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

by Carissa Broadbent

This is the tale of how a fallen one ascends. Long ago, I told you a tale of a chosen girl who fell to the darkness. Now I will tell you the tale of a boy who was born within it.

His mother often spoke of crowns and kingdoms. You are a king, she would slur. And it is my blood that makes you so.

“Your father’s blood is nothing to scoff at, either,” the man said, amused. “And he has sent me to retrieve you.”

And yet, oh, how the shadows shift upon the past depending on the light of the present.

And he cared about none of it, because he was losing the love of his life.

But the boy takes the man’s hand every time. Death, after all, is inevitable.

This is the tale of how a fallen one ascends. He does it in countless cascading decisions, over years, over centuries. He does it with the desperation of a starving soul willing to sacrifice anything, everything, for a single chance at redemption. But in the end, he loses her every time.

I died at the doorstep to the underworld, a traitor’s weapon in my hand, drenched in the blood of the god who had given me everything. I died covered in the ashes of his remains and the burns of his punishment.

I died alone, listening to the screams of the love of my life.

When I died, it was with my god’s blood on my hands, my lover’s pleas in my ears, and the oblivion of eternal darkness—not eternal dawn—seared into my eyes.

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

“Mische Iliae.” Vincent clutched my arm, yanking me from the riptide. “You cannot go. Not yet.”

The sun called to me. The scent of the sea. The peace of an easier past.

But Vincent pulled me closer. “If you go, I cannot find you again. Whatever you are feeling now, it is false. It is a lie. You have work to do.”

the windows. “The sensation fades quickly,” he said. “Soon you won’t remember what it felt like at all.” “It?” I croaked. “Living.”

“The sun fell as he did. Ushering in an endless night.”

“You attempted to resurrect Alarus,” he went on. “But instead⁠—” “I saved Asar.”

“You saved him in a sense,” Vincent said. “You refused to sacrifice his soul to the resurrection spell. But the spell was already in motion. You ended it before you completed it, but the incomplete resurrection, along with the destruction of the relics Alarus used to construct the underworld, put stress upon the underworld that it couldn’t bear. Thus.”

“From what I hear, he’s better than alive. He holds the power of a god.”

“If the underworld needs to be repaired,” I said, “Asar will do it. There’s nothing he loves more.”

I heard a million invisible souls crying out, Asar had told me once. They needed someone. And now, they needed me. He needed me.

She had slain a god. The kind of act that would cement her in legends. But the woman I’d held had not felt like a legend. She felt mortal. Fragile and fading like a smothered flame.

I wasn’t angry. Anger was a fool’s emotion. It made you slow and stupid. What I felt was hatred. Cold, sharp, precise.

“Only a coward pleads his innocence to the executioner.”

“I am not pleading my innocence,” I hissed. “I’m giving credit to its rightful owner. I did not kill Atroxus. Mische Iliae did, and she deserves to have her name painted in the stars for it.”

“Kill you,” I repeated, scoffing. “Ignorant, to think death is the worst I can offer you.”

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.

Only the ignorant believed that death was an end. It certainly would not be for her.

It feels warm and comforting. A fresh dawn makes you believe that the future can be better than the present.

You changed the world, Iliae, I thought. You’ve terrified even the gods.

The Blade of Retribution. The sword that represented a rightful death granted in a rightful punishment. And, in a repulsive irony, the sword she had used to kill Mische.

RUDE

That little broken shard of the sun, burning like a grudge.

Reminded them I was nothing but a tainted mortal. Good. Let them keep believing it.

“Forgive our accommodations, Asar Voldari, King of the House of Shadow, Warden of the Descent, and descendant of Alarus.”

Casual flex

“A soul of such simple beginnings. Mische Iliae is no chosen one. Her blood is plain as it comes. And yet, she sits at the apex of so many different fates.”

“Billions of threads,” she murmured, “and not a single one where you say no.”

“Something isn’t—” I started. The sky burst open like a rotting cyst. Hell rained down over us.

Icky imagery but it works

“Go, Asar Voldari. You agreed to play a game with high stakes. You do not get to waste your time as the cards are drawn.”

“Have you ever wondered how gods travel? This is the spira. The web that connects our world. Gods scale it as spiders do, independent of the physical rules of the mortal world.”

Crazy??

He was coming for me. That stupid, reckless, foolish man was coming for me.

“If? Girl, there is no if. You will make it back to the land of the living. You will finish what you began. You will help your lover ascend, and you will fix the underworld before it collapses and takes my kingdom with it. There is no if.”

“You chose this battle. You chose it when you took your first steps into Morthryn, and you choose it again now. You set out to change the world. You set out to create a god. So do it. This is the time for conquering, Mische Iliae. Go.”

I’d shatter it to get to her. I didn’t even care anymore.

I’d already given up the kingdom. Might as well embrace the sin. I was Alarus’s heir. I held his power in my veins. No one, not even a guardian, could stop me from using it.

Asar looked, felt, just as he had in that ritual circle. Mortal, god, vampire, prince, exile. In some realities, all at once.

Morthryn—my soul recognized it, even without looking. Because I couldn’t look at anything but her. Mische.

“Hello, Warden,” she whispered. “Hello, Dawndrinker.”

FINALLY

“You came for me,” she murmured. “I told you that I would.”

“All that matters,” I said softly, “is this.” She blinked, and a tear struck a path of gleaming silver across the curve of her cheek. “I couldn’t let you go,” she whispered.

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