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.

He was small, but he had a way with death.

You are a king, she would say. Survive long enough to take your crown.

You will sacrifice beyond what your mind could ever conceive today, and there is only a chance of a chance of a chance that there will ever be a crown on your head in exchange.

Do you know what it means to conquer every unknown? It means a life free from fear. Think of that. Freedom.”

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

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Death, after all, is inevitable.

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

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

Once, that disrespect would’ve been enough to send me to my death. But I was already dead. So what the hell could he do to me now?

How could my chest hurt so much if my heart was no longer beating?

“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.”

“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.”

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.

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

A fresh dawn makes you believe that the future can be better than the present.

Legends said that occasionally, Shiket had been known to gift one of these blades to a mortal follower, with the considerable caveat that the weapon would be destined to one day end them.

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.

They were afraid of me—or, more accurately, afraid of him, and whatever of him might be left in me.

To a god, after all, nothing really mattered.

Magic had always felt easy when nothing else was.

All of us, rare artifacts.

“Fate and luck are twin sides to the same coin.”

“The two of you are now bound inextricably,”

“His mask, which acted as the crown to his kingdom of Vathysia.”

Vathysia—the heart of Alarus’s territory, before it became Obitraes when Nyaxia created vampires. Most of it lay within the borders of what now was the House of Shadow. The image of the mask unfurled in her palm. It was bronze, reminiscent of a simplified skull, canine teeth pointed. It was a familiar image to me. A version of it adorned the Shadowborn crest.

“His eye, which granted him the power to see beyond the bor...

“his heart, which contained the basest essence of his soul.”

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

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“How dare you speak to me about her suffering,” he spat. “How dare you question my intentions. Look at yourself, girl. You betrayed the man who is about to end the world for you. And yet I am being asked to put her fate in your hands. Why do you deserve that?”

“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.”

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

In my world, every heartbeat pushed me to her. I only had to let it take me there.

I raised my blade, and I brought it down, and the veil shattered. Death swallowed me in a wave.

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

!!

“They may tell you this place is a prison,” she had told me, “but they only call it a cage because their minds are too small to see what it truly is.” “And what is that?” I’d replied, unconvinced. She had spread out her arms. “It is a bridge to endless possibilities. It is the gate to the kingdom of the dead. It is a refuge for those who have nothing else. And perhaps, my disgraced prince, it can be a refuge for you, too, if you allow it to be.”

“I saw it, when everything else had faded,” I said. “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.”

Rules couldn’t protect us if they were now being rewritten.

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“Stop thinking like an acolyte and start thinking like a vampire.”

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

It’s not about revenge, Asar. Sometimes mercy can get you further if you give it at just the right time.

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“Not as bloody as the collapse of the underworld. Not as bloody as a war between gods.”

“You think I don’t see through you, Dawndrinker? We have traveled to hell together.”

Why. Because I was right here and yet so far away. Because all I wanted to do was capture his next breath in mine, and I couldn’t. Because I didn’t know if death would ever let me go, no matter what Asar achieved. “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 dangerous thing for a god, no?”

The Melume was a legendary event in the House of Shadow, much like the Kejari was in the House of Night—though far less bloody. The House of Shadow was the oldest of the vampire kingdoms, having been constructed from the remnants of Alarus’s territory. This, many believed, gave the House of Shadow a unique link to the past. 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.

“The House of Death,” I said. “I thought that was a myth.” “Not a myth. Just old, old history. Vathysia existed. It encompassed parts of the House of Shadow, as well as the underworld itself. It was the territory of Alarus’s most devoted followers. The mask is here. But it belongs to Vathysia. Not the House of Shadow.”

“Some say that all Shadowborn magic is a bastardization of Alarus’s magic,” he said. “The Melume gives us an opening to a deeper well of power. The castle will use it to fortify itself, high-ranking sorcerers will use it to conduct powerful spells more easily, and certain ancient relics will make themselves more visible.” He gestured to the House of Shadow crest hanging above the door, and the face that stared back at us from it. “Like the mask. The Mask of Vathysia.”

“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.”

It was hard to question what kept you alive, even if it did terrible things with the life it gave you.

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