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

by Carissa Broadbent

No one loves you more than someone who has no one else.

Nothing was more deadly than a hurting person pushed to a breaking point.

A girl who can only love broken things, and a boy so broken he can only love what he cannot have.

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

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

“And I think Morthryn should be thanked for her efforts.” “Her?” “Morthryn has feminine energy.” Luce barked in agreement, and Asar, wisely, didn’t argue.

I finally allowed myself to look at him. He knelt at the altar next to me. “What are you doing?” I asked. “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.” Strange how it was this small gesture of kindness that shattered me.

“And if you’ll take it, Mische Iliae, you will have me, too.”

This isn’t what love should feel like. “Show me what it should feel like,” I whispered. The blade fell. My sentence was written. We crashed together into beautiful damnation.

“I’d burn with you till the end of it all, Dawndrinker.”

Sometimes they only see you for the first time when you force them to.

But I’m patient. I’m determined. I have plenty of time to think about Mische and what I will offer her when—not if—I find her again. 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.