Page 81 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

I ’d heard it was a common Shadowborn tactic to disorient their target at the start of a battle.

But words couldn’t describe just how well it worked in person.

A blanket of darkness surged through the Citadel, smothering sight and sound in a suffocating wave of nothingness. Even I couldn’t penetrate it.

When it fell away, the screams rose up over Vostis like wildfire smoke.

The vampires were everywhere. Hundreds? Thousands?

Shadowborn, but were there Bloodborn, too?

I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. They had flooded the Citadel, running through the balconies.

A cascade of blue-white explosions rang out through the forest, and I watched the distant outer buildings of the Citadel go up in billowing plumes of Nightfire.

On the balconies above, the spectators screamed and trampled each other in desperate bids for escape.

Judging by the blood already spilling in waterfalls over the railings, it wouldn’t work.

Everything had devolved into chaos.

I pulled helplessly against my restraints, only to hiss at the burning sensation. I had to get out of here. Now .

The Sentinel had gone in the wave of darkness.

Two of my guards had now bolted, too, leaving behind only one of the teenage girls.

She spun around in a panic. A hundred images rushed through her mind, so loud, so unguarded.

She was a recent convert. Not even a true acolyte.

Someone who had only come here because she had believed it was safe.

Such a cruel twist of fate.

“You,” I commanded. “Let me out.”

Compulsion boomed through my voice. Let me out, out, out.

The girl was so terrified that she could barely move. But the force of my command jerked her toward me. A moment later, I slid to the ground. The manacles still adorned my wrists, but the chains had been released.

The girl’s eyes widened, and she leapt backward, horrified by her own actions. She pointed her sword at me.

“Stop, b-b-beast. I’m—I’m warning?—”

A horrific scream—the scream of a child—cut through her words.

Here were hundreds of innocent humans, in the home that had once been mine, locked up like rats to be hunted.

I looked up at the trees and thought of the purging of the firefinches, all those golden bodies hitting the ground one by one.

The screams drew closer. Another plume of smoke pumped through the room.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do . For a terrible moment, uncertainty paralyzed me.

I could not stop an army of Shadowborn. I could not stop divine war.

But right now, I decided, I could save someone.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said to the girl in Vostin. “Tell me your name.”

Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.

Her face went blank. My compulsion temporarily dulled her panic.

“Kyrene,” she whispered.

Her blade trembled wildly. She had clearly never held one before.

“I am not going to hurt you, Kyrene,” I repeated slowly. “Alright? I am going to help you. Give me that sword.”

Give me. Give me. Give me.

She did as I commanded, handing me one of her comrade’s weapons, discarded in their panic.

“Hold it like this.” I demonstrated. “And if they come for you, you go for the heart.” I pressed my hand to my sternum. “Right here. Really, really hard.”

Gods, the poor thing was so afraid she could barely think. But she swallowed hard and attempted to adjust her grip. “Like this?”

It was still bad.

“Good,” I lied.

Then I took in the scene before us. The tumult unfolding in the balconies and on the paths through the forest below. If we were going to make it out of the Citadel alive, we needed to go now, and quickly.

“Let’s go, Kyrene,” I said. “We are going to get out of here.”

There was so much blood on the floors that every step threatened to slip beneath me.

I felt like I was in that terrible first night of the Kejari all over again.

The sounds of carnage were sickening. Some believed that the Shadowborn were the most elegant of the vampires, but the truth was, we were all animals.

Presented with enough hunger and enough blood, we slipped into a frenzy that stripped away all veneer of civility.

Our best hope of escape was to make it to the back of the Citadel, which ran right up against the beach.

Long before my birth, the acolytes of the Destined Dawn had dug tunnels beneath the building that ran into the nearby villages—a security measure in wartime, so that villagers and soldiers could pass between the civilian homes and the fortress without exposure.

I prayed that the Shadowborn weren’t aware of them—at least, not yet.

