The Songbird & the Heart of Stone (Crowns of Nyaxia, #3)

by Carissa Broadbent

In times of great darkness, humans crawl to light like flies to the gleaming silver of a spider’s silk. These are the souls that gods feast upon. No one loves you more than someone who has no one else.

Asar Voldari. The Wraith Warden. The stories seemed more befitting a myth than a man, even by the gruesome standards of vampire lore. They all ran together in my memory, grim tales of torture and spycraft, bloody tasks accomplished by bloodier means. Every king has someone to do their dirty work.

Still, that didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. Nothing was more deadly than a hurting person pushed to a breaking point.

“We have a long walk ahead, Dawndrinker,” Asar said wearily. He dumped the pack on the ground and knelt down to rummage through it. “I assume your legs and mouth can work at the same time.” He was such an ass.

Of course, he still unsheathed his sword with all the grace of a raven taking off into the night, not so much as missing a step.

Don’t let them touch you, he said, like it was that fucking easy. I was starting to realize that Asar often gave advice that wasn’t very useful.

Asar, I was quickly learning, didn’t seem to experience any pleasant emotion for longer than two seconds.

She looked at him like he was a question answered. He looked at her like she was the only one worth asking.

I knew how to help people. It was my most comfortable role.

Asar, I now understood, was like me. Not because he was related to my maker, or because he wielded a magic that spoke so innately to mine. But because he, too, was a healer. He had devoted himself to fixing the broken things that no one else saw.

“It means that many things here don’t follow rules.” He said this like it greatly pained him to admit it. I’d gathered by now that Asar enjoyed rules.

“I was trying to decide why this felt so familiar,” I said. “And then I realized, this is what it feels like to be Turned. You’re stuck between layers as the entire world changes. And you’re in the middle of it all, watching it happen, and yet none of it can touch you.” Not living. Not dying. Starving for both.

“We all have ghosts in our pasts, Iliae. We can’t give them the power to define our futures, too.”

“You’ve seen how I’ve studied you,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t stop until you were so exhausted from pleasure that you begged me for rest.”

But through it all, his eyes met mine over his shoulder, just for a split second, and he looked at me as if the sight of me alive was a prayer answered.

Maybe my face changed, because Asar said quietly, “You were magnificent, Iliae. Never doubt that.”

And he was smiling in a way that made the entire world stop, a smile that reminded me of the way the sun looked when it crested the horizon the first time I saw it at the Citadel, and I had thought, I am home.

I liked to watch Asar smile. It felt like a victory every time.

And then he said, after a moment, “I just played the notes that sounded like you.”

“It is an injustice, Mische, that this is what you got when you asked for love,” he murmured. “This isn’t what love should feel like.”

Atroxus didn’t make you special by choosing you. He chose you because you already were, and even when you were eight Mother-damned years old, he knew that. You owe him nothing. Nothing.”

“I’ll tell you what you’ll have if you lose the sun, Mische. You’ll have a soul gentler than any vampire’s I’ve ever known. You’ll have an incredible magic and the skill to wield it better than the bastard who gave it to you. You’ll have a soft heart and a sharp wit and the wisdom to know when to use one or the other. You’ll have countless inane questions and horrible taste in food and a penchant for making lost souls love you.” I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. He leaned closer until his forehead touched mine. “And if you’ll take it, Mische Iliae, you will have me, too.”

I would always be with him, I knew in this moment. I would never be able to leave.