Page 85 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

THE GOD OF DEATH

T he god knelt before the goddess. Before him, a sea of carnage spread out from horizon to horizon.

The ache of divinity gnawed at the inside of his ribs, where a long-lost heart now sat.

His power pulsed from him in a great wave, like a shock across the mortal and divine worlds.

It flowed into the cracks of the underworld, halting its collapse.

And yet, it still groaned in pain.

Nyaxia’s palm pressed to his chest. She watched him carefully—perhaps searching for her husband in his face.

There was some, perhaps. Far away. Fragments of his memories floated, unmoored, in the god’s newly formed mind.

But above all, there was emptiness.

The god turned and looked out over the scene before him. Thousands of souls meeting their ultimate end; thousands of souls screaming out in agony. He could sense it rolling on and on and on, stretching into the future and the past. A thousand miles away, a kingdom of vampires fell.

Perhaps another version of this god might have been moved by this.

Perhaps another version of him might have remembered that there was something crucially important that he needed to do.

The thought nagged at him, like the call of a ghost fading away.

But the part of him that had cared about these things was gone now, thrown into the sea.

He could not recall why it had ever mattered so much.

Nyaxia stared at him for a long moment. Then looked away, masking her glimmer of disappointment.

“Very well,” she said. “Then I shall uphold my end of our deal.”

She raised her hand over the great expanse of death. When she spoke, the words were like thunderclaps.

“You have done well, my children. The White Pantheon shall never forget the blow we have inflicted upon them today. But we must be careful not to overextend ourselves in a single battle. There is still a war to fight.”

The vampires looked up from their caresses and writhing prey. Blood-drunk, at this they laughed and cheered. The vampire queen—the god had the strange sense he had known her name, once, but now, it didn’t seem to matter much at all—rose her spear in triumph, then bowed deeply.

“As you wish, Dark Mother.”

But as the other vampires left their half-dead victims behind, following the command of their goddess, one still remained.

One woman, who seemed so pathetically close to death that she was little better than the human corpses scattering the ground.

And yet, in the sea of souls, his attention kept drifting back to her.

All the others stared at Nyaxia. Not this woman. She was looking only at him.

She crawled toward him, calling a name he did not recognize.

“Remember why you are doing this,” she begged. “Please. Remember your promise.”

But the god did not remember. He did not care to. He had no connection to mortality. The suffering of mortals slipped by as inconsequential as grains of sand.

Nyaxia spread her hands before her followers.

“We hold the power of the god of death. And with his power, we will be unstoppable. We will destroy the White Pantheon. We will conquer what is ours by right—all that the White Pantheon has attempted to keep from us.” Her lips twisted into a sneer.

“And we will do it slowly, my children. So that they might feel every strike when we cut out their hearts.”

At this, there was a wild cheer.

But that woman dragged herself closer still, shaking her head. “Please, Asar. This isn’t why you did this.”

Another fleeting sense of familiarity, gone before he could pin it down.

Nyaxia took his hand.

“Come,” she said to him. “Let us save my wayward vampire kingdom from their destruction. Let Shiket see what we are capable of. And then we shall prepare for the war ahead.”

Another fissure shot along the beach, the ground crumbling as the vampires retreated.

The god stared one more time down at it. At the woman who reached for him.

But such were the concerns of mortals, and he was not one of those anymore.

He turned away.