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

by Carissa Broadbent

“I never wanted anything so much as I wanted to show you that happy ending you so believe in, Mische,” he murmured.

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.

“I made you,” he snarled. “You end with me.” “Then let me burn,” I said.

“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.