The Songbird and the Heart of Stone (Crowns of Nyaxia #3)

Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T he first thing I became aware of was the sound of someone vomiting their guts out.

I opened my eyes to see familiar silver rafters, arching overhead like a ribcage. Stone walls. Stretches of ivy.

Morthryn?

I sat up and was rewarded with a spinning head, so violent that it made me want to follow Chandra’s lead. She was on all fours, dry heaving, even though there was apparently nothing left to come up. Elias was already on his feet, though he swayed as he wrung out his cape of rotten blood. I was covered in it, too.

“Gods, what is that smell ?” I muttered, and then realized it was me.

Asar lay beside me, not moving.

Elias eyed him. “Is he…??”

I probably didn’t imagine that he sounded a little hopeful. Luce growled low in her throat, like she was offended by the mere implication of the question.

Asar was alive—I could see his chest rising and falling, albeit weakly. Still, a knot of concern formed in my stomach as I thought of the four dead who had grabbed onto him after I’d distracted him.

I leaned over him.

“Asar?” I shook his shoulder. “Asar!”

Then I raised my palm.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Elias muttered. “What are you going to do, slap him awake?”

Spoken like someone who didn’t know how good I was at slapping people awake. Couldn’t even count the number of times I’d done it on Raihn. Blessed hands.

Asar’s eyes snapped open.

Immediately, his face pinched into a scowl. He sat bolt upright.

“What were you about to do?”

I lowered my hand. “Nothing.”

Asar looked unconvinced, but he didn’t push it. His hand shot to his pack, and a wave of relief fell over his face as he touched its contents—the relic.

A very brief wave of relief.

Asar, I was quickly learning, didn’t seem to experience any pleasant emotion for longer than two seconds.

“That,” he grumbled, “did not go as it should have.” He shot Elias a glare. “I ordered you to hold your strike.”

A vein throbbed in Elias’s temple. He pushed his hair out of his face, the blood in it now flowing down his cheek. A well-timed breeze made me acutely aware that he smelled just as bad as I did.

“I wasn’t going to just stand there,” he said. “We got the relic. It ended fine.”

“The next time you disobey an order, you’ve just given me the excuse I need to let the dead have you,” Asar snapped.

Elias’s mouth opened. Then closed, a tiny movement that looked like it took herculean effort.

“Wise,” Asar said—though I sensed that his long, combative stare was a bit of a goad.

Men. They were the same everywhere.

I let out an exasperated sigh, and then, at the dagger glares Asar and Elias shot me, somewhat regretted it.

We were at the end of a hallway, a sheer stone wall behind us. The other direction extended off into mist. Ivy and roses crawled up the walls, encircling the rafters. Shallow water collected around our feet, mirroring the darkness above.

“Are we…?back where we started?” I asked.

This was Morthryn. I was certain of it. My bones shivered with that same mournful song, the same call, that I’d sensed in those halls.

Yet, there were differences, too. Deep cracks ran down the walls, smoky gloom pouring through them. The ivy sparkled—upon closer inspection, I realized that it was covered with frost, the leaves coming to silver-sharp points. The air was colder, and the light dimmer, flickering as if bestowed by candles on the verge of death. The mirrored floor quaked with barely there ripples, distorting the reflection.

Asar stood, adjusting his jacket. “In a sense.”

“You like giving nonanswers.”

“It’s not a nonanswer. It’s true. We’re in the Descent now. We left Morthryn behind, and we didn’t go backward. But Morthryn isn’t a building.”

“It’s a passageway,” I said.

“And to bridge the gap between worlds, it needs to run deep into the Descent, not just perch on top of it.”

I closed my eyes, envisioning it.

“Like a tree,” I said. “The building in the mortal world is the trunk. And now, we’re in the roots.”

“Yes. The paths can take us some of the way down. Though they’ll get…?difficult to access as we go deeper.”

“Difficult?” Chandra repeated.

Asar cast us a humorless smirk. “We’ve barely gotten started.”

Gods. It hit me all over again that this had just been the first Sanctum. The first of five .

I wasn’t one to shy away from intimidating tasks, especially not when I had a god at my back, but I felt a little sick at that thought.

Maybe it was the smell. I told myself it was the smell.

“But for now, we have an easy journey. For a while, at least.” Asar picked a thread of—was that sinew ?—off his coat, unmoved. “It will be a week or two before we reach the doorstep of Breath. Get some rest. Clean up. We’ll be off again shortly.”

He began to stride away, as if that was all the explanation any of us needed—and I was too tired to argue. But Elias called after him, “What about the relic?”

Asar stopped. Turned. “What about it?”

Elias’s gaze was fixed upon Asar’s pack, held tight in his grasp. “What was it?”

I was wondering the same thing, though Elias knew even less than I did. He’d been so busy holding off the dead that he likely hadn’t seen the branch at all.

