Page 70 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

D rink,” Oraya said. “You’re not going to be helping anyone if you’re keeling over by the time we’re ready to do this thing.”

She held out a glass of blood to me. I stared at it, blinking, before taking it. It hadn’t even occurred to me to drink, and it hadn’t occurred to me that Oraya would notice.

I took a sip and ducked away to hide my face of disgust. Gods, that tasted awful . I subtly spit it back into the cup and set it down, careful not to let her see.

I craved Asar’s blood, but nothing else. Still, I didn’t need to give Oraya any reminders of how dead I was.

She took a sip from her glass—more wine than blood, a testament to her human tastes—and set it down on the desk. We were in one of the offices in Vincent’s private wing, retrieving more supplies.

We stared down at the desk, covered in books and paper.

Oraya was silent for a long, long moment. I sensed the grief roll over her like a slow fog, quiet and deep.

“They must have done some incredible things together,” she murmured.

Vincent and Alana—her mother.

“I think about it all the time,” she said. “More, now. It’s still hard for me to imagine him doing all of it. Especially with her.” Oraya’s eyes, bright silver, slipped to me. “He really told you about all of this?”

I carefully set down the book I was holding.

I’d been waiting for this. When I had first told her about Vincent, Oraya had been painfully silent. But I knew it wasn’t for lack of questions. It was because she had too many of them.

“He did.”

“And led you through the underworld.”

“I wouldn’t have made it out without him.”

She scoffed and shook her head. “What was that like? Traipsing around the underworld with the great Nightborn King Vincent?”

“It was?.?.?.?surreal. He wasn’t very good company, and he didn’t exactly seem happy to be doing it. I don’t think he likes me very much. There was a lot of?.?.?.”

I made a stoney, angry face, which made Oraya choke a laugh.

“Oh, I know that one.”

But that laugh quickly died.

“I still keep thinking about it,” she said. “I don’t know why he would do this. Especially if it meant helping you.”

Because I was Raihn’s friend. And Nightborn kings were notoriously petty. They weren’t exactly known for their selflessness.

“I don’t entirely understand it myself,” I said. “But I think—I think maybe it was just the truth. That he wants to help the House of Night.”

Oraya was silent. I knew what she was thinking. She took another sip of wine.

“What else did he say?” she asked.

I knew the real question: Did he say he was sorry?

I felt how desperately she wanted that closure. And I so wished I could give it to her.

I said nothing, and that was answer enough for her. She let out another laugh, this one a little more choked up than the last.

“So fucking pathetic,” she muttered. “I told myself that I never needed his apology. I even believe it, most of the time.”

“It’s not pathetic.”

“It’s a little pathetic. Every time I think I’m finished with it?.?.?.” She motioned to her eyes. The tears on her fingertips.

“Grief has a way of sanding down all the complicated parts of a person in the eyes of the living. It freezes them to a single moment.”

I thought of Saescha, kneeling near Atroxus. Saescha, before I sank my teeth into her throat. Saescha, beside me as I walked into hell itself—the hell that would swallow her forever.

“But the truth is that the dead are just as complicated and broken as the living,” I said. “Maybe even more so, sometimes. Vincent’s death was not going to make him the father he should have been for you in life. It just makes it easier to dream it could.”

Her expression flickered. “I know.”

“And even if he had, he’s not entitled to your forgiveness. Nothing he could do or say now erases the past.”

“No,” she agreed. “But it’s?.?.?.?it’s something, at least.”

She wiped a stray tear and collected herself. I watched her tuck her vulnerability back behind the armor of a Nightborn queen. And gods, what a queen she was.

“You have a home here, if you want it,” she said softly. “I hope you always know that.”

I looked out the window. Silver dunes rolling under the moonlight, the sky so deep it verged on purple, the twinkling lights of Sivrinaj. Wouldn’t be such a terrible view to wake up to every night.

“He could come, too, if that’s what you wanted,” she said.

“It probably would be useful to have a Shadowborn around, if things are about to get as?.?.?.?complicated as you say they are. We could give you an apartment on the palace grounds. Or a house outside of it, if you’d prefer the privacy. Dog is welcome, too, of course.”

It was an easy dream to slip into—Asar and I as members of the Nightborn court.

Luce galloping through dunes and chasing nightwolves and snuggling with us before the fire.

Asar and Lilith losing themselves in books and study for hours on end.

Raihn and I dragging Oraya and Asar off to shitty pubs.

And even when the hard times came—because the hard times would, inevitably, come—we could face them together.

But some dreams felt too sweet for reality. And this one didn’t feel quite right, even if it meant so much that Oraya wanted it at all.

I took her hand. After all this time, it still felt like a triumph when she squeezed it instead of pulling away.

“Thank you,” I said.

She gave me a smirk. “That’s a no if I’ve ever heard one.”

I laughed and opened my mouth to respond.

But before I could, I doubled over, hands over my ears.

It was more than a sound. It clawed through me from the inside out.

Someone was saying my name, and it took me a minute to realize that it was Oraya, who was leaning over me, hand on my shoulder, brow furrowed.

She wasn’t reacting to the sound at all.

“What’s wrong?” she was saying. “What happened?”

I frowned up at her, confused.

“You don’t hear?—”

The sound came again, louder, closer.

It sounded like a million screams wrapped up in one single cacophonous roar. It sounded like a distillation of eons of pain.

And then, there was a deafening shatter.

I tasted Oraya’s blood, fresh and mortal. I tasted my own, thin and weak.

The wall of windows had shattered, pelting us with countless shards of glass.

I looked up to see that the room had gone dark, all the candles snuffed out as if by a single great breath of a cruel god. I saw the dead in the shadows that poured into the room, so many of them I couldn’t make any single face out through the sea of agonized features.

Except one, flickering in and out:

Get her away! Vincent roared. Get her away ? —

The floor quaked.

I realized what was happening too late. I leapt to my feet and grabbed Oraya.

“Move!” I screamed.

The floor burst open beneath us.

And the monster that tore free put the horrors of the underworld to shame.