The downside of this plan was that we would need to make it across nearly the entire length of the Citadel.

Kyrene was shaking with terror, but she was brave.

She led the way through the hallways I had forgotten how to navigate.

The Citadel looked so different, and yet, so much was the same.

With every twist of a staircase or a familiar, faded tapestry, the memories of my past here pieced back together.

The Citadel was teeming with vampires. I pushed Kyrene against a wall when we nearly ran straight into one gutting a priest—a blond teenage boy who reminded me so much of Eomin.

The vampire had ripped out the boy’s throat and barely even lapped up the blood before he was distracted by another screaming, wounded girl, who was trying frantically to crawl away.

“We have to help them,” Kyrene squeaked out, ready to dive out after them. But against every instinct, I held her back.

“There’s too many,” I hissed.

“I can’t just listen to them?—”

Around the corner, the girl’s voice rose to a frantic, terrified shriek and then gurgled to silence. Kyrene’s eyes welled with tears. Her arm trembled violently in my grasp.

When her gaze flicked back to me, it struck me just how much more vivid human emotions were than vampires’. I realized that Kyrene was no longer shaking in fear. She was shaking in rage.

I was, too, by the end. We slipped through hall after hall, terror after terror.

The carnage was unrelenting. The vampires were not discerning.

They killed everyone. Ripped off limbs. Discarded heads.

They couldn’t be so careless with their own supply of Obitraen humans, who were disrespected but at least considered citizens, with a purpose—if one killed all the humans in Obitraes, none would be left for feeding.

It had been centuries since vampires had been allowed to be so freely bloodthirsty at such a bountiful buffet of prey.

At last, when we turned one final corner, Kyrene breathed a shaky sigh of relief. The door ahead would lead outside, to the spiraling staircase that would take us down to the tunnels. A straight run to freedom.

Kyrene dove down the hall and threw herself against the door. She grabbed the handle and pulled.

And pulled.

And pulled.

Her hope soured to agonizing dread.

The door did not open.

I turned to the windows, looking out over the beach. My heart sank.

From here, I could see the other wings of the Citadel curving against the shore.

Stone painted with drips of blood. Windows bright with plumes of Nightfire or dark with the toxic smoke of Shadowborn creations.

At the top of the eastern tower, a figure hurled themselves from the window, choosing death by sharp rocks over death by sharp teeth.

There was no part of the Citadel that hadn’t been overtaken. The vampires already had complete control of the compound.

This was not only a declaration of war, but a claim of resources. Knowledge. Weaponry. Magical artifacts. Humans—not just as game, but as tools. Magic wielders of the White Pantheon to be taken back to Obitraes and leveraged for their skills. Food to be harvested. Offerings to be made to Nyaxia.

The vampires would not cede any of that.

The doors had been locked all along.

The humans here were never going to make it out alive. Not Kyrene, and not the hundreds of other innocents in this building.

Kyrene pounded against the door, now in wild panic.

Desperate, she grabbed the amulet on her throat—the sigil of Shiket, shiny and new, never used.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered under her breath.

“I’m loyal now. Please. I beg protection from the lady of justice.

I beg protection of Shiket. I offer my soul.

Take it, please, take it, and save them, please, please, please?. .?.”

I looked nothing like this girl, but I saw myself in her. Was this what I had sounded like, I wondered, when I had traveled to Obitraes and been so certain that Atroxus would protect me? Faith could be such a beautiful thing. It had saved me, once. Perhaps it had saved Kyrene once, too.

I hated that right now, I pitied her for it.

No one is coming for you. No one is coming for any of you.

I grabbed her shoulders and spun her to me. “You need to save yourself. Do you understand? Save yourself?—”

I smelled it too late. That acrid, venomous bite. Nightfire explosives.

The smoke and light and darkness burst through the air, and then the floor was gone beneath me, and Kyrene’s fragile human arm was ripped from my grasp.

A force had me flying through the windows.

And I was falling, and falling, and falling.