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

by Carissa Broadbent

I let Alarus’s power overtake me. Yes. She would fear me. “Do not touch her.”

I refused to live this again. I would not hold Mische’s dying body as the gods watched.

Oraya smiled. “Hello, Mische.” My eyes burned. “Hello.” But then Raihn’s expression darkened. “You have,” he said, “so much explaining to do. So. Much.”

And then, I realized. We both realized. Slowly, her gaze slipped to my hand. Her hand. My hand holding her hand.

I was whole, entwined in her skin and soul alike.

I want it all, she had said. Take it, I said silently to her. It is all for you, Mische Iliae.

A tear streaked down her cheek. I kissed it away. “What is it, Dawndrinker?” “I just—” She drew in a ragged breath and let it out. “I feel so alive.”

Omg 🥹

“I’m not a mortal,” I grumbled. Her thumb ran over my hand—tracing my scars. “I like your mortality,” she said softly. “Don’t wish it away.”

“Fine,” she sighed dramatically, and I touched her, and touched her, and touched her.

“Oh gods, stop—” I gasped, burying my head in my hands. “I know what it looks like when a man is gone. And he is so far gone for you.” I peeked through my fingers at Raihn, then lowered my hands. I couldn’t stop the smile from pulling at my cheeks.

“We can’t change what we’ve done in the past,” I said. “But there’s still a whole damned future out there waiting. You and me. We’re in this together. I need you to believe in this with me. You can do a lot of good in this world, Asar Voldari. Don’t you dare give up on it now, when it needs you most.”

And as the hopeful melody of shared song rose and fell, the vision did, too. Us, before the hearth in the library. Us, in the mournful beauty of the Descent, restored to what it was always intended to be. Us, in a field of poppies. Us, cradling a precious soul that held the best of both of us. Countless dreams for the future, encapsulated in a single song.

And gods, what beautiful dreams they were. I watched them dance around us like butterflies, so close I could reach out and seize them. I wanted to. I wanted to capture them and hold them close, even though I knew that they would simply dissolve if I tried. I blinked and another tear slithered down my cheek. “It’s a nice song,” I said.

And I felt his truth as deeply as I felt his song when he murmured, “I have never wanted anything so fiercely, Dawndrinker. Not ever.”

He looked mortal. And I felt alive. I buried my head against his shoulder and let sleep beckon.

Everything I had done was to avoid this. But all along, it had been inevitable. It would always end here.

There was always someone who could be saved. And there was always a reason to have faith.

And I kept fighting. Through all of it, I kept fighting.

Where are you, Mische? Where are you? At last, at last, I found her. When I saw her, the world stopped.

But there she was, forcing her broken body to obey her. Fighting to protect the very same humans who had cast her out, just as she had fought to protect the vampires who had once taken everything from her.

Her presence was warm against mine. I felt her pain and her grief. I felt her fury and her determination. And even now, above all, hope. I was awestruck by her.

But I was not a child. I was a man, covered in the marks of my mistakes, watching the world fall. I was a man who was in love with a woman, and I understood that love would never be beyond fear.

I stared down at her. I was so far away, and yet felt so close. I could taste the sweet softness of her lips. The freckles on her cheeks like flecks of cinnamon. Among the sound of the universe rearranging, I could have sworn I heard a song, the fading, imperfect notes of a dream floating to the stars, never to be recaptured. And I loved her, I loved her, I loved her.

As a missionary, I had believed that there was always hope, even in the darkest places. But my actions had torn the sun from the sky and the heart from my lover’s chest. I could no longer remember what hope felt like at all.

I rarely allowed myself to think like that. Rarely allowed myself to feel that terrible emotion: hopelessness. But now, I couldn’t find anything else.

The pain was unbearable. My own heart felt as if it would crack open. I pressed my hand to my chest, as if to hold the pieces together. “He’s gone,” I whispered.

I stopped in the center of the field. A single poppy stood there, bright red, unmistakably alive. Take it, the underworld whispered. It is for you. For you, for you, the field agreed.

It was so beautiful that it hurt to look at. This was the kind of dream that seemed so big that it was dangerous to even acknowledge it—to open a tender heart up to something that seemed so impossible. But I felt it, anyway. I knew that Asar had, too.

I held the flower to my chest, right over my heart. I inhaled the scent of frostbitten ivy. Then I tucked the flower behind my ear, where its stem wound into my hair like fingers folding around mine, and I kept walking.

I wasn’t ready. But I stepped into the darkness, anyway.

{Do it,} the eye said. {Do it,} the mask said. {Do it,} the heart said. No, the wound begged, scar tissue from another life. No. His hand did not move, and he was not sure why.

But she just touched his face. “Come back to me,” she murmured. {End it,} the mask commanded. {End it,} the eye agreed. {End it,} the heart whispered. But still, that inexplicable hesitation.

Silver tendrils caressed the keys. They painted the ghost of another life. A man with his head bowed over the music, a woman perched beside him, the two of them composing a new life together.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you, Asar Voldari, Warden of Morthryn, king of the underworld, heir of Alarus. I love you, and in this life or the next, worlds mortal or divine, I will never let you go.”

My queen. My light. My darkness. My future. The answer to every question. The ending to every sentence.

“Hello, Dawndrinker,” I whispered. She smiled through her tears. “Hello, Warden.” And I kissed her again, as the underworld bowed around us.

At last, he said quietly, “I could not let you go, Dawndrinker.”

Mische’s hand slid into mine. “I told you that strength is measured by the sacrifices we refused to make,” she said softly. “You were mine.” I squeezed her hand back, my response silent but unmistakable: And you were mine.

“Almost seems like it would have been easier to die in my grand final gesture,” I muttered. But Mische, of course, saw right through my wry joke. “That’s the cost of a future, Warden,” she said. “It’s hard work, to make the choice to do better every single night for the rest of your life. Maybe that’s why acolytes are always so obsessed with dying in a fiery blaze of martyrdom.”

Raihn ruffled my hair and I jerked away, scowling. “At least whatever we face next,” he said, “we face it together.” And what a gift it was.

At last, at peace.

He held out his hand. I did not miss that it was trembling. Mine was, too, when I took it and stepped into the circle with him.

His forehead now leaned against mine. My body was nearly pressed to his. The magic burned around us, breaking down the walls between us brick by brick. But then, what walls had I ever had, with him?

“From this night,” he murmured. “Until the end of nights,” I finished. “Your pain is my pain.” “Your heart is my heart.” And then, together, “I bind myself to you.”

In the darkness, I found solace. In the underworld, I found hope. And here, in this twin soul, in this love we built together, I finally found it: Home.