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

by Carissa Broadbent

Never. 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. She was not done with this world. Only the ignorant believed that death was an end. It certainly would not be for her.

“But in doing so,” Acaeja went on, “she did not fully complete her spell. A passage to the threads of fate was opened and never fully closed. She entangled herself with you to pull you free, but never severed that thread.” As Acaeja’s hands moved, the threads rearranged. Two shone brighter than the others, intertwined in a knot. “The two of you are now bound inextricably,” Acaeja said. “Yet, the threads fray under the pressure of this tension. As she did not successfully complete the ceremony, she still holds a piece of Alarus’s power—power that belongs to you and could distill your role as god. The underworld crumbles beneath the pressure of this tension.”

I wiped my eyes and held out my fingertips. “Explain this! I’m dead and I still have to deal with this?” He gave me a soft smile. “Fitting, isn’t it, that the messy parts of mortality are the last to go.” He unrolled his sleeve and carefully wiped my tears away with the fabric. “Let them come. And then we’ll talk.” “We have so much to do,” I said, even as I kept crying and crying. But Asar dabbed my tears one by one. “Let them come.”

He was, after all, a weapon, and weapons should not strike without the hand of their master on the hilt.

Divine fucking wonder. From the being who had done this. Did these people think that, too, when they built such incredible monuments to their gods? Did they think it when they were on their knees, begging for mercy?

“I think that we learned how to live a certain way to survive,” I said. “And now we have to unlearn it.”

I didn’t understand. If a god could see so much, how could they possibly care about every mortal soul? How could each follower truly mean something to them? “You think too much,” she said. “I think what he said was quite beautiful, wasn’t it? Imagine being a part of something so grand.” She gestured to the sea of green sprawling out toward the Vostis shore, gleaming under the searing glow of sunset. It was undeniably beautiful. Still, I was uncertain. “But how can he save us if that’s all we are to him?” 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.”

“I will never promise you, Asar, that it won’t hurt, because it will. I will never promise you that we won’t fail, because we could. And that terrifies me, too. But it’s in that fear that we hold our greatest strength. We need yours, now.”