Asar lifted one shoulder in an almost-shrug and turned away. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Elias said. “Yes, it does.”

But Asar didn’t turn back, disappearing down the hall without another word.

Morthryn, it seemed, had been ready for us. There were only a couple of rooms accessible to us—the rest were empty arches, bricked over—but they held clean clothes tucked away in dusty dressers, and carafes of blood, and even large tubs of water that we were able to use to wash away the worst of death.

I was especially grateful for the blood, though I tried not to show it. The smell of Chandra’s wounds was getting distracting. Acolytes thrived on self-deprivation, so in a twisted way, my time as a priestess had prepared me well for my vampire life. Still, I gulped down that cracked goblet of blood with shameful pleasure.

That night—or was it day? I couldn’t tell anymore—we commandeered the bigger of the two rooms for rest. Luce curled up near the door, though Asar was nowhere to be found. The rest of us gathered dusty blankets to create something that could pass for beds. Elias cleaned his sword in the corner, intently focused on his work. Chandra attempted to patch her wounds with torn scraps of fabric.

With my hunger sated, I allowed myself to approach her. She whispered beneath her breath, and up close, I recognized her words right away. Prayers, in a language so familiar it made my heart clench.

“You speak Atrean?” I said in my mother tongue.

It had been so long since I’d spoken it that the sounds were clunky on my lips. Did I have an accent now, I wondered?

Her brows rose. “I’m more surprised that you do.”

She shielded her wounded arm as I approached. I didn’t get too close, and gave her an easy smile. “I was born in Slenka.”

She winced. Everyone knew what it was like in Slenka.

“It wasn’t so bad,” I said—a half lie. “Then I went to Vostis. Spent most of my life there. Those forests! Those beaches! So beautiful.” I shook my head, smile bittersweet. “I miss it.”

“I’m from Aerenne. We had the forests there, too. Not like here. So…” Her eyes swept around the room—across the frost, the stone, the frozen ivy. “…dead.”

I couldn’t quite bring myself to agree with her. Raihn and I had traveled all over Obitraes. At first, I’d thought I would have to force myself to love it. But there really was so much beauty in this world. And even Morthryn seemed so far from dead. It already felt like one of the most alive places I’d ever been.

“Can I see your arm?” I held up a bottle of medicine. “I’ll patch it up for you.”

She seemed wary, which was understandable. But then she smiled. It was a kind, grandmotherly expression, shifting our power dynamic. Now I was the frightened child and she was the reassuring elder.

We were probably almost the same age. In another life, my face might look just like hers.

“I’m a healer, child,” she said. “I can do it.”

“Easier if someone else does.”

After a moment, she acquiesced. She watched me carefully as she extended her arm, the wound still dripping blood through her makeshift bandage. A test, I knew.

Even though I’d just eaten, the scent was agonizing. But I shoved my thirst down and tended to Chandra’s cut as if it were nothing remarkable at all.

“I met some members of the Helianen, back then,” I said as I worked. “Sometimes we would meet with a local sect, not too far away. A long journey, but always worth it. Gods, they had the best food.”

“Ah, yes. Perhaps you came to one of our parties. The food was the least of the pleasures, but I’m sure a pretty girl like you knew that.”

I laughed. Yes, the Helianen were known for being…?free. They were often healers, and secondarily worshipped Ix, the goddess of sex and fertility. The parties put even vampire debauchery to shame, which was saying something.

Not that I ever indulged. No one wanted to make a cuckhold of the King of the White Pantheon.

She sighed. “Gods, what I would give to be at one of those parties again.”

“Why did you come to Obitraes?”

The warmth disappeared from her expression.

“I didn’t choose to,” she said. “They needed a midwife.”

She didn’t need to say more. Vampires were unique creatures biologically. Reproduction was difficult, and their own magic—the magic of Nyaxia—was not well suited to healing. Thus, they often relied on human healers. Sometimes, they would force humans in their own districts to take up the practice. Other times, they would simply kidnap those who had the skillset they needed from nearby nations. One of our own was taken once. A middle-aged woman who never came back from one of her mission journeys.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly.

Chandra shook her head. “There is no light without darkness. There is no life without suffering.”

She said it in Atrean, and it sounded so painfully familiar that my heart hurt. “My sister used to say that.”

Chandra smiled. “She must have been very wise.” She drew a bisected circle over her chest—the sign of the sunrise, a common gesture among followers of the Helianen. “I can’t bemoan my circumstances. I still feel the sun. And you must be very devout, to still have your magic after…?your change.”

I started winding the bandages around her arm, watching the red bleed through the fabric. Watching too intently.

“It’s just a part of me,” I said lightly. “I can’t abandon it.”

I still feel the sun, she had said.

It was rare that Atroxus spoke directly to his followers, outside of those who were chosen, like me. But again, I found myself wondering if Atroxus had visited her, too, before this journey.

Redundancies, Asar had called us. Had Atroxus felt the same way?

I couldn’t ask her—I’d been explicitly forbidden to—but the question hung heavy in the silence.

“At least once this is done,” she said, “we’ll have our freedom. We can return home.”

We, she said. As if the Citadel would take me back now, even if I could return. But I appreciated how easily she said it, like it was a simple truth. I wished I lived in that world.

“You’ll have more than that,” Elias said from across the room. “Nyaxia will reward you for this. Whatever you desire.”

Chandra’s face hardened. “That is the only thing I want. Home.”

I thought of a forest and a great stone Citadel. I thought of Saescha.

Home.

I tied off Chandra’s bandage and presented it with a smile. “See? Good as new.”

It was satisfying to fix a straightforward problem.

She gave me a kind smile, but it quickly faded.

“If only this would all be as easy as this,” she said.

I lay curled up in dusty blankets, exhausted but unable to sleep. I’d listened to Chandra’s whispered prayers until she finally dozed off. Now it was silent.

I needed to sleep.

But in the darkness, I saw the bloody face of the boy who had grabbed me in the Sanctum. I’d pushed that memory away while I could cover it with distractions. Now, there was nowhere for my thoughts to go but in.

I imagined it, I told myself. I’d projected a face from my memories onto one of the dead. That was all.

Still. It shook me. I curled up, pulling the scratchy wool tight around myself. It had been a long time since those memories had been so vivid.

I missed Raihn.

In the beginning, when it was all at its worst, he used to catch me crying in my sleep and wake me up by sweeping me into one of those great bear hugs. I’d go straight from the cold claws of my nightmares to the warm safety of his protection—no in-between. I had always told myself that I had to be there for Raihn because I knew how much he needed someone to protect, especially in those early days. But it was selfish, too. We both knew it.

No one in the world was better at hugs than Raihn. The last time I’d seen him, it was that hug goodbye that almost broke my resolve.

They wanted me to stay, I knew. Oraya even said it—multiple times!—which felt like a great triumph. They’d make me a part of their family forever. They’d give me a room in the Nightborn Palace, a space at their dinner table, an overstuffed chair near the hearth. Never for a moment did I doubt how much they loved me.

And I loved them, too. So hard it hurt.

But I could feel the stains on my soul growing every day. I had disgraced a god. I had broken vows. I had killed a prince of the House of Shadow within their walls. When I would kneel to pray at sundown, the silence wasn’t just dismissive, it was ominous. I didn’t know how I knew something was coming for me, but I knew it in my bones. And I wasn’t about to let it hurt them. Not when I had seen, firsthand, how much they had suffered for what they built and just how fragile it was.

Besides, I was a missionary. This was my purpose. I found a broken soul. I helped them. And then I left. I had done it countless times before. Why would I stop now?

Still, the night I had set out, I’d paused at the end of the road, just before the palace gates, and I’d looked over my shoulder. Oraya and Raihn were on the balcony, but they weren’t looking at me anymore. They were standing nose to nose, laughing softly at words meant only for each other. She looked at him like he was a question answered. He looked at her like she was the only one worth asking.

I knew, in that moment, I was making the right decision. And even now, as much as I missed them—and gods, I missed them—that I had done the right thing.

Two souls saved didn’t make up for the ones I had damned. The mission I was on now just might.

Still. I wished I’d responded to their letters.

My lashes fluttered. I was so exhausted that I didn’t even feel it when sleep took me.

I dreamed of my wedding night.

I’d never felt so beautiful. I stared at myself in the mirror. I wore a gown of gold, the perfect shade to complement the rich brown of my complexion, the gold of my freckles. My hair had been tamed into elaborate braids, a few rogue curls escaping around my face.

Still, I felt uncomfortable. The dress was heavy, like my sixteen-year-old shoulders were too small to bear its weight.

“Such a beauty. A phoenix incarnate.”

I watched him in the mirror. He lounged on the bed, flawless lips curled against an apricot.

“What do you wish to ask, a’mara?” He stood and approached me, voice against my throat—right near the mark that someone else would leave years from this moment.

I turned around to face him. It hurt, genuinely hurt, to look at him sometimes—he was the perfection of a sunrise over the mountains, sunset over the sea, warmth after a long winter.

“You’ll never abandon us, will you?” I asked.

The words sounded so pathetically mortal. The kind of thing that I imagined human lovers whispered to each other in the dark— promise me you’ll always love me, promise me you’ll always stay .

My vows had included no such things. A god does not have to promise to love you forever. He doesn’t have to give you fidelity or affection. Instead, he takes your soul and offers it something so much greater: purpose.

I was so certain that he’d be angry at me for asking. But Atroxus—kind Atroxus—instead laughed.

“Of course not,” he said. “You are mine forever.”

He put down the apricot and lowered his mouth to mine, his lips still damp with another mortal pleasure.