The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

by Carissa Broadbent

When I died, it did not feel like the peaceful end to a grand fight. It felt like the beginning of one.

Gideon had taught me that every weakness could become a strength if you embraced it enough. That the most resourceful minds would find the tools to sharpen nothingness to a blade if offered nothing else.

Mische Iliae would be remembered by the bones of time itself, and I knew it because I would write her story there with my blood if I had to.

As if the gods had seen some beauty in mortality but failed to realize that the imperfection of it was what made it remarkable.

“Mische Iliae, Dawndrinker or Shadowborn, living or dead, I will never let you go.”

“Because I’ve learned that you can’t live on grief,” I said. “It’s poison. It festers into bitterness and hatred. If you have nothing else to offer a heart, grief will just hollow it out until that’s all that you are.

“A bad lie still fulfills its purpose so long as everyone agrees to believe it.”

“Grief has a way of sanding down all the complicated parts of a person in the eyes of the living. It freezes them to a single moment.”

I was a man who was in love with a woman, and I understood that love would never be beyond fear.

“Her daughter, our daughter, is up there still, at the mercy of this game of gods. I will not allow her to suffer the consequences of it. And I do not care if the goddess-damned underworld collapses around me, but I will not allow it to take her with it. I didn’t protect either of them in life. Not the way I should have. But I will be damned if I don’t protect them now. So get up.”

“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you, Asar Voldari, Warden of Morthryn, king of the underworld, heir of Alarus. I love you, and in this life or the next, worlds mortal or divine, I will never let you go.”