Page 87 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

M y light, what is the difference between us?”

I was ten years old, sitting in the special chambers I was given for when Atroxus visited me. A room of gold and finery and gifts—me among them.

He laughed in that way he often did when I’d done something charming, which always made me happy.

“I am a god,” he said. “You are a mortal.”

“But what does that mean?”

“Surely you know, little one, what a god is.”

“Of course I do. But?.?.?.”

I splayed my hand out, arranging it over his. Mine was small and unremarkable, brown skin flat and smooth. His was much larger, glowing with divine light and gleaming gold with the strength of the sun.

All that beauty. All that power. Just in a hand.

“But what does it feel like?” I asked.

“I know no other existence, a’mara. I imagine that it is very different from that of a human.”

“How?”

His effervescent gaze lifted to the window, gazing past the horizon. It was rare that I witnessed Atroxus looking thoughtful —which made sense, I supposed. Why would a being who existed in constant certainty ever have a need to think?

“I experience all things at once,” he said.

“As I am here with you, so too am I in the sky, in the sun, in the arc of the day across the horizon. I have seen the beginning of this world and one day I shall see the end of it. All in between is merely the rise and fall of fates, like leaves budding and falling upon the branches of a tree.”

This answer confused me. But I didn’t say so. Atroxus was now staring right through me, as if I’d outstayed his interest. I looked out at the forest below, and I thought of how inconsequential the leaves must feel. Pretty enough, but merely one of millions.

Later, I’d ask Saescha about this as she braided my hair. I didn’t understand. If a god could see so much, how could they possibly care about every mortal soul? How could each follower truly mean something to them?

“You think too much,” she said. “I think what he said was quite beautiful, wasn’t it? Imagine being a part of something so grand.”

She gestured to the sea of green sprawling out toward the Vostis shore, gleaming under the searing glow of sunset.

It was undeniably beautiful. Still, I was uncertain.

“But how can he save us if that’s all we are to him?”

Saescha stroked my hair and rested her chin on the top of my head. “The real gift,” she said, “is that he gives us the means to save ourselves, Mische.”

I had failed.

I had failed so catastrophically.

I was falling, and falling, and falling, consciousness slipping in and out of my reach. I reached out frantically for something, anything, to hold on to, only to find misty nothingness.

Until—

A hand grabbed mine.

It was slender, female. Then another joined it—male, calloused. A small, delicate one, like a child’s. Another, with pointed, painted fingernails and knobby knuckles. They pulled me up, up, up.

My back hit solid ground.

I opened my eyes. Above me was a red sky marked with vicious black cracks, stretching from horizon to horizon.

Rivers of blood twisted across the misty sky.

Once, they had been elegant swirls. Now, they were broken, their paths shattered and interrupted by sputtering waterfalls.

Souleaters plummeted across the dark, their bodies twisted and deformed, colliding in vicious fights.

Silent streaks of lightning cascaded across my vision, leaving smoking scars in their wake.

The distant echo of another monument falling shook the earth like thunder.

I knew right away where I was. My body felt it, too, as the final dregs of life drained away.

I lay there, staring at the sky.

Staring at what had become of the underworld.

Tears blurred my vision.

It was over.

It was all over.

I rarely allowed myself to think like that. Rarely allowed myself to feel that terrible emotion: hopelessness. But now, I couldn’t find anything else.

I blinked, and saw the House of Night falling, saw Vostis going up in flames, saw a beach full of corpses and blood beneath the ink-black sky that I had created. I lifted my hand in front of my face and saw my flesh dissolving.

“Get up.”

The voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. Everything felt far away.

I closed my eyes. Opened them.

Vincent leaned over me. His form was faint, the outlines of the broken underworld above visible through his body.

“Get up,” he repeated.

I sat up. But I felt as if the life was draining from my skin, rooting me to the ground.

The only thing I could think to say was, “It’s over, Vincent. It’s—it’s over.”

