The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King (Crowns of Nyaxia, #2)

by Carissa Broadbent

would also be his ruination, and that both would come in the unlikely form of a young human woman.

But you can’t stop time. Can’t stop death.

My husband smiled at me, lowering his raised fist, which had indeed been ready to knock one more fucking time. “There she is.”

Every humiliation, every violation, every strike, every casual agony. I remembered it all.

The look on Oraya’s face struck me. Satisfaction. Bloodthirsty satisfaction. The first time in weeks I’d seen something that looked like fight in her eyes. Goddess, I could’ve fucking wept for it. There she is, I thought.

It was all her. Deadly and stunning. Even her hatred was fucking beautiful.

“You made me kill you,” I ground out. “You made me do what you couldn’t do.

Mische said softly, “You don’t have to be fine.” She said it so simply. Like it was just a truth, nothing to be judged or disagreed with. I knew that she believed it, and in this moment, I loved her fiercely for that.

I thought of Oraya and her furious face and the way she spat in the eyes of things that could kill her with a flick of their fingers.

“I’d spend a lifetime at the tip of your blade, and it would have been worth it.”

“You have nothing but me,” I said. “And yet, you’d let me go?” “I have nothing but you,” he murmured. “So I am letting you go.”

I stepped closer, even though it was dangerous, even though that put us so close that our bodies were nearly aligned, my head tipped up to hold his stare, a sneer over my nose. “Fuck you, Raihn,” I whispered. “Fuck you.”

I didn’t know who moved first. The kiss was like a thunderstorm over the summer desert—a torrent that swept in all at once, obliterating the heat, so all-consuming that suddenly you remember nothing but the rain. All at once, he was everywhere.

He read my face and sighed. “Because you look so fucking fantastic, princess.

I lifted my sword, and we dove into the wall of death.

My downfall and my most valuable supporter. My weakness and my strength. My worst enemy and the greatest love I had ever known.

It was never that hard to find Mische at these types of events. She was always either near the food or the flowers.