Page 82 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

I hit the ground hard, tumbling down, down, and then sliding through dead vegetation and broken trees and sand. Perhaps my wraith state, closer to death, was the only thing that saved me. The fall would have killed a human.

My vision blurred, consciousness wavering in and out. I became dimly aware that I was no longer falling. I pushed myself up to see that I’d plummeted to the beach. I was surrounded with glass from the window, twinkling in the moonlight.

The carnage was overwhelming. Corpses dotted the beach. Some whole. Some not. Legs and arms, torsos, heads. The sand was soaked with blood. The sky was bright red, churning with divine rage. The vampires had overtaken this shore, too. Apparently, they had spared no resource.

It was a slaughter.

And if anything—anything—could have made this worse, it was the cracks that now snaked through the beach, into the water, letting off angry plumes of acrid smoke.

Cracks that led to the underworld, bowing beneath the weight of its impending collapse.

Even here, half a world away, there was nowhere to escape it.

The vampires and humans alike were distracted with their battles, but wraiths clawed at the openings in the earth, desperate to drag themselves closer to life.

It would get worse. If such a thing was even possible.

I choked down my fear and felt around until I found a sword clutched in a dismembered hand. I extracted it and pushed myself unsteadily to my feet.

But as soon as I straightened, someone tackled me.

I skidded across the sand, slipping my attacker’s grasp. I managed to keep hold of my weapon—managed to raise it as I turned?—

The Sentinel was diving for me.

But their mask was cracked, now. It had split right along the scratch I had etched into it in our first meeting.

And what was revealed?.?.?.

The horror made my steps falter. I barely managed to deflect their strike, sending them stumbling to the sand.

The face that stared back at me, framed by jagged gold, was barely human—the features faded, like those of a statue sanded down by time. The marks of life and humanity had been erased. She was free of freckles or scars or hair. Her eyes were blank white.

But it was her.

The sister I had damned twice over now, come to seek her revenge.

“Saescha,” I gasped.

Her mouth twisted into a sneer of rage. But even that didn’t quite look like her, the movement lopsided and stiff.

“ You did this,” she roared. “The corruption inside of you. You destroyed the god that could have saved us. You destroyed the last hope we had.”

I couldn’t move as she encroached upon me, glowing divine blade raised. Desperate, I reached for her with my magic—reached for a mind that I’d once known as well as my own.

But I found nothing but rage and pain. Nothing but a twisted, single-minded obsession with righting every wrong.

Sentinels were further from their living selves than even wraiths. They had sacrificed the basest truths of their souls to the mission of justice.

This thing in front of me was not truly Saescha. But once, it had been.

When she loomed over me, I saw flashes of my past life.

Me, running away from prayers.

Me, cutting down a dead vampire from the courtyard.

Me, sinking my teeth into Saescha’s throat, again and again and again.

Me, damning her as I thrust that arrow into Atroxus’s neck.

And it dawned on me.

All this time, I hadn’t been seeing my own memories reflected in her. I had been seeing hers. Every moment that I had failed her. Every wound I had inflicted, invisible at first, until they weren’t.

And gods, they were so, so deep. So deep she had been forced to discard her heart altogether.

She would kill me. Yet, I still couldn’t bring myself to lift the blade against her.

“Saescha,” I begged.

“That is not my name anymore,” she growled, and raised her weapon.

A flash of shadow streaked through the air, knocking her away. Luce snarled and barked, smoke billowing around her, forcing Saescha back.

Luce . The best girl.

But how? If she was here, did that mean that she had come with?—

I didn’t have time to think of it as the two of them collided in a vicious morass of gold and darkness. Luce let out a howl of pain, and I grabbed my sword.

But then, I hesitated—because could I strike Saescha, even this twisted shell of who she had once been, down a third time?

I didn’t get the chance to answer that question.

CRASH, as another explosion of Nightfire tore through the stone, right next to us. The force struck me like an open palm to a fly, sending me sprawling back. A fresh wave of screams wailed into the night, droplets of blood and gore spattering from the sky.

Consciousness slipped away.

Returned.

Water. I was in the water, now. I dragged myself to my feet, whirling around to find Luce, but all I saw was chaos and unrecognizable ruin. Another wing of the Citadel had crumbled. The sea, red with blood, lapped at my knees.

I lifted my chin to the dark sky, and suddenly, I saw myself as if through the eyes of another. Me, kneeling on a beach, surrounded by death, beneath an eternal night that I had raised.

It was an image I had seen before. I’d seen it depicted in tapestries and prophecies in the Sanctum of Secrets. I had seen it in Atroxus’s terrible visions of the future.

I choked a terrible laugh that ended in a sob.

Everything I had done was to avoid this.

But all along, it had been inevitable. It would always end here.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to wail. I wanted to let myself fall into the ocean and drown in the blood of the innocents I had, however indirectly, slaughtered.

But I wiped my tears with the back of my hand.

There was always someone who could be saved. And there was always a reason to have faith.

I felt through the water until my hand closed around the hilt of my sword. I turned back to the battle at hand.

And I kept fighting.

Through all of it, I kept fighting.