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

Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

I jerked awake with a gasp.

The cavernous halls of Morthryn moaned a greeting as I sat up. I could’ve sworn that someone had grabbed my arm and shaken me, but when my eyes opened, there was no one before me but the shadows. No sound but my heartbeat.

Chandra and Elias were asleep. No Asar, but that wasn’t surprising—he had stalked off to gods knew where after he unceremoniously declared we’d be stopping to rest, and hadn’t returned.

But…?Luce wasn’t here, either. That seemed odd. She often stood guard when he didn’t.

A thick breeze rustled my hair, insistent, like the prison was grabbing my hand and pulling me to my feet.

I rose unsteadily and went to the door, careful not to wake the others. I peered out into the hall.

Strange. I didn’t remember the hallway branching out like this. But now, an open arch stood before me like a gaping maw, revealing stairs that led down into darkness.

Another breeze—this time, almost a gust.

Come, the prison seemed to whisper. Hurry.

Raihn would’ve called it reckless to just wander off into a shadowy hallway in the underworld.

But contrary to common belief, I wasn’t reckless. I just followed my gut. Some might even call that faith.

Right now, my gut said to follow.

And so, I did.

The steps blended together. The halls pulled me forward. The wind blew faster—as if Morthryn was whispering, Hurry, hurry!

I found myself running, even though I didn’t know why. I half slid down the stairs. When I hit flat ground, I had so much momentum that I almost sent myself flying face down to the floor.

I caught myself, skidding to a stop.

When I lifted my head, I had only seconds to make sense of the scene before me.

A gate of twisted wrought iron stood before me. A stained glass eye stared down with a half-shattered gaze from the apex of its arch. The gate was open; one look at what lay beyond it told me it was not of this world—undulating mist of purple, black, blue, green, stars and sunrises and fire and ice.

Smoke poured through, filling the small room—and with it came the dead.

I couldn’t count how many, but at least half a dozen broken forms lurched through the fog. Asar stood before them, silhouetted against the infinity of death, a one-man shield. His long jacket flew out behind him, swept up in the force of his spellcasting. He called to the shadows from every corner of the room, and they surrounded him like outstretched wings. His sword burned through the darkness, the broken blade glowing white.

He was magnificent.

He was also losing.

One of the wraiths clung to his left arm, while another lunged for his exposed right side. I couldn’t see his blood—it was too dark for that—but I sure as hell could smell it. And more dead poured through the open door, threatening to overwhelm him. Luce ran back and forth across the door, trying to stave them off, but the two of them were sorely outnumbered.

I acted before I allowed myself to hesitate.

I dove into the morass, lunging for the dead that clung to Asar’s sword arm. I stretched out my hand and reached inside myself for the light of the sun.

The dead turned to me, black eyes dragging me in.

The flame did not come.

Shit.

Asar shot me a look of shock that I only saw for a split second before a wraith collided with me. I staggered back, barely protecting my face. I, stupidly, had not brought my sword—I had no weapon now but the sun that had abandoned me. The wraith clawed at me. One of my sleeves slid down to my elbow and I let out a gasp of pain as her death-black fingers wrapped around bare skin.

Asar’s warning echoed in my head: Don’t let them touch you.

I tried the flame again. I had to push deeper this time to grab hold of that little piece of humanity and pull .

Light flared to my hands, and the corpse lurched back into the gloom.

But there were so many more. I fought another back, drawing it away from Asar before Luce pushed it back through the gate. Another grabbed my shoulder, and I whirled around, ready to strike again?—

He looked at me with pleading eyes, half his face sloughing off.

Mische, help me, he begged.

He looked even less human than he had out in the Sanctum. His one visible eye was a pit of darkness. And the voice—it didn’t come from his throat. It slipped straight into my mind, like an echo of a memory.

Mische, let’s go home. He’ll forgive you.

I couldn’t move. My flames had withered away. The dead boy pulled me closer.

Help me, he moaned.

I was reviled by him. I was entranced by him. I wanted to push him away. I wanted to let him drag me to my long-overdue death.

“Get him off!” someone was shouting at me.

I couldn’t. This was a friend—a friend who was begging me for help. He pushed me, my head cracking against the ground as he crawled over me?—

But then, just as quickly, someone hauled him away, leaving me gasping for breath. I sat up to see Asar and Luce dragging him to the door. