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

by Carissa Broadbent

But faith meant that you never stopped letting yourself hope, even if it hurt.

I love this definition of faith

Before us, a river coiled lazily through the velvet night like a snake writhing through the grass. But instead of water, it held blood. Ruby deep crimson spilled over dehydrated white dust. Tributaries split off from its main body like veins splitting into capillaries. In the distance, mountains of ivory rose into the sky, jagged as broken bones.

This is just so beautifully written

I leaned over him. “Asar?” I shook his shoulder. “Asar!” Then I raised my palm. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Elias muttered. “What are you going to do, slap him awake?” Spoken like someone who didn’t know how good I was at slapping people awake. Couldn’t even count the number of times I’d done it on Raihn. Blessed hands.

Lol

Men. They were the same everywhere.

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

They needed someone. There was no mystical Turned connection that could make me feel Asar’s soul more deeply than I did in this moment.

“Asar…” Elias said uneasily as he narrowly avoided the curious reaching hand of what looked to be a dead priestess, blindfold over her eyes.

Oooh! A Reference to Slaying the Vampire Prince?!

Then, to Asar, “She is very interesting. I see why you enjoy her. Another attractive curiosity. But she only knows how to love things she can fix, and there is no fixing you, is there?”

Asar’s hands fell. Their warmth, and that press of cold, lingered on my cheeks, which now felt oddly exposed to the word.

exposed to the word? Typo, I'm assuming.

My hair had grown past my shoulders, messy curls framing my face.

all the art that's out had her depicted wrong then.

“Just accept it,” I murmured. “Never.” But his hand fell to the small of my back, and he didn’t pull away.

The man could express the deep woes of being surrounded by idiots without any words at all.

Stay in this moment, before he opens you up and takes you like another meaningless offering, before he leaves you alone in a room of gold, staring at the dress he ripped off you and discarded. Stay in this moment, before you have that little crack of doubt.

I felt Asar’s happiness. No, not quite happiness—satisfaction. But for someone who had been striving his entire life, what was the difference?

And then he said, after a moment, “I just played the notes that sounded like you.” I stiffened. He spoke the words so softly, with such tender vulnerability. Like a confession to a priest. So kind it hurt.

He's just so damn sweet

And gods, that touch—it was like his hands over the piano keys. His scars against mine. Mistakes against mistakes.

“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.”

I had been hurting for so long that I had forgotten what it was like for something to feel good. And gods, it felt so good that it hurt. It reached past my scars, past my wounds, to the neglected version of myself that I’d long ago abandoned.

“Once we resurrect Alarus, you can let him know your critiques of his design of the Descent.”

Lol! I was just thinking how this all didn't make much sense.

“I won’t let you die here because you’re too ashamed to live, Mische,”

“Good girl,” Asar whispered. The words vibrated against my lips, serrated with a hunger sharp as mine.

I always want to hate the "good girl" cause women aren't freaking puppies... but I never hate it 😅🤣🥵

I strove for Saescha’s pride more than I strove for anything. Secretly, sometimes I wondered if I treasured that more than the love of Atroxus.

Eternal fealty didn’t seem like such a high price for that.

Ummm

Even that instruction now felt so intimidating. Follow his lead. He will be happy. He was a god. He had so many chosen, and surely had bedded countless others beyond them. I was a sixteen-year-old girl. I couldn’t imagine my virginity being all that captivating.

“And now, look at you. I raised you. I protected you. You were my child, not just my sister.” Her mouth twisted, a sob, a sneer, a hiss. “And look at what you’ve done to that innocent baby I raised. I was a baby, too, once. Who protected me?”

The poison that had broken free in my veins was hotter than sadness, colder than grief.

I miss this. I miss how beautiful Carissa's writing was before her publisher's editors tore it apart and simplified it for mass consumption. Apparently readers can't handle complexity. This whole book has hurt to read. I wish I could read it in her indie style and really experience her mastery with words again.

“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 adore him

The space between us was an executioner’s blade—thin as a hair’s breadth, and yet, the difference of an eternal soul.

The blade fell. My sentence was written. We crashed together into beautiful damnation.

He laughed, low and cruel. “And I’m being slow now, because I won’t be able to later.”

From that first thrust, I knew that the time for patience was over. This was raw and frantic and brutal. This was pleasure and pain and desperation, faith and destruction, fire and ash.

“Can’t think of anyone better suited to master both the sun and the stars, Iliae.”

I almost laughed as understanding dawned on me. He had, indeed, had a visitor in Secrets. He’d learned of the sacrifice he could not avoid. And he had made a deal to save me as I had made one to save him. A cruel joke.

I did miss the sun. I lifted my chin to that rising orb of light as it drenched me. The destined dawn. A horrible truth settled over me—that this was always intended to be the end. Salvation paid for with the blood of the unsalvageable souls. A dawn drenched in sin.

And I drove the arrow into Atroxus’s throat.

holy sh*t! I did NOT see that coming. F*ck yes, Mische! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

He looked at me exactly as Malach had when I’d driven my sword through his chest. Like I had truly shocked him by existing beyond the bounds of what he thought I was. Sometimes they only see you for the first time when you force them to.

The two of us went up in flames together, god and traitor. It shakes the world when a god dies. It rearranges histories in mortal and immortal realms alike.

If I were the god of the sun, I would have given her endless dawns and warm hearths. If I were the god of the sea, I would have given her cool rains on hot nights and currents that always brought her home. If I were the god of vitality, I would have given her sweet fruit and spring flowers. I would have given her anything, everything, because that was what she deserved—every single thing she had loved, fully and completely, about mortality. But I am not the god of any of those things. I have only one gift to lay at her feet. And so, I wait.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I need Asar's POV moving forward. Just... wow.