Page 83 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

M y spell had been clumsy, vicious, a machete instead of a scalpel. I landed roughly in the sand, the world tilting, my skin burning with the power of the spira. It was an invigorating pain. I welcomed it. Luce landed beside me, not wasting a second before she bolted through the chaos.

I straightened slowly, taking in the carnage with the detached observation of a god.

I had seen my fair share of bloodshed, but never before had I witnessed anything like this.

It was an indiscriminate slaughter. The House of Shadow had poured all of their resources into this battle.

The scant army left behind in the fortress didn’t stand a chance.

A thousand times bloodier than it had been when I executed this same plan, all those years ago.

{And yet,} the eye mused, {they do not know that they are already standing upon the precipice of damnation.}

Beneath the mortal world, the underworld wailed in pain. Stitch after stitch snapped. Cracks had opened across the beach, twisted wraiths crawling free. Inevitable and unescapable.

And yet, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about any of it.

Where are you?

I extended my magic across the battlefield.

Even vampire minds screamed out, unguarded, in their final moments, and humans were many times louder.

The wails of the fresh dead, still clawing for life, echoed in my skull.

I could feel their pain reverberating through the eye, up the blade, through my hand, and my rage grew, and grew, and grew.

A lightning crack split across the sky.

{She is coming,} the mask hummed in delight.

{She is angry,} the eye added.

I was angrier.

A human soldier, taking me for one of the vampire warriors, threw himself at me, and I batted him away easily.

Where are you?

With every loop through my mind, the question grew more frantic. The mask sat hot against my skin. My vision was shrouded in red. I fought through humans and vampires and wraiths alike.

Where are you, Mische? Where are you?

At last, at last, I found her.

When I saw her, the world stopped.

She was across the beach, at the edge of the water.

Nightfire consumed the forest here, enveloping her in cold blue.

Gold restraints encircled her wrists and ankles, and with my enhanced divine sight, even from here I could see the burns beneath them—from blessed metal.

The shimmering residue of her mortality rose from her broken body in plumes.

With every crack across the beach, she faded a little more.

I could feel her wounds as if they were my own. Torn skin that I had once worshipped, skin that I had ripped apart the underworld to wish back into being. Wounds made by mortal hands and divine ones, by humans and by vampires.

She looked so similar to how she had when I held her in the Descent, on the cusp of death.

{Almost gone now,} the eye said, indifferent.

Mische had sacrificed her life to save millions. To save the very vampires who now offered her up as a cruel bargaining chip.

But there she was, forcing her broken body to obey her. Fighting to protect the very same humans who had cast her out, just as she had fought to protect the vampires who had once taken everything from her.

Across all of it, across blood and steel and fire, I reached out for her. Her presence was warm against mine. I felt her pain and her grief. I felt her fury and her determination.

And even now, above all, hope.

I was awestruck by her.

Her eyes met mine through the carnage. Tears streaked her cheeks. She started to turn to me.

But before I could go to her, something sharp cracked across my back.

The impact caught me off guard. I stumbled, only barely recovering before I hit the ground. Blood sprayed from my shoulder.

My vision went gray, black, gray again.

{Traitor!} the mask roared.

I raised my blade to counter. But before I could, pain erupted through my leg, and I was pinned.

Egrette stood over me, a spear in her hand, going straight through my thigh into the ground below. Her bronze armor gleamed under the light of Nyaxia’s divinity, matching the wild sheen of her chestnut hair. Her chin and chest were covered with the bright red of human blood.

She smiled at me, blood dribbling down her chin. I thought, Our father would be so proud.

The spear should not have stopped me. I bore the mask and the eye of Alarus—I was part god. And yet, when I tried to yank it free, pain spasmed through me. Light and shadow danced around the weapon’s staff.

“You aren’t the only one with god-touched toys, brother,” Egrette said.

My eyes fell to the carvings on its hilt—the red glow at the base of the blade.

{Those,} the eye hissed, {do not belong to her.}

A vision racked through me. A girl with galaxies in her hair, slipping poppy petals into her mouth.

Petals.

The petals Elias had stolen from the Descent. Used to create a weapon that could take down a demigod—even if only temporarily.

Egrette leaned in close. Her smile became a sneer.

“I told you that you would pay for what you did to my lover and my kingdom. At least you have become quite a gift to me, in the end. I knew you would be useful for something.”

I grabbed the hilt of the spear. Shadow rolled from my skin in spasms of darkness.

“Arrogant.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. “You do not know who I am, if you think a spear with a few discarded flower petals can kill me.”

She laughed softly. “I don’t plan to kill you. What a waste of an offering that would be.”

Lightning cracks of white light arced from the horizon, splitting in two. The sky burst open. The vampires, humans, and wraiths alike stopped, chins lifting to the sky, as the devastating power of a god called to them.

{She is here,} the mask whispered.

She is here. She is here. She is here.

Nyaxia appeared in the sky, great and terrible and utterly breathtaking, triumph shining in the gleam of her eyes and razored teeth.

Egrette stood, spreading her arms wide.

“Nyaxia, Mother of Shadow, of Night, of Blood, Mother of vampires!” she cried.

“I offer you the blood of your enemies, Atroxus and Shiket of the White Pantheon. And I offer you what my brother could not. I offer you the crown of Alarus, the eye of Alarus, and what remains of your husband’s divinity.

Rightfully yours, as it has always been! ”

Another set of explosions rang out in the distance.

A fresh wave of Nightfire burst across the horizon.

A hundred or a thousand or a million other souls fell to the underworld—an underworld that could not accept them beneath the weight of its own destruction.

A fresh crack burst open across the beach.

Wailing, deformed souls cried their death rattles from within, too twisted and weak to even drag their way to the land of the living.

Nyaxia lowered herself over the sea, coolly observing the bloody offering in her favor. It was merely a start. The death had only just begun.

{Go to her,} the mask commanded.

{At last you will see what you may become,} the eye agreed.

A surge of rage pulsed through me, and with it, I ripped the spear from my leg and cast it aside. It got Nyaxia’s attention. She smiled down at me. “We meet again. You have changed so very much in so little time.”

Divinity commanded one’s full attention. It sucked the life from all else—even here, in the middle of the falling of a civilization. Nyaxia was the center of it all.

And yet.

Look at her, a voice whispered. One last time.

The voice did not belong to the eye or the mask. It belonged to my mortal heart.

I found Mische across the battlefield. Her eyes locked to mine. Dread fell over her face. I could hear her voice reaching across the carnage, screaming, No.

But I rose anyway. I turned to Nyaxia.

And when she reached for me, I went to her.