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.

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.

How could my chest hurt so much if my heart was no longer beating? I pressed my hand to it like a tourniquet, a futile attempt to quell the bleeding.

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

“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.”

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.

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

Sun take me, those eyes. Rich and deep, complex, brown threaded with gold.

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

And a voice, quiet and booming at once, said, “Get your hands off my wife.”

She looked at me with such abject, undeserved affection. It made me think of how a sunrise I’d never witnessed must feel.

The veil to the dead was so thin. I tore through it like it was a woman’s lace lingerie, and let the dead rush through me.

“You just hesitated before you said that.” “No, I didn’t.” Yes, he fucking did, but fine.

I thought, Damn masks and eyes and hearts and divine missions. This is what a true goddess looks like.

“For whatever of your mistakes, Mische Iliae,” he said, quietly, firmly, “for whatever of your faults, for whatever unintended pains you may bring this world, I will love you anyway.”

I dreamed of skin, and want, and all the ways the two collided.

“Maybe greatness should come not from the sacrifices you make, but the ones you refuse to.”

But when my knees hit the ground now, it wasn’t for the eye. It was for her. I wanted to bury myself before her. I wanted to cut myself open for her, let her take whatever she wanted, and treasure the scars for the rest of my pathetic life.

“I would do it a thousand times over. A thousand times, if it means that I get to hear you berate me for it here rather than imagine those words over your corpse. You are the sacrifice I will not make, Mische. You. Don’t ask me to apologize for that.”

“I don’t regret it,” I said again. “Which part?” she murmured. “Any of it, Mische.” And then I kissed her.

“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.”

Saescha stroked my hair and rested her chin on the top of my head. “The real gift,” she said, “is that he gives us the means to save ourselves, Mische.”

“A necromancy spell,” he finished. “Yes. That’s the interesting part. The reason we conduct necromancy this way is because it encapsulates the five core aspects of a living being. And the Vathysians believed that linking one soul to another in marriage deserved the same commitment. The entirety of oneself.”