Page 72 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

Behind me, Oraya let out a bloodthirsty roar. A blur of dark red smeared at the edge of my vision. CRASH, as Raihn went careening into the marble pillar.

It was only now, my focus so singularly narrowed to the spell I was attempting to weave, that I realized all the Nightborn guards had fallen.

Luce dove out from behind Mische, snarling and roaring the battle cry of a much bigger beast, and the souleater—the not-souleater—smacked her away as if she was nothing.

It took every shred of my self-control not to drop what I was doing and run to her.

Almost there, Dawndrinker, I said to Mische.

She began her last glyph.

The beast had run out of distractions. Now, a cold shadow fell over us.

I could feel its presence, even though I couldn’t look up.

“Shit,” Mische whispered under her breath, even as she didn’t stop painting. “Shit, shit, shit.”

The creature’s warpath stilled, and it stared down at us, as if we were too interesting to bat aside as it had a dozen Nightborn warriors.

Slowly,

Slowly,

Slowly, it lowered itself, its grotesque face staring into ours.

The wave of voices rolled over us.

Help me ? —

It hurts ? —

I don’t understand ? —

What’s happening ? —

—not supposed to be here ? —

I had looked into the mouth of a souleater many times before, and even so, staring into the face of pure nothingness never grew any less unnerving.

But this was not a souleater. It was so much worse.

The creature’s mouth opened, and opened, and opened, and within it, a morass of souls wriggled and writhed.

Hundreds of screams, from hundreds of fractured souls, partially digested, stitched together in ways that did not make sense—all of them begging for mercy.

And from within that morass, a single face appeared. A small hand reached out. An echo of a fragmented memory reverberated through us.

—name is Celie ? —

—what a pretty name ? —

—lead you to safety ? —

—you’re safe, you’re safe, you’re ? —

Mische’s horror was sharp and quick. Mine was the slow rising of a cursed dawn.

The little girl was barely recognizable. Her face was distorted, features rearranged. Her body was entangled with countless others. But that little hand still reached for us, just as it had out in the deadlands.

I had known. I had known she could follow us.

I had led this thing to us. Carved the path that it followed.

Mische’s wide, horrified eyes snapped to me.

Cut her out, she demanded. We have to get her out.

But there was no way to get her out. She was inextricably bound into the fabric of the monster she had been made.

I shook my head. Grief spasmed across Mische’s face.

No, she said.

The beast opened its mouth and drew in a great gasp. I felt my soul clinging to the inside of my bones to avoid getting sucked right up with it.

“Now, Mische!” I roared, and thrust all my remaining strength into the spell we had woven.

I felt her magic rise up to meet mine, another half of the whole, tainted with the agony of her grief.

And together, we pulled, pulled, pulled ?—

The open wound stitched closed.

The creature lurched, spasmed, reared back, caught in between the closing jaws of the door we’d wrenched back together. It tried to escape it, but I reached out with what little magic I had left and tethered it to us, sucking it back in.

The last thing I heard was a little voice:

—name is Celie ? —

—safe now ? —

A deafening wail, as the door slammed closed.

And then silence.

I sank to the ground, pressing my forehead to the blood-slicked tile. Then I dragged myself upright again, crawling to Mische, who was lying in a heap. She stared down into the fissure, now empty.

The beast was gone.

But I could feel the underworld groaning beneath us. I could feel the splinters jutting up. This wasn’t just one crack. The collapse had been set in motion.

The Nightborn landed heavily beside us, one after the other. Oraya pressed her palms to her knees. “Holy fucking hell,” Raihn ground out.

The world was spinning. Or maybe it just felt like that because the scale of the destruction that surrounded us was so severe. The ballroom had collapsed. The cracks, which still pulsed with dark purple shadow, ran all the way out the castle doors—out into the gardens, and then the city beyond.

I cursed at that sight.

Sivrinaj was split in two. The rifts struck like lightning down the hill to the city, plumes of purple and black gasping from between pristine domes of smooth white, then gathering in the blocky distant shapes of the human districts on the outskirts of the city.

One ornate, tall building groaned in the aftermath of its destruction, having been split straight down the center, shadows puffing from the opening like a grotesque chimney.

Echoes of distant screams ricocheted between buildings.

For a few long seconds, we were silent, as the horror of what we were seeing dawned on us. Mische’s eyes met mine, and though she didn’t speak, I heard her: We did this.

But there was no time to wallow. Oraya spread her wings again, shouting to the slew of Nightborn guards who had been alerted by the battle. “Get to the city,” she commanded. “Find whatever else is out there.”

I pushed to my feet, grabbing my sword in one hand and helping Mische up with the other.

“We can fix it,” she blurted out.

The note of desperation in her voice twisted in my heart. After everything, she still so badly wanted it to be true.

I started to move, then stopped mid-step. A puff of shimmering smoke blurred my eyesight, and my gaze trailed down.

I took Mische’s hand and lifted it between us.

It was?.?.?.?smoking. Puffs of dusky light peeled from it, trailing from her like wet paint in rain.

{She belongs to the underworld,} the eye said. {And the underworld is falling, now.}

My heart clenched.

Enough, I snapped at it.

{I speak only the truth,} the eye said simply, before at last falling silent.

I pulled Mische’s hand tight against mine. She felt solid, still. But she smelled like death.

I looked out over the city of Sivrinaj, broken with the infected wounds of the underworld bubbling up to the surface.

I could have sworn I heard it: a million invisible souls, calling out for someone.

Someone who had already failed them.

The next hours passed in a bloodstained smear.

There had been nearly half a dozen souleaters that had crawled through the streets of Sivrinaj.

Though none of them were quite as twistedly deformed as the creature that had come up in the castle, they still managed to rip destruction through the city and claim several dozen casualties by the time we managed to put them down.

Mische and I closed the fissures the best we could, but I could feel the underworld groaning and straining against the tenuous spell work. It would not last for long.

At the last of the rifts, I leaned against a broken beam in exhaustion, pressing my forehead to the scorched wood and closing my eyes.

—help us ? —

—safe here ? —

—you promised ? —

“—it hold?”

I only caught the edge of Raihn’s question. I opened my eyes.

“How long will it hold?” he repeated.

Behind him, Oraya picked through the rubble with Mische, putting out the last of the fires.

I looked at the city. The crack. The glyphs, already growing dim.

It was a tattered bandage on a severed arm.

No, worse—a bandage on a corpse. They were already damned.

I only said, “Not long enough.”

My gaze fell to Mische. Mische, whose soul was drifting from her in an elegant plume into the sky.

Not long enough.

I said, “We need to do the ritual immediately. The minute that your general returns.”

And then pray it would take us to the heart. Pray the heart would allow me to ascend. Pray ascension would allow me to fix the underworld before it fully collapsed. Pray that the underworld would let me save her.

{Gods have no need to pray,} the mask scoffed.

Raihn and Oraya exchanged a glance. Then, Oraya said to Jesmine, “Tell Vale to get his ass back here now. We’re out of time.”