“It is not over,” he snapped. “Your lover stopped the immediate collapse of the underworld. And he stopped the immediate end of the House of Night. But it’s only a matter of time before the threats resurface again.

And—” He gestured to the broken landscape, barely visible in the desolate fog.

“Only a matter of time before the underworld dies a slower death. There is still work to be done.”

In the mists, I saw that moment:

Asar turning away. Asar’s empty stare.

He had ascended and in doing so, he had dragged us back from imminent destruction.

But it had destroyed him. Not his body, but him . That precious heart who had so treasured the underworld. Who had heard the calls of a million invisible souls.

The pain was unbearable. My own heart felt as if it would crack open. I pressed my hand to my chest, as if to hold the pieces together.

“He’s gone,” I whispered.

And it was only when I said those words aloud that I really felt them, deep in my soul. The absence of him, like an organ had been ripped from my body.

We had created a god, just as we had intended to. And though it had saved us, it had also damned us.

But I wasn’t thinking about any of that.

I was thinking about the love of my life, and that heart I had so treasured falling into the sea.

What had I done? How could I have let this happen?

I pressed my palms to my eyes. I really did try not to cry. But the tears came anyway.

Vincent watched me.

“This is pathetic,” he hissed.

Pathetic. He wasn’t wrong. I knew it, too. But the word slid between my ribs and twisted.

I whirled to him, furious. “Why are you here?” I snapped. “Go turn me over to Nyaxia. See if maybe she’ll reward you with your kingdom. That’s what you really wanted, isn’t it? Fine. Take it.”

A scoff. “Missionaries. So self-righteous.”

He lowered himself slowly, until he was at eye level. His stare pierced me, the silver gleaming even as the rest of him threatened to fade away.

“Do you think I don’t know what this is like?

To lose the—” His voice caught. “The greatest love you’ve ever known?

I do know this. And it was the fault of my own mistakes.

No one else’s. No, Mische Iliae. I’m not here to earn Nyaxia’s favor.

I am here because someone I once loved very much believed in the power of fate.

The power of even the most inconsequential person to change it.

Her goddess sent me to you, not my own. And I know that there is nothing I can ever do to right the terrible ways I wronged her.

Not in life, and certainly not in death. But .”

He leaned closer, fury burning in the cold ice of his stare.

“Her daughter, our daughter, is up there still, at the mercy of this game of gods. I will not allow her to suffer the consequences of it. And I do not care if the goddess-damned underworld collapses around me, but I will not allow it to take her with it. I didn’t protect either of them in life.

Not the way I should have. But I will be damned if I don’t protect them now. So get up .”

I stared at him, a bittersweet pang in my chest.

I had watched Oraya claw her way from the darkest, most painful depths of grief in the wake of Vincent’s death. I had seen the way his lies had destroyed her. And as her friend, I had hated him for it.

Even now, I still did.

But it also reminded me of an older version of myself. How many times had I said that anyone could be saved? That anyone could choose a better path forward, no matter how dark their past was?

None of it would erase the things he had done. But at least he was choosing a better future. Even if he was doing it after death had already taken him.

I stood shakily. The faintest hint of an almost-smile flitted across Vincent’s face. Still, I sagged. My body, weak as it was, swayed. A frigid gust of wind cut right through me, and Vincent nearly faded away.

I opened my mouth, and I’m sure he was hoping for some bold declaration, some confident affirmation. But the only thing I could choke out was, “How? What can I do? I’m just a?—”

“You are no wraith,” he said. “Look where you are.”

He gestured to the ground. And it was only now, when I looked closely, that I recognized it. It all looked so different, with the underworld collapsing like this. But at my feet, scattered by the wind, were ashes. Golden ashes.

We were in the Sanctum of Soul—or what it had once been. Standing in the death place of a god. Standing where I had died, too.

“You slayed a god,” Vincent said. “And you hold a piece of Alarus’s power within you, just as your lover did.”

“A tiny, stolen piece,” I said. “I don’t have his blood.”

“Blood.” He scoffed. “What do you think gave your lover the best of his power? A drop of a god’s lineage, diluted by a dozen generations?

You found his crown, his eye, his heart.

How do you think you brought yourself closer to life?

Did you think Asar did that? No. You were the one who wielded the eye of Alarus.

You climbed out of Srana’s forge, remade. You. ”

He gestured out into the soupy mists.

“The underworld is not the territory of the gods,” he said. “It is the kingdom of the dead. And the dead have chosen you.”

The figures emerged, barely more than shimmering silhouettes in the silver fog, every step slow and deliberate—as if they had to fight for each one, to be here.

My eyes burned with unshed tears.

Esme, hand over the wound in her chest. A vampire man with a streak of white in his hair and flower petals in his pockets.

Ophelia, more whole than I had ever seen her.

Eomin, mouth still twisted in that familiar, boyish smile.

Countless others, melting into the soupy fog behind them—but I recognized every one of them.

Every lost soul I helped Asar free in the halls of death.

Every lost soul I helped lead to comfort in my human years.

The hands that had caught me. The hands that had guided me here.

“I consider myself a practical man,” Vincent said.

“I won’t pretend that I believed much of it, in life.

All this talk of fate. But even I know that there is power in this place.

The kingdom that Alarus built. It does not forget.

And it has chosen you.” He turned his moon-silver eyes to me.

He was barely visible, now, just faint outlines that wavered with every gust of wind.

“You are not merely here to lift up someone else’s fate.

It is yours. So take it. Take it and go. ”

The dead huddled together, then extended their hands, an offering in their cupped palms.

My heart twisted.

A sword. Asar’s sword—no, my sword. I had lost it when I fell into Srana’s forge.

Yet, it looked different now. The broken blade glistened as if freshly polished, illuminated with a sunless glow.

The leaves on the intricate hand guard quivered as if they were alive.

And the hilt?.?.?.?the hilt had changed.

Now it bore poppy petals, and outstretched wings that looked as if they were aflame. A phoenix.

The dead pressed the hilt into my outstretched hands. Then, wordlessly, they melted into the mist, swept away with the fading embers of the underworld.

And my skin, where they had touched it, was now marked with streaks of red. Twisted, organic strokes like lightning, and an eye on the back of my hand.

An Heir Mark. The twin to Asar’s.

I stared down at the blade, at the Mark, mouth dry. My hand slowly closed around the hilt.

“What do I do with this?” I asked.

Even as I dreaded the response.

“It is your blade, to do with as you choose.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Nothing remains of your lover. You already slayed a god once. You could do so again. Take his divinity for yourself, and wield it to better ends.”

I flinched, like I’d just been struck. I shook my head hard. “No.”

Vincent barely clung to his physical form. Still, he looked at me with such genuine pity.

“A queen must make difficult choices,” he said. “But no one can carve this path but you. You are the one with the power of Alarus. Listen to what it tells you.”

A million questions lingered at the tip of my tongue. But another gust of wind nearly snatched Vincent away. “We fade, as the underworld does,” he said, nearly inaudible now. “I cannot stay.”

He began to turn. Then stopped and looked back at me one last time.

“She knows, I hope. How much I love her. I know that in life, it was not enough. And I know that it isn’t in death, either. But it is all I can?—”

A howl of wind. The ash of a dead god scattered across the desolate ruins of the Descent.

And Vincent was gone.

I was alone.

You are not alone, the underworld whispered. You are home.

Once, those words, hummed by death itself, might have seemed like a threat.

But I clutched that sword in one hand, and pressed the other to my chest, right over my heart.

It took me a moment to feel it beating—slowly, as if it was still reawakening.

Human and vampire. Alive and dead. Imperfect, just like the scarred hand that I held over it.

I heard Asar’s voice, as he had whispered in my ear:

We can be imperfect together.

My thumb pressed to the phoenix on the blade’s hilt.

Vincent had been right. All I had to do was listen.

I sheathed the sword at my hip. I closed my eyes.

I listened to the underworld, and I let it guide me.