Page 66 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

I was now in a much better mood.

I loved feeling. Feeling was wonderful! Feeling Asar’s skin, feeling his breath, feeling his cock inside me.

Feeling him tense when he came and relax in the moments after.

Feeling him breathe, long and slow, beside me when we dozed to sleep.

Feeling his kisses when we awoke, and then feeling all of it again and again.

Now, I felt tired and sore, and I loved that, too. It was not the emptiness of wraith exhaustion—though I could sense that looming in the background. It was a very alive kind of tired, like I’d just run a long way. Or, maybe, had sex five times in one night.

Five! Really!

I sat up, wincing as my stitches stretched.

Between the blood and the medicine, the wounds were now shallow, my vampire healing restored, though it would be some time before it was fully gone.

I didn’t mind. I liked the pain. I liked it the same way I liked the sore ache between my legs or the faint burn on my chin where Asar’s stubble had scratched against it.

I didn’t even realize all the sensations I had been missing until they had returned to me, a precious gift I swore I’d never take for granted again.

I felt so alive.

And yet?—

And yet, death still loomed over me.

Still, I could ignore that for a little while.

“I didn’t know it could feel this way,” I said.

“Hm?”

Asar looked half asleep. It occurred to me now that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him sleep. Yet, when his eyes met mine, a soft smile bloomed over his lips.

Gods, I could watch that smile forever.

“Sex,” I said. “It’s so?.?.?.”

Asar waited expectantly. Eventually, I settled on, “Fun!”

A stifled laugh. “Fun,” he repeated.

“You don’t think it is?”

“Oh, it is. It’s just not the word I was expecting you to use.”

“What were you expecting?”

“Devastating. Transformative. Spiritual.”

He was being sarcastic, but I wouldn’t deny that with Asar, it was all those things, too.

He caught a stray curl between his thumb and forefinger. “It wasn’t fun before?”

Now it was my turn to laugh.

Asar did not. “That shouldn’t be a funny thought.”

“Of course it wasn’t fun. It was?.?.?.?you know, an offering.”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. His face hardened.

“You are not, never have been, and never will be an offering, Mische.”

I was already laughing it off, already turning away. But he caught my hand.

“Look at me,” he said.

There was no compulsion in the command. But I obeyed, anyway. Asar’s stare was steady—and yet, so painfully gentle. He always had seen too much of me. Even on that very first night.

“You are not an offering. Not to Atroxus or any other god. Any of them would be lucky to kneel before you.” He pressed his mouth to my bare shoulder, tongue briefly tasting skin. “As am I.”

It was a more sobering thought than he meant it. Thoughts of gods led us to thoughts of ascension, and thoughts of ascension led us to thoughts of war, and thoughts of war led us to why we were here in the first place.

Asar pressed a kiss to my fingertips. “I see your thoughts turning.”

“Mm.” It was all I could manage to put into words.

“You’re thinking about the House of Night?” he asked.

I let out another unhelpful, wordless noise, which was all the answer he needed. He kissed me again, this time on the back of my hand.

“The decision is yours,” he said.

“We don’t have many options, Asar.”

What would we do, if we left? Go wander the seas or the forests, waiting to be captured or killed or gods knew what else?

Sacrifice Asar’s sanity to the mask and the eye in long-shot attempts to find the heart?

He’d wielded them once and survived it, but I wasn’t convinced he would be able to again.

My gaze traced the black-red marks that ran along his cheekbones, over the bridge of his nose, and circled his eyes. They were faint, but I still saw them every time I looked into his face. And though he tried to hide it, I was certain they were far from the only marks the mask had left on him.

I knew that Asar treasured time, because he knew how little of it I had. And so, I knew just how much of a sacrifice it was when he said, “We’ll find another way if you want us to.”

He genuinely meant it. Warmth suffused my chest at that.

But I let out a reluctant sigh.

“I think I know what we have to do.”

“So that’s why you covered it,” Asar said as I pulled the sheet off the mirror. “I had been wondering.”

“I didn’t wany any unwanted ghosts peeking at me.” That close call in Ryvenhaal was enough to inspire caution.

“Understandable. Still, a shame. I would have enjoyed watching you from all available angles.”

When I turned to the mirror, I startled slightly at my own reflection.

My hair was a mess, my skin flushed. My mouth was slightly swollen, and the scabbed-over marks left by Asar’s teeth dotted my throat and shoulder like little blackened flower petals.

