Page 96 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

MISCHE

T he dead sang me a tune I now knew so well, and I followed it over plains and mountains and rivers and forests, all dead and withered.

Eventually, when I slowly scaled the rocky paths between dried-up streams of rusted red, I pushed through a ravine to see a familiar sight. Between sheets of jagged stone and the twisted branches of blackened trees, I glimpsed something that made my heart stutter.

A flash of bronze in a familiar shape—an arched doorway, with an eye carved at its apex. Between columns, I could make out just a hint of peeling brocade wallpaper, rotting tile floor, a tattered velvet curtain flowing sadly in the breeze.

The sight interrupted the hypnotic haze of my journey. I stopped short.

It was Morthryn.

Or what little remained of its roots into the underworld. Barely a pile of ruin—barely four standing walls. And yet, when I saw it, my heart still sang out, Home.

I half slid down the rest of the rocky hill, sending pebbles pitter-pattering down with me. The dehydrated remnants of the long-dead thicket clawed at my clothing and hair. A branch hooked itself to the back of my jacket, yanking me back. I paused to disentangle myself.

A small voice hissed, urgently, “Behind you!”

My head snapped up. I caught a flash of a figure disappearing behind Morthryn’s doorframe. Then I whirled around?—

Too late.

Something—someone—slammed into me. My jacket ripped. A hand grabbed a fistful of my hair. The rocky earth slid from under our feet. My attacker and I rolled down the hill in a mass of kicking, flailing limbs.

It was only when we stopped, when my assailant straddled me and pushed me down to the dust, that I saw her:

“Saescha,” I breathed.

She had lost more of her armor since I had seen her last. Her white robes were stained with the red blood of humans, the black of mine, the silver of her own.

They were ripped, revealing her body beneath—not just the glowing godlight of her golden gauntlets and boots, but the painful, necrotic purple where they met her flesh.

And her face. Gods, her face.

The rest of her helmet was gone now. Her face was too smooth, hard and angular. Her eyes were white. She had no hair, no eyebrows. When she snarled at me, her teeth were gold.

And her throat was still ripped out, just as it had been the night that I killed her. The blood glowed bright, smearing up her chin and down her sternum. It was immortalized even in her current form—the injustice that allowed Shiket to turn her into a Sentinel.

She was no corpse. She had been given a new life, just as I had. And yet, when I looked at her this way, my heart shattered for her. She was more dead now than she had been when I found her body. So much further from the woman I’d loved.

Her face contorted in agony. There were no more words, no more grand declarations of justice. Only hatred.

This was not my sister.

This was not my sister.

She let out a wordless snarl and lunged for me, and this time, I fought back.

I pushed her off me, and we rolled down the rest of the hill in a tumbleweed of teeth and fingernails. She had lost her sword, though the scratches from her blessed gauntlets still burned my skin. And she was divinely created. She was stronger than any mortal.

But this was my home—this was my territory. The underworld offered its help to me. Writhing rivulets of shadows rose to meet my every strike and swept in to interrupt hers. The few remaining wraiths clustered around us, watching.

Saescha was weak. It didn’t take long to have her on her knees. When the underworld offered me my opening, I leapt on her, pushing her to the white dusty earth. I whipped my sword from its sheath and raised it. The broken, death-sharp blade glinted beneath the cold light.

But Saescha didn’t fight. A tear rolled down her cheek, soaking into the thirsty ground.

“What have you done?” she finally choked out. “What have you done to my sister?”

I stopped.

I stared down at the face that was so similar and so different than that of the person who had once been the most important in my life.

“You took her from me,” she wept. “She deserved justice. I was promised justice .”

My hand trembled as the realization fell over me.

Souls became Sentinels because of their desperate desire for justice, so powerful that nothing else existed anymore at all. Saescha had every reason to want hers. I had thought that she was seeking justice for her own death at my hands. For the death of Atroxus. For the death of the sun.

But Saescha had been seeking justice for me .

Just as I looked at her and saw a shell of who she once had been, she looked at me and saw a monster who had consumed her baby sister.

If I killed Saescha here, whatever remained of her soul would simply cease to exist. She would never find her peace.

She is lost, the underworld said sadly. There is nothing to offer her but a quick end.

No. No one was ever truly lost.

Thump, as the sword fell to the dust. I lifted my mask, perching it atop my head so that my face was revealed.

The dead collected around us, stepping protectively closer, waiting.

Slowly, I leaned down. I took Saescha’s face in my hands. Her skin was neither warm nor cool. It was stone-smooth, absent of all mortal imperfection. But deep beneath it, I could still sense her there. Just a tiny hint. But I would know her anywhere.

“You’re right,” I whispered. “I failed you, Saescha. You deserved so much better.”

No one had ever told her that in life—that she’d deserved better. Everyone had always acted like she was lucky to have whatever she was given. She was never the chosen one. I’d never seen it back then, and now I felt so ashamed of it.

It had always been Saescha that I’d believed in. More than the sun. More than Atroxus. She had held my most unshakable faith, and because of that, I’d never seen her vulnerabilities. Now, they were all that remained.

Her eyes, blank and white, squeezed shut. Another tear trailed down her cheek. Her hands wrapped around my wrists, the golden claws digging into my skin, but she didn’t push them away.

And she whispered, barely audible, “So did you.”

I felt her regret bubble up from deep in her soul, so far beneath the surface—almost gone. All her doubts about every decision she had made in my upbringing.

I shook my head. “You have nothing to regret.” I pressed my forehead to hers. As a child, she had smelled of the sun and the sand and the promise of dawn. Now, she smelled like rot.

“You are the sacrifice I will not make,” I murmured. “And I will do this for you, Saescha. I will build you a home to rest. Your whole, beautiful soul.”

I pulled away just enough to look into her face. “Don’t be scared,” I said. “Think of the sunrise. Like on the west balcony, in the middle of summer. When the light hits just right. Remember that?”

Again, that flagging flame rising in her soul. That one fading glimmer of who she had once been.

I seized it, and lowered myself to the wound of her throat. It was a perfect mirror of the night I had killed her. I could sense her path to the underworld. It was broken and convoluted. I wasn’t sure if any soul, let alone one so horribly damaged, would be able to make it.

But sometimes, faith was all we had. And my faith in Saescha, even now, was absolute.

“Go,” I breathed.

The last time I had helped a wraith, Asar had been with me. Now, I was alone. But Vincent had been right. All I had to do was listen to the underworld. I opened the door to Saescha’s path home.

And then I kissed the wound I’d left on her all those years ago, the wound that had ripped her from mortality, and breathed my goodbye into it.

When I opened my eyes, Saescha was gone. Beneath me was only bone-white dust.

I stared down at it—my hands, marked with the beautiful whorls of my Heir Mark, and the scattered teardrops between them. The dead slowly drifted away, their work complete.

I drew in a deep breath. Let it out.

Movement rustled in the distance. I snapped my head up.

The door to Morthryn loomed ahead, much closer now. I glimpsed a smear disappearing around its frame.

I stood, wiped my tears with the back of my hand, and went to it.