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

by Carissa Broadbent

In times of great darkness, humans crawl to light like flies to the gleaming silver of a spider’s silk. These are the souls that gods feast upon. No one loves you more than someone who has no one else.

I see you, little one. Reach out your hand.

This is the tale of how a chosen one falls. She does it screaming, clawing for her old life with broken fingernails. She does it slowly, over the course of decades. And in the end, she takes the whole forsaken world with her.

Shadowborn magic, I realized. The magic of minds and compulsion, illusion and shadow.

But the Shadowborn were like ghosts. They manipulated reality itself. They drank up the darkness like wine and relished the notes of fear within it.

She was dangerous. The little razor blade no one saw coming because they were too busy looking at her husband’s sword.

Asar Voldari. The Wraith Warden.

I see you, a’mara. Open your hand.

I gave him a smile—my greatest weapon.

I felt an uncomfortable pressure on my temple, like invisible fingers reaching for my thoughts. It was different from Egrette’s or Raoul’s rummaging. This was gentler, more delicate—and familiar in a way I couldn’t place. It made my skin crawl. It felt invasive. Intimate. I shook my head, hard. “Don’t do that,” I snapped.

He broke my name up into five pointed, deliberate syllables—Meesh-uh Il-ee-ay.

“You were born human in Slenka. You were eight years old when you traveled to Vostis and joined the Order of the Destined Dawn. You served as a crusader for a decade or so. You journeyed to Obitraes when you were nineteen, where you were Turned by my beloved late brother, Malach.” His voice dripped with venom around the name as he flipped a page. “Then you befriended Raihn Ashraj. Competed in the Kejari. Helped him overthrow a kingdom. Murdered Malach—a great service to us all, so thank you for that. And now, you are here.”

For a strange, disorienting moment, an innate connection bonded us—I could feel his emotions, just as tangled and nonsensical as mine, curiosity and anger and determination and fear.

“I just—I thought necromancy is forbidden,” I said. Asar continued painting over some of the strokes that didn’t meet his standards. “And forbidden things never happen.”

“My father often needs to break his own rules. Every king does. And if they’re smart, they all keep someone disposable on hand to do the rule breaking for them.”

The realization dawned on me—that this was why he had finally answered my call. Not to save my life, but because I’d been acting as his spy without even knowing it.

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

“You will find a weapon within the Descent that will have the power to pierce a god’s flesh,” Atroxus went on. “You will know it when it presents itself to you. But the less I tell you now, the better. You must guard your thoughts against the necromancer. You must ensure that he sees as little of your truth as possible.”

But of course, we didn’t have that kind of marriage, and that wasn’t the kind of comfort he offered me. Our binding ceremony was more about faith than love, the night after it more of a physical offering than a lovemaking session.

I just had to travel to the underworld with my Shadowborn captor, resurrect the god of death, and then kill him—ideally without starting another war of either the mortal or immortal varieties.

“Yes. But even by god standards, constructing a new realm was an intimidating project. He would have had to offer a part of himself to each Sanctum. And those relics are the only things we know of that are powerful enough to fuel his resurrection.”

found it hard to imagine Asar prostrating in general. He didn’t seem like the type who went to his knees easily, goddess or no. Even his deference to the king had been so palpably resentful.

I didn’t want to listen to Asar talk about what my body wanted.

“This is… ​something,” panted Elias, the way one might say, I hate everything about this.

Asar’s open invitation was right there, a sentence waiting to be finished, and I took it. Power flooded me, from his unfinished spell, to the shadows in the corners of the room, to the pool inside myself that I’d been ignoring for the last fifty years.

“Whatever magic I have from—from him, prince or not, I don’t want it,” I said. “I wield the magic of Atroxus. Not Nyaxia. I have my faith, and I have the love of my god. That’s all I need.”

But this, with Asar, was different. It felt more like my blood was answering a mutual call rather than bowing in subservience.

“A perfect corpse is still not living until it breathes, or its heart beats, or it changes with time. That’s Breath. The nature of being alive. It may be something intangible, but it would represent the essence of connection to life.”

“Or perhaps that’s why you would be so perfect for each other. A girl who can only love broken things, and a boy so broken he can only love what he cannot have. A perfect match.”

“You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” I said. “A past doesn’t define a future. I’d be a terrible missionary if I didn’t believe that.”

“You’re just so matter-of-fact about it.” I scrunched my eyebrows together, lowering my voice in a mimicry of his deep, perpetually cool tone. “Now we shall go face the nightmares of our worst memories. Watch your step.” Asar’s lips grew thin. “I sound nothing like that.”

I felt as if I were staring into a different mirror, now, at a more monstrous reflection than the one that pinned me to the temple floor.

I didn’t remember taking Asar’s hand, only that when his fingers intertwined around mine, it felt like a key sliding into a lock.

The blind fury of my magic faded. I saw another version of myself in his gaze: Mische, the woman he looked at like that.

And there was nothing more dangerous than a sin that felt right. Nothing. My hands felt so filthy. I wanted to scrub them until the skin peeled off.

“You have a good heart, Asar. Thank you for trying to protect me. But just because I talk a lot and smile a lot doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I know what I’m asking for. You can’t do the rest of this alone.”

“If anyone can melt a stone heart.”

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

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 swore that the entire world rearranged around his rage. The shadows at the corners of the room trembled and shivered, as if preparing to answer his call. Light poured from his left eye in a sudden burst.

“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 wasn’t crying anymore. The poison that had broken free in my veins was hotter than sadness, colder than grief.

“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’m patient,” he murmured. “A man can’t rush worship.”

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

But we didn’t have time to sit around dissecting it, as much as the priestess in me would have loved to.

I jolted at his touch for a reason I couldn’t identify—something felt odd about it, even within the connection we shared. But I didn’t have time to question it.

“Sometimes someone else just needs to feel it with you. Like when you’re a child with a scraped knee. Do you remember that?”

She didn’t forgive him. That would be too tidy. But she let go of her anger. Let go of her pain. Her body disintegrated like ashes into the wind.