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

by Carissa Broadbent

And he cared about none of it, because he was losing the love of his life.

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.

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

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.

Acaeja smiled as she straightened. Her wings went dark as fate shifted. “Billions of threads,” she murmured, “and not a single one where you say no.” And then she drew the threads tight, and the world rearranged.

Another spear of pain bolted through my chest, leaving me gasping. An onslaught of images, too quick to decipher, flashed by. But I didn’t need to see them to feel it. Hear it. Notes of a song that sounded like him. The next words of a sentence we hadn’t yet finished. “Asar.” The name was a sudden exhale. I didn’t mean to say it out loud.

“Hello, Warden,” she whispered. “Hello, Dawndrinker.”

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

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.”

“Why?” he said. I watched his lips curl around the word, a breath and a thousand miles away, and a fierce twist pushed against the inside of my chest—a sensation so painfully close to a heartbeat that I could almost taste life on my tongue. I was certain that I’d taste it on his.

“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.”