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

by Carissa Broadbent

“I’ll begin preparations,” she said, and she wouldn’t hear anything else of it. No, her sister’s loyalty was not that of a lover ready to follow their sun to a promised land. It was that of a mother using her final moments to fling her body in front of her child.

Why did she not run? Was it her faith, so bright it blinded her? Was it her desperation, pushing her ever closer to the cliff? Was it his magic, drenching her in that honeyed haze? Or perhaps the truth is simpler. Perhaps mortals, like gods, are mesmerized by their own damnation. She took his hand.

“I have an interesting relationship to the underworld,” he said dismissively. “I lost half of myself to it the night I tried to bring Ophelia back, and a little more with every night I spent warding over Morthryn.”

Anyone, maybe, except for Malach. Some souls, I thought as I drove the blade into Malach’s heart, deserved to burn.

“He didn’t mean to, Ophelia. He loved you.” She shook her head. “He did not love me. He did not even see me.” “That can all be true at once.”

“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 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’m so sorry,” I choked out. And I drove the arrow into Atroxus’s throat.

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.

“I gave you the order to resurrect him. Instead, you have stolen his power. You think that because you have some pitiful drop of his blood in yours, you are worthy of what he was?” She approached us, darkness deepening with every step. “You are no god. You betrayed me.” “She killed Atroxus to save your people.” Asar held me so tightly. “She⁠—”

There, in a broken heap of flesh, upon the discarded ashes of my god, I died alone.

“Do not be afraid of death, Dawndrinker. Make death afraid of you.” I watched the bird burn, and I let myself rise.

“Get up,” he said. He didn’t bother to introduce himself. But maybe he knew he didn’t have to. I recognized him. I took his hand, and he helped me stand. “Welcome to the underworld,” Vincent, dead King of the Nightborn, said to me. “I hear we have some work to do.”

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. 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.