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

by Carissa Broadbent

Asar stiffened like a cat unexpectedly captured, debating if he should wriggle away. But I just tightened my arms around him. My face buried against his shoulder. The delicate scent of ice and flowers filled my lungs.

Sometimes, I would watch him and marvel at the fact that this man tutting like a mother hen over a cracked wall was, in fact, the Wraith Warden.

He scoffed. Asar had, I’d learned, a delightful variety of sounds of displeasure. The man could express the deep woes of being surrounded by idiots without any words at all. It was really impressive.

“Asar, do you actually care what I think of you?” He turned back to his work and didn’t answer. A slow grin spread over my face. “You do.” This felt like a triumph. “Absolutely not,” he muttered. “Arrogant of you. Get over here, Dawndrinker. Help me with this.”

He shot me a flat glare that I knew very well by now to mean, What inane thing are you giggling at now?

That was a Mark. An Heir Mark, denoting the rightful ruler of one of the three vampire kingdoms.

He had said that Psyche would try to draw us in. It would offer us bait. Bait. We were each other’s bait.

Dogs. We didn’t deserve them.

Third time I’m saving his life, I thought. Lucky man. And jumped.

Long fingers of darkness fanned from his back, wrapping around the pillar. He’d been the one to make the ruin fall. He’d smashed through the stone of hell itself to get to me. My heart stirred.

“I’ve got you, Mische,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.” I smiled. “You said my name,”

And there was nothing more dangerous than a sin that felt right. Nothing.

I’m serious, Mische. I couldn’t count how many times protective men had said that to me.

“Do you think that I don’t know what darkness is?” I said. “Why? Because I smile too much? Because I talk too much? It’s my choice to be the way that I am. A choice that I make even when it’s hard. That doesn’t make me weak, Asar.”

Asar had touched his chest when he’d seen it. “The betrayal wounds, Luce,” he’d said, but he’d scratched her behind the ears in a way that seemed to say, Good girl.

He was in an armchair, one foot propped up on the coffee table. Lounging. I never thought I’d see Asar lounge. It was like witnessing a dog sing.

“Yes. She’s… ​well.” A scraping sound—it sounded like he was dragging his chair closer. “She’s nosy, and a terrible spy. No shame about eavesdropping.”

I adored it. I unabashedly adored it. I liked pretty things, and I’d missed them.

“I don’t comment on décolletage unless invited,” he said coolly.

Esme scoffed and rolled her eyes. “In the name of the Mother, girl, he could not stand up after he saw you in that nightgown. Friends, she says.”

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

He let out a low scoff. “Mische Iliae, you are full of secrets and surprises.” The music swelled, and he twirled me again. When he caught me this time, he cradled me close.

“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.”

“You only say my name when you’re worried about me,” I tried to say. “It’s sweet.”

A lifetime wielding the magic of the sun, and yet, I had never felt so aflame as I did in this moment.

I’d always been a touchy person, thriving on those brushes of affection. It wasn’t sexual or romantic. Sometimes, you just need a hug.

I actually hugged the doorframe. “Thank you, Morthryn. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He sounded a little helpless beneath his frustration, and again, I felt a pang of hurt on his behalf.

“Praying with you,” he said. As if it were obvious. “I thought you didn’t believe in prayer.” “I don’t,” he said. “But you do.”

“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’ll never regret you.” An easy truth. My soul had been marked by a litany of shames.

But Asar looked at me like he wanted to see me, layer by layer. It was uncomfortable. I wished he’d return to the harsh desire, too furious to allow for thought. Tenderness was painful.

“You make me so greedy, Dawndrinker,” he murmured. “I can’t deny myself around you.”

The rage of a god is impossible to describe. It reshapes the world. You feel it in the air. It seeps into your soul and burns from the inside out.

“People hurt the ones they love all the time. It might be the one thing we have in common with the gods.”

Sometimes people just love each other and do right by each other and always make up for it when they make mistakes. Sometimes people are just happy together for the rest of their lives.

I folded my hand over his, scars against scars.

“It feels like waking up rested after a long nap. Or like going to sleep knowing you’ll awaken safely. It feels warm and comforting. A fresh dawn makes you believe that the future can be better than the present.”

Her recklessness was not borne of foolishness or stupidity. Always, it was borne of love.

“You are so foolish,” he said, “and so extraordinary.”

Asar finally—finally—looked at me. The sadness in his eyes split me apart. “It’s in my blood, Dawndrinker,” he murmured. “In my bloodline. I can’t finish it because I am a part of it. The offering of Soul.”

“I never wanted anything so much as I wanted to show you that happy ending you so believe in, Mische,” he murmured.

And I drove the arrow into Atroxus’s throat.

“Mische.” He only said my name when he was worried about me. Now, it was fractured with almost-tears.

I would have given her anything, everything, because that was what she deserved—every single thing she had loved, fully and completely, about mortality.