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

by Carissa Broadbent

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

“Thank you,” I whispered. He started to protest, but I said again, more firmly, “Thank you.” I didn’t mean to hold on so long. But it had been a long time since I’d hugged someone. I didn’t realize how much I’d needed it. I couldn’t bring myself to pull away because the tears just kept coming, rolling down my cheeks and sinking into the fabric of his shirt. “Just accept it,” I murmured. “Never.” But his hand fell to the small of my back, and he didn’t pull away.

And yet, I recognized the look on his face immediately—reverence. “It’s a powerful gift,” he said softly. “To right a wrong.”

“What?” “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.”

She was right. It definitely was dangerous. But the girl had always been too reckless. She sawed away at the restraints at the top of the arch anyway, and when that vampire corpse fell, her blessed life went crashing down with it.

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

And that meant that his father, Raoul, King of the House of Shadow, was dead.

But when he finally opened his mouth, it wasn’t to offer words of allegiance to his new king or words of mourning for his old one. He just said, “Fucking finally.” And drove his dagger into Asar’s side.

You always do the most reckless things, Raihn would always say to me. His voice crossed my mind now, and I had to admit, he was right. I let go. “Mische!” Chandra cried after me.

I realized just how well I fit within a room of offerings to a god. The offering was not the dress. The offering was me.

I saw Chandra, a young woman, brought to the House of Shadows’ shores in chains. I saw her kneeling before labor bed after labor bed, guiding screaming vampire women through their difficult deliveries. And I saw her hold those tiny vampire babies, so much more fragile than what they would one day become, and snuff them out.

I did understand. She had offered every one of those tainted vampire lives to our shared god. She had culled the population of the creatures that had kidnapped and abused her. She believed it was right.

“You’re coming with me, right?” I said to Luce, and she yipped in agreement. Dogs. We didn’t deserve them. Third time I’m saving his life, I thought. Lucky man. And jumped.

His arms wrapped tight around Luce’s mangled body, as if maybe she might offer him this one final gift of this one final comfort, when he needed it most. But still, the tears came.

He knew that Ophelia was punishment for rising too fast. A beautiful life with so much potential, ended for nothing but his brother’s petty jealousy, his need for dominance, his desire to destroy something just because he could not have it.

But Asar gave me one of those looks—the kind I hated, the kind that cut right through me. “You don’t deserve this.” He said it so earnestly, so softly. It reminded me of that little boy clutching a dead dog.

“To call for a great love and hear no answer. I called for him seventy-two times when they murdered me. I counted every one.”

He hadn’t torn down that wall so he could save me. He had done it to hand me the weapon I could use to save myself.

Not Mische, chosen of the sun, teenage prodigy of light. Mische, vampire, Shadowborn, who had already let the dark devour her a long time ago, and had simply refused to see it.

“That’s the trick, Asar. You’ve been my project from the start.” He snorted. The tension broke as he leaned back, shaking his head. “If anyone can melt a stone heart.”

And maybe that man—the man who loved his home with his whole stone heart, who considered his dog his best friend in the world, who devoted his life to fixing broken things—would love to learn how to play the cello. I smiled, cheeks stinging against the cold. “When we get back, I’ll personally go find you a cello.”

“I am Asar’s predecessor,” Esme said. “I was the warden of Morthryn for nearly three hundred years. Until I displeased the great Shadowborn king.” Venom dripped from the title. She gestured to her chest. “I suppose even in death, I cannot escape my charge.”

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

“I will tell you that you should be careful how much you sacrifice to your sun god,” she said, pointedly, “not because of Asar, but because of you. Because you did not make it this far just to let yourself burn up like some pretty little candle. You killed Malach of the fucking Shadowborn, Mother’s sake. Have some self-respect.”

He started to protest, but Esme let out a dramatic sigh. “I let you and your friend here into my home, and I, a lonely dead woman without a friend in the world, ask for only one thing⁠—”

I stood. “One more song, Warden.” “Because I’m at your beck and call.” I batted my lashes at him. “You can’t deny me.” He stared at me for a moment too long. The joke landed awkwardly between us, heavy with all the ways we both realized it was true.