The sight made my thighs clench at the memory of his lips on my skin, and the exquisite, physical, mortal pain of his teeth.

I briefly considered dragging Asar back to bed. Just one more time.

Through the mirror, he returned my lingering stare.

I knew he was considering it, too.

Sun take me. What was wrong with me? I shook my head and adjusted my shirt to hide most of the bite marks, then returned my attention to my task.

It occurred to me that I’d never summoned Vincent.

He always just seemed to turn up, usually when I didn’t want him around.

But now, the mirror showed me only our own reflections.

I realized that since we’d arrived here, I barely saw or heard the ghosts, though I could sense their presence lingering like mice in the walls.

“Vincent?” I said, feeling a bit foolish. I leaned closer to the mirror, tapping on the glass. “Are you here?”

“You have finally listened to reason.”

I jumped and whirled around. The voice was distant. Through the half-ajar washroom door, Vincent’s ghostly face peered back through the mirror above the basin.

“Why are you over there?” I asked as I pushed the door open.

He looked irritated. “I don’t get to choose.”

His voice was weak, and even up close, sounded as if he were speaking across a great, windy distance. His form was fainter than I’d ever seen it, and sapped of color entirely.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

His lips thinned. “The underworld continues to decay. It has been?.?.?.?challenging here.”

That word alone told me plenty.

I glanced at Asar over my shoulder. “You see him, too?” I asked. He nodded, visibly fascinated.

Vincent’s hard gaze darted between us. He said something, but his words were too faint to hear.

I leaned closer. “What?”

He said, more clearly, “You finally came to the House of Night.” Then his gaze flicked over me, feet to head. “You survived the forge. I’m pleased to see it.”

Sun take me. Was that a hint of relief on his face? That was almost sweet.

“You told me that god blood could be used to find Alarus’s heart,” I said. “Do you still think that’s true?”

“It is a part of a whole. I suspect it could be.” His silver eyes settled on Asar. “If wielded by someone powerful enough.”

“Find it how? Like?.?.?.?on a map?”

“You expect blood to point to a map?”

“Well, no, but?—”

Vincent sighed. “You are Shadowborn. Have you conducted an anchor spell?”

I nodded. Asar had cast one to bind us together before our journey to the Descent. A straightforward way to magically link two objects or people.

Then it hit me. “You mean that you believe the blood could be used to find its other half. Like an advanced anchor spell.”

Asar leaned forward, brow furrowed. “When I was in Ysria, Acaeja bound me to Mische as a way of opening a passage to her, through the spira. Could the blood be used to do this?”

I shot Asar a sharp look. The spira was not mortal magic. Asar had just used the eye and the mask to traverse it to save me. I didn’t like that he was already so quickly talking about using it again.

Vincent considered this. “I had always been a better warrior than sorcerer. But perhaps. If one was capable of opening such a passage.”

“You’re talking about opening a door before you know where it will go,” I said. “And using the blood would attract the attention of the gods.”

If we hadn’t already.

Maybe we were lucky enough that the protection of Nyaxia’s territory shielded us, even temporarily, from Shiket and the White Pantheon—and even that seemed like more and more of a stretch lately.

But Nyaxia surely had noticed Shiket’s attack on the House of Shadow.

She must know by now that we had taken her husband’s crown.

So where was she?

This question hung heavily. Maybe she was distracted by something far worse than us. Or maybe we had even less time than we thought.

The look on Asar’s face told me he was thinking this, too.

“The Nightborn palace has hallways that are underground,” Vincent said. “We—I had conducted my more?.?.?.?divinely sensitive work there. It’s as hidden from the eyes of the gods as one can be in Sivrinaj.”

Still, my stomach twisted in unease. I had a reputation—earned, maybe—for being reckless. But there were some things I was just not willing to risk.

Vincent now looked past us, peered through the open door into the Nightborn palace. Even across such distance, I sensed a potent, sad longing. I wondered how much of it he could see, peering through from the underworld.

When he spoke again, his voice was distant, almost inaudible. “You have only one chance. We cannot waste it.”

I stepped closer to the mirror, leaning over the basin, so I was staring right into his eyes.

“This is Oraya’s home,” I said. “Oraya’s kingdom. I need to be able to trust you, because I can’t gamble with her life.”

A pained wince flickered over Vincent’s face.

“Nor can I,” he murmured. “It is far too precious.”

And with the next wave of mist, he was gone.