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

by Carissa Broadbent

Asar’s blood tasted like—gods, what word could describe it? He tasted like life.

It was so intrinsically him. And every gulp made me hungrier, made me want to crawl over him and press my skin to his, wrap around him until we were a single form. Made me want to⁠—

But the way he looked at me was the way my friend, my lover, had. His eyes were not those of a god or a king. They were Asar’s. My Asar’s.

Mische’s tears came for a long time. I was so grateful for those tears, paint strokes of mortality all over the constellation of her freckles.

Mische told stories the way a painter flung colors across the canvas—with grand, artistic gusto, expressions bright, hands flying, voice rising and falling like a piano’s melody.

The consequences of an eternal night. Withering plants. An endless black sky. And a vampire empire ready to seize the opportunity they’d been given. The gods had spoken of it. But seeing it made it real.

There was nothing, I had learned, that could silence her quite like when she felt that she had too much to say.

“You, driving that arrow into Atroxus’s throat. It was more beautiful than any part of death or life I’d ever witnessed. The way you looked seizing fate with your bare hands.

You saved the lives of millions that night. Atroxus deserved his end, god or not. Never regret giving it to him. Never.”

I was thinking about an eight-year-old Mische on her knees before him. Seemed like proper punishment to me. Even if I would have preferred it to be a bit slower.

“You’re making that face.” I was going to regret asking. “That face?” “The decoding magical complexities face. Like this.” She lowered her brows over narrowed eyes and stroked her chin.

“I mean this in a nice way, but I don’t think you’re very useful like this.” “There’s no nice way to call me useless, Dawndrinker.” “Only temporarily useless, Warden.”

“Pray tell, what is that supposed to be?” “My death touch,” she said, as if it were obvious.

“Get off of her.”

Meow

I watched Mische roll over, eyes closed, hands over her stomach. And it was the last thing I saw when I plunged into darkness.

The expression made me even more sympathetic to Oraya’s complexes. It really dug right into your chest.

“I didn’t expect you to come this close to death again this quickly,” he said.

“Come this close to death” so is she not dead 👀

She is a woman, after all, and the Shadowborn have never been fond of that quality in a ruler.

Sounds like somebody else I know

“You carry a piece of the god of death in you. And your lover has more power than he has even begun to understand. Use it.” He leaned closer. “Stop thinking like an acolyte and start thinking like a vampire.”

The cruelty is always the game, Raihn used to tell me. You just have to know how to play into their rules.

And just as she began to bring it down, the room plunged into an eerie, static silence. The candles snuffed out. The room fell to slow, ominous darkness, shadows painting across my vision like bandages winding around and around and around us all. And a voice, quiet and booming at once, said, “Get your hands off my wife.”

Oh boy this may be my favorite “get your hands off my wife” yet WHEW

I didn’t remember rising or moving. But then I was standing before Egrette. I almost laughed when I felt her understand her miscalculation. And what a miscalculation it had been.

“You underestimated me, Egrette.” I spoke softly, and the words felt far away. Yet they vibrated in my bones. “Once I had thought you were the wiser one in the family. And yet, you drag me out here and you threaten what’s mine. As if she’s just an object to be used for your purposes.”

I had traded that future away. I would do it again a thousand times if I had to.

You’ve grasped mind speaking quickly, Dawndrinker. I am impressed.

“You are too intelligent for us to be having this conversation right now. You know what my priority is. You know it because you just used it against me.”

My empty chest ached. With the memory of that sword, yes. But also with Asar’s grief. And with that ache came the stark truth that never got any easier to bear: I was dead.

On the Night of the Melume, the boundary between the past and the present thinned. It created a natural phenomenon that even great poets struggled to describe, in which the ghosts of the past walked among the living.

“So is it here? Or is it not here?” “It is here, and not here. The Night of Melume is a rare inflection point when those in the House of Shadow can draw upon Alarus’s ancient magic, which predates Obitraes.”

“I never would have guessed when I first met you that you would one day be so giddy at the prospect of death magic, Dawndrinker.”

“So we have to steal it.” “Yes.” “During a fancy ghost-rite party.” “Yes.” “That’s the best place to steal things.”

“At least this place is . . . ​nice?” “You said ‘nice’ the way one might say, ‘riddled with the carcasses of rats.’ ”

I stared hard at the wall and noticed more of those writhing shadows I’d seen in the ballroom wriggling just outside my field of vision. They almost looked like . . . “Asar,” I said. “I think I’m seeing ghosts.”

And as she stood before those open windows, looking out over her kingdom, it occurred to me that she did, indeed, resemble a queen.

“What an incredible gift,” she murmured. “Imagine what we could shape this kingdom into, Asar. I never imagined that we would do it together. But I will not turn down the help.”

“If I had just been a child, Raoul would have executed me without a second thought. Being a tool gave me the chance to live.”

“Remnants of dead souls are attracted to places where they sense they might be acknowledged. They’ve always lingered around here, but they’re . . . ​active tonight. Maybe because the Melume is so close.”

“Right. Leave you alone to go explore and get yourself into trouble.” “I would never,” I said, aghast.

“A ritual circle.” My thoughts felt a bit gummy, sticking to each other like honey candy left out in the sun. “For necromancy.”

Is this his prior mentor?

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

There is great power in transitions. The transition point between life and death. Between mortality and godhood. The moment a soul is created, and the moment it is destroyed.”

“But enough business,” he said. “Mische, it isn’t often I meet someone that my stone-hearted protégée clearly is so fond of. Tell me more about yourself.”

The door clicked open. The scent of knowledge and death surrounded me.

My knuckles whitened around the glass of rancid blood. Darkness crept closer and closer to us.

What the helly 😭

Then I stood and slipped off my jacket, laying it across the back of a chair—far enough away that the blood spatters would not reach it.

OH??

Countless failures, countless small tortures, every rung that broke my bones in my fall from grace.

Instead, like a ghost, I walked the path of my previous life.

“I think it’s quite beautiful here. But . . . ​sad. Even the ghosts here are sad. It was probably a difficult place for a child to grow up.”

“Hold on to the bars. They will keep your hands where they need to be.”

OH??

“Sun fucking take me, Vincent,”

This phrase is so good