smile was so tight it hurt my teeth.

“What shall I do to you?” I said. “Shall I cut out your eye, too?”

I moved the tip of the blade to her face, right next to her eye, where the broken gear cli-cli-click ed in a futile attempt to turn.

“Shall I stand by and let them rip you apart gear by gear, just as you stood by and watched your kin commit such injustices?” I gestured to the dead, who jammed their desperate fingers into screws and coils, digging for a taste of divinity.

I leaned closer.

“Or, perhaps I shall take a finger for every link of the chain you forged for her?”

Srana’s confusion delighted me.

“Oh, cousin,” I breathed. “You think I do not know the things you did to Nyaxia in her captivity?”

And there, at last, was delicious fear.

{Now she sees you,} the eye purred in satisfaction.

“You,” she gasped.

But there was nothing she could say to earn my forgiveness, let alone my mercy.

I saw those clockwork eyes watching over the murder of a woman in the ashes of a dead god.

Watching over the torture of a woman with galaxies in her hair.

These two memories twisted, tangled. I didn’t care to separate them. Srana would suffer for either crime.

I raised the blade and brought it down.

CRACK, as metal split and shattered. Srana wailed. Her right arm screeched as it dragged across the floor, pulled apart by the hungry dead. The skies churned above, lightning spearing the web between worlds.

“They will come,” she screeched. “The others will come for you!”

{Let them,} the eye taunted.

“I don’t care,” I replied. And I did not.

I raised the blade again.

But then, a sound pushed through the haze.

A voice screaming a name.

“Asar!”

I paused.

I knew that name, that voice, though I could not place them.

“Come back to me.” The words slipped through me like smoke, sweet with a familiar compulsion.

Come back to me. Come back to me. Come back to me.

I lowered the axe. There was now sand under my feet. I turned.

A beautiful woman approached me slowly, arm outstretched. She had eyes of amber and smelled of cinnamon.

Smelled of cinnamon?.?.?.?and blood.

The scent made my heart stutter. A cacophonous clatter rang out behind me as Srana collected herself and made her pathetic escape into the ether.

{Do not let her go!} the eye cried.

But I barely noticed her departure.

The woman stepped closer. Her hands slid over my shoulders, gingerly reaching past the axe. There was blood on her face, smearing over freckles. Blood on her clothing. She swayed slightly.

“We have to leave, Asar,” she said. “The gods are coming. Come back.”

Come back. Come back. Come back.

All at once, her name struck me.

“Mische,” I gasped.

I dropped the axe, reaching out to catch her as her knees buckled. Blood cascaded onto the ground. Luce circled us in anxious urgency.

She was bleeding so much. When had this happened? How had I not seen it?

How could a wraith bleed like this at all?

But she didn’t feel like a wraith when I drew her up in my arms.

“We have to go,” she murmured, lashes fluttering.

Everything fell away but the panic.

I looked up at the skies above, shattered shards of a hundred worlds, now swirling with divine interest. Moments, and the gods would be here.

But we had no passage back. No way to run fast enough. Nowhere to hide. My mind raced through countless impossible choices, arriving at only one conclusion:

I refused to live this again. I would not hold Mische’s dying body as the gods watched.

My gaze fell to the axe, with the eye pulsing at the center of its blade.

Then to the mask, lying in the sand.

I couldn’t save her as a mortal. But a god was not confined to the bounds of time and space. A god could step between worlds.

Luce whined a warning, as if she knew what I intended to do. But it was easy to ignore her, faced with Mische’s death. Easy to discard a piece of my mortality I knew I might not get back.

“Hold on to me,” I told them both.

I pulled Mische close. I grabbed the mask and slid it over my face. Then I held the axe.

The divine power threatened to sweep me away all over again.

But I anchored myself to Mische. I looked up at the spira, a shimmering web that connected worlds.

I needed to take her somewhere safe. Somewhere we could hide, if only for a little while.

I had seconds to decide, and when I arrived at our only answer, I knew she would hate me for it.

But at least if she hated me, she would be alive.

I gathered her up in my arms, Luce at my side, and jumped.