Page 7 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

At least, it wasn’t long by a god’s estimation. In mine, I felt every passing second. The shard against my skin held the distilled power of the sun itself—the very antithesis of my being. I felt it chew through skin layer by layer, then set in on muscle.

But I knew I was being watched. So I didn’t twitch, didn’t make a sound. I’d just shown them—gods and Sentinels alike—how easy I was to defeat. Reminded them I was nothing but a tainted mortal.

Good. Let them keep believing it.

At last, they came for me. They sent three Sentinels this time, but they were less wary than the last time. My show had worked.

I wasn’t sure where they were taking me, and I didn’t care. When they reached for my restraints, I moved.

I went for the smaller one first. Magic filled my lungs like the euphoric smoke of a Pythoraseed addict’s inhale.

Magic had always felt easy when nothing else was.

Something that I understood far better than court politics or vampire viciousness.

But now, it took on an intensity that might have been terrifying if it didn’t feel so damned good.

I used a wave of darkness to fling the first Sentinel across the room, sending its metal body crumpling against the columns. Behind me, I felt the nagging intention of its companion’s strike before they moved, seizing the fallen Sentinel’s sword as I whirled.

A crash rang out as I slipped past their blade, sending them stumbling against the wall, then smothering them out with a wave of darkness.

They huffed a curse in a human language I didn’t understand, which almost made me laugh.

Perhaps Shiket had done all she could to separate these warriors from who they had been in life, but put them in an unexpected situation, and it would still be the profanities of a life a thousand years past that came flying from their lips.

I didn’t wait for them to recover. I raced through the door into pristine marble hallways, only to nearly fling myself directly into a large, armored body.

A final Sentinel stood in the doorway, golden sword drawn. “Your rebellion ends here,” they said.

Their blade pulsed with the glow of divine light. Even from this distance, its presence burned my exposed skin. Behind me, I heard the two fallen Sentinels recovering. Seconds, and they would be here, and my one chance at escape would be gone.

I let out a long breath through gritted teeth. I pressed my hand to my chest, then raised it in surrender.

“You can’t blame a man for trying,” I muttered.

I felt the Sentinel’s ripple of satisfaction as I extended my wrists to be cuffed again.

And as soon as they were close enough, I drove the shard of the sun, hidden until this perfect moment, into the Sentinel’s throat.

The Sentinel let out a hollow scream as the sun melted through metal and whatever lay beneath it. Silver blood spattered my face. The Sentinel fell to their knees.

I yanked the shard from their not-flesh, pushed them down the opposite hall, then wound a cloak of darkness around myself and fled.

I’d done what I could to make sense of the layout of my prison, though that wasn’t saying much.

This place was even more convoluted than Morthryn.

I was convinced that it had changed since my last walk through these halls.

When I dove through the gates the Sentinels had left open, I was presented with three hallways.

I didn’t remember there being three the last time I was brought out of my cell, but I didn’t have time to second-guess myself.

I picked the left branch and ran—right next, then center, then winding around a circular hallway that I could’ve sworn was just taking me right back to where I started.

I could hear distant commotion. Above me, the white sky cracked with sudden lightning.

The mess I’d left behind had been discovered—faster than I’d hoped.

If I was lucky, they would take the location of that final body at face value and go hunting for me in the wrong direction.

Would it be enough to fool a god, though?

I’d thought long and hard about what I’d do once I got free, but the truth was, I didn’t know enough about Ysria to have anything resembling a “plan.” There would be a path to the underworld somewhere in the land of the gods, even if long abandoned.

Perhaps if I made it beyond the gates of the prison, I could figure out how to follow the tether in my heart that I’d felt at the pool. I could?—

“Asar!”

I stopped short and nearly slammed into a corner.

That voice.

Mische’s voice.

Unmistakable.

All thoughts dissolved.

I whirled around. A long, empty white hallway stood before me, silent.

“Asar! Where are you?” The note of fear in her voice had my heart leaping.

A trick. A trap.

It was what I would have done.

But Mische had killed a god. The White Pantheon had dismissed her, but perhaps they’d thought better of it and somehow dragged her back here for further punishment.

I touched my chest—the echo of the anchor that had once connected us, which I swore still, sometimes, pulsed with her distant presence.

It could be her. A sliver of a chance. A sliver of a sliver of a chance.

Foolish. Naive. I knew it, but that was never going to stop me.

I looped around the corner, and then another, following her voice. And then at last I came to an open gate leading to a narrow staircase.

At the bottom of the stairs, gold liquid lapped at a shore of ivory sand. And kneeling in it, battered and burned, was Mische.

She looked exactly as I remembered she had when they dragged me away. Her skin was covered in ash, the darkness of it obscuring the seeping burns that Atroxus’s light had left over her skin. Her hair, caramel curls, hung limp, heavy with blood, over her face. But those eyes. Those eyes.

Even as she had died, they’d looked just like I had imagined the sun.

Now, they glistened with tears. Her mouth curled into a shaky smile. “Why are you crying?”

A million unspoken words—of adoration, of apology, of love—drew tight in my chest. None of them made it to the surface.

We didn’t have time.

I threw myself down the stairs. The moment my bare feet hit the gold water, Mische began to fall, as if the sand beneath us had simply opened up.

“Asar,” she begged, reaching for me. I tried to catch her. But it was no use.

I was falling, too.