Page 91 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

THE GOD OF DEATH

T he god no longer grew tired or hungry. Time was a mere suggestion, stretching out before him in limitless possibility, and yet, no possibility at all, because what was left to care about?

He went to visit what remained of his predecessor’s kingdom—not the vampire lands that Nyaxia lorded over, but the underworld she had long abandoned. Nyaxia did not want to come.

“I do not venture there,” she told him.

“Why?” he had asked.

Her eyes darkened.

“Too many ghosts,” she said, and turned away.

Now, he wandered through the desolate plains of the underworld.

It was in terrible disarray. The levels of the Descent had collapsed, merging into one another.

The underworld bled out into the land of the living.

Invasive beasts feasted upon the souls of the dead who inhabited it and the guardians who had once protected it. Everything, ruin.

He walked through it all, impassive, feeling nothing—even though a wound in his chest, a wound where something used to be, cried out in fury. It was easy to ignore.

Eventually, after much wandering, he came to a field.

A broken arch stood at the center of it.

Once, it had been blanketed with flowers—poppies, maybe.

Now, the flowers had turned black and the grass gray.

The withered husks swayed as the breeze hacked up puffs of ash and dust, covering it all with a ghostly white cast.

He stepped through the field.

{It was once so grand,} the eye said, disgusted.

And indeed, the god could still glimpse what it had been—what it had been meant to be. A faint scent of cinnamon rolled over him. The memory of sitting among these flowers, beside a soul who felt like sunlight, lingered just out of reach.

He knelt in the field and, using the edge of the axe that held the eye, he cut free a single dust-coated flower. Its petals were black, tinged gray and shriveled at the edges.

He observed this, then, for reasons even he did not quite understand, he placed the blossom over the eye in his blade.

The petals quivered, then blossomed back into life. Bright red dripped over them as if with a fresh infusion of blood. The withered leaves opened, rejoicing in deep green.

He smiled faintly, then placed the poppy back in the field, letting it take root once more.

He took peace in this brief satisfaction, and then wandered away again.