“You wrote this?” “Wrote is a strong word. I just…” I was too close to him to see him, but I felt his muscles shift as he shrugged. 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.” It isn’t? I almost said. Because this was what I was taught that love was—something you hurt for, something you bled for. You give your god your life, your blood, your virgin body. You give your charges your devotion and never accept theirs. You give and give and give until you have stripped your soul bare.

“If you so believe that vampires can be saved, then who am I to tell you other-wise?” Atroxus said. “If what you claim is true, it would be a great tide turn in our blessed war against the darkness. It could change the world, a’mara. So this is my mission for you. Go. Go to Obitraes, the land of the damned. Give me a single vampire heart that can be shown the light.”

This was not an impossible mission. This was an opportunity. Because she did believe that vampires, like anyone else, could be saved. She did believe that there was goodness in all hearts, even ones that held black blood instead of red. And so, that silly, naive girl didn’t even hesitate as she said, “Of course, my light. I accept.”

“I won’t let you die here because you’re too ashamed to live, Mische,” he said. “You are so much more than this. And it would be a waste to throw all that magnificence away—for what? Because the sun told you to hate yourself? No. I won’t allow that.” I won’t allow that. So simple. I appreciated that about Asar. He liked to set wrong things right.

“Five drinks.” Just five. I could handle that. It took him a moment to understand what I meant. “Ten,” he countered. Then, before I could argue, “Don’t even say it, Iliae. You need strength. The sin only starts at eleven. I promise.”

Am I hurting you? And I was glad he didn’t speak it aloud because I would be too ashamed to say the truth: No. Make it last. Let me live in this pleasure a little longer. As the understanding fell over him, he let out another long, shaky breath. “Mische,” he growled against my skin. He licked my throat, slow and languid, before drinking again.

That was what we had always been warned of, back in the Order. Desire begot desire. Sin begot sin. Selfishness begot selfishness.

“Thank you, Morthryn. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” “It was probably a coincidence,” Asar said, amused. A coincidence? What were the chances? “I choose to believe it’s a gift.” I patted the cracked wall. “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.

“Do you think it will end any differently?” she hissed. “You are a regret to every person who ever loved you. I know this better than any other.”

“He was supposed to protect her. And I understand if he rejects me. Because I’m—I’m the monster. I’m the tainted one. I’m the one who destroyed myself. But Saescha. Saescha was perfect. And the only piece of her I have came from him. The only good thing I can offer the world.”

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.”

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.”

“Do you still wish to tell me,” he breathed, eyes burning, “that you have been loyal?”

“I am a monster. You have every right to burn me. But Saescha—why did you allow Saescha to come here?” A pause. “Saescha,” he repeated. He didn’t know who she was.

“Such terrible final moments,” he said softly. “To die at the hands of a monster wearing her beloved sister’s face.” The thought made bile rise in my throat again. Now I understood her wraith’s fury. Whatever she said wasn’t true, Asar had told me, looking at me with such affection. He’d been wrong. It was all true. Every word of it.

“You speak truth that you are beyond saving. But perhaps I can offer your kin the redemption that you have squandered. Should you complete your task, I will offer her life once again—the life she should have had, if you had not cut it short.” My breath of relief was fractured with a sob. “Thank you. Thank you.” In this moment, I loved him all over again. At least I could right this one wrong.

Instead, I lower it down, down, down, far beneath the ground. It will be buried here for millennia. It will remain here, where my beloved wife may never find it. She will never know what was once intended for her heart.

This was a weapon. A weapon crafted by the gods to kill a god. If Alarus had done what was asked of him from the beginning, Atroxus had said, what a better world this would be.

“No. Not always. 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. Sometimes—sometimes it all works.”

But I knew that one day, he would regret me.

“I’ve only been wielding Shadowborn magic for what, a few months?” “But you’re talented. And more valuable than that, you’ve spent your entire life studying magic. Your technique is perfect. It’s obvious every time I see you work. You just… ​understand it.”

For a moment, I saw a glimpse of all that he could be, would be, once this was all over, and the thought that I would not get to see those things was devastating. “I think you’re going to be an incredible king,” I said. “I think you make the world better.”