Page 76 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

I t’s time.

The halls of the Nightborn castle seemed to thrum with those words.

It’s time.

Vale came to Raihn and Oraya’s private meeting room. Oraya and Lilith led us down the halls of their royal wing, Asar trailing slightly behind me as he flipped through his notes.

I heard their voices echoing as we approached. “Took you long enough to get here, didn’t it?” Raihn was saying, audibly annoyed.

“Apologies,” Vale said. “Like I told you. I was held up.”

We filed into the room. Vale sat in an armchair, wearing his Nightborn military uniform of dark purple. His dark hair was unbound over his shoulders. Something—though I could not place what—seemed immediately odd about his appearance.

Lilith paused at the door, brow furrowed, as if she’d just misplaced something but wasn’t sure what. Vale glanced at her and didn’t move.

“At least you’re here now,” Oraya said. “You have it?”

Vale smiled. “I have it.”

He held up a small glass tube of shimmering liquid. The vial was barely even a quarter full. Yet, at the sight of it, every hair on my arms stood upright. Everything in the room seemed to bend toward it.

A headache pushed into the back of my skull and twisted.

Vale rolled the glass between his fingers, gazing at it with a lover’s longing.

“It really is beautiful, isn’t it?” he murmured. “The kind of power that could summon gods.”

Asar entered the room behind me and stopped short.

“What are you doing here?”

The raw horror in his voice was ice water down my spine. I whirled around. He was standing in the door, rigid, a bright plume of light surging from his left eye.

“What do you mean?” Raihn said, confused. “This is?.?.?.”

But he trailed off. Frowned, like he’d forgotten what he was saying.

My headache grew suddenly unbearable.

Asar said, “If you touch them?—”

“What will you do, Asar? Tell me. I’d love to hear.”

Vale smiled. It was such a smooth, smug expression. Different from any expression I had ever seen Vale wear before, but it looked like one I’d once seen on someone else. I just couldn’t place?—

And then, all at once, I saw it.

The truth hit me. The haze cleared. My mind broke through the illusion.

The man before us wasn’t Vale at all.