Page 79 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

T he air smelled like the ocean. Clean and salty. Not like Obitraes’s brackish shores.

I drew in an inhale. Damp soil. Hot stone. Incense. A bell rang in the distance, four mournful, familiar notes that summoned a wave of old memories.

It felt so real for a dream.

I forced my eyes open.

My limbs were splayed. Manacles encircled my wrists and ankles.

I was chained up against a smooth stone wall.

Before me was a hill leading down to the ocean.

The sea was silver beneath the moonlight.

I was surrounded by clay walls that rose from the forest in eternal, majestic watch.

The trees were now bare and withered, but I knew that once, this jungle had been so lush it blanketed the world in green all the way to the horizon.

Just as I knew that under a summer sunrise, this entire building looked like it was on fire.

I was in Vostis. At the Citadel of the Destined Dawn.

I blinked. My head throbbed.

It was a dream. An illusion. Surely. It had to be.

I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until someone said, “It is not a dream.”

The Sentinel’s voice was quieter than I’d ever heard it. It almost sounded human.

They stood before me, the tip of their sword pressed to the stone floor, their golden gauntlet-clad hands folded over the hilt, white robes falling in a waterfall down their body.

Behind them loomed a statue of Atroxus, standing tall, robed and bare-chested, his hands out to present the dawn.

At sunrise, the light would fall just right to cast a glowing orb through the stained glass window into his hands.

At sunset, another window and a set of mirrors would cast the blood-red light over his crown.

For a moment, the Sentinel looked downright majestic there, framed against him. They were a soldier of Shiket, not Atroxus—but the robes, the gold, the commitment to justice were all so similar.

We were in the main temple of the Citadel, where priests would meet to pray or for holy festivals—or divine punishments. Two balconies wrapped around the room, looking down on the stage. Humans stood shoulder-to-shoulder, looking down at me with curious, hateful eyes.

Behind the Sentinel were three human acolytes, all wearing long white robes and gold armor on their arms and shoulders.

They were young, and, judging by the sweet scent of their rushing blood, very nervous.

The man looked to be, at most, in his early twenties, while the two women with him appeared to be older teenagers.

The man had a sun tattooed on the back of his hand.

A symbol of Atroxus.

A convert, then? Egrette had told Asar that Shiket had taken over most of Atroxus’s followers. Maybe she had promised them justice for their fallen god.

“I—” My mouth was dry. My mind was muddy. I couldn’t think. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Silvery smoke rolling from my skin—death trying to pull me back.

I didn’t have time.

“I need to go back,” I choked out. The only words I had. “I need to go back.”

The Sentinel cocked their head. “Why?”

They asked it like they actually wanted to know.

“I can’t leave them. I need to go back. Please. I know you fight for justice. But there are innocents there, too.”

The words just poured out of me, clumsy, unpracticed. I sounded pathetic. I knew they would get me nowhere.

“A loyal fallen one,” they said bitterly. “So many years of corruption, and this is where you find loyalty in your heart? A gift reserved only for your tainted kin, it seems.”

In their mask, I saw the shame of my greatest betrayals. Leading Eomin to Obitraes’s shores. Sinking my teeth into Saescha’s throat. Giving her wraith my wordless apology, before I damned her yet again by driving that arrow into Atroxus’s throat.

“Where was your loyalty then?” they snarled. “Where was your loyalty when it was called upon by those who needed it most, Mische Iliae? Nowhere to be seen. Perhaps lost in your lust for the sin of your new existence.”

With a sudden graceful flurry of their robes, they raised their sword, stalking closer. I cringed. But then, just as smoothly, they lowered their weapon and gestured to the dais.

“Now, at last, you will be saved. Here, in the place where you had once sworn your soul to the White Pantheon.”

Saved. I knew what that meant. I’d seen it countless times in this very room—vampires hung up to die slowly by the sunrise, or stabbed through the heart as their blood spilled over Atroxus’s sigils etched into the floor.

But why? Why would a Sentinel of Shiket bother bringing me all the way?—

A violent shudder racked my body.

An eerie, terrible sensation yanked away my attention to the horizon.

I looked past the Sentinel and their guards—to the sea and the night sky.

The water churned. What had been smooth silver minutes ago was now interrupted with choppy streaks of foam.

Flecks of silver, like suspended fragments of lightning, dotted the sky.

I knew this feeling.

A god’s attention.

I heard Gideon’s words again:

Farnelle.

I pieced it together with rising dread.

The House of Night was the distraction.

The House of Night was Nyaxia’s sacrificial lamb. I remembered what Acaeja had told Oraya when she forged her Coriatis bond with Raihn:

One day, Nyaxia will bring forth a great reckoning.

Gods were petty. Gods did not forget.

But there had been another half to Asar’s mission in Farnelle. The real battle, when the House of Shadow had swept in with a bloody victory over their unprepared adversaries.

Here. Vostis. The battle that deserved Nyaxia’s real attention. The opportunity to oversee the bloodbath of her enemies.

Horror spilled over me. I looked at the people around me with fresh eyes. The spectators on the balcony, staring down at me. Children. Elderly. The weakest among this sect. Everyone who had been deemed unfit to go on Shiket’s warpath. Even the soldiers who stood before me were practically children.

“She’s coming,” I blurted out. “Nyaxia is coming. You have to go.” I looked up to the audience who watched, rapt, unmoving. This time, I cried in Vostin, “You have to go, Nyaxia is coming!”

They whispered amongst themselves, confused—more by my use of Vostin than what I actually had said. Why would they believe me? To them, I was just a fallen one. A monster.

The Sentinel scoffed. “Your threats mean nothing here.”

“It’s not a threat. It’s a warning. Nyaxia is coming now .”

They would never believe me. But even if they had, my warning would have come too late.

The Shadowborn were masters of illusion. I knew this, but I had never seen it in action at such an incredible scale. How thousands of vampires could hide themselves from human senses, waiting for the perfect opening to reveal their presence.

I had been a vampire for so long that I’d forgotten what it was like to see them as humans did. As monsters in the night. Beasts at the door.

Even now, I found them terrifying.

The Shadowborn understood the value of surprise.

The Sentinel sensed it first. They hesitated. Turned, slowly, peering out the windows into the night.

The veil of the illusion lifted, and suddenly, they were everywhere.

The world plunged into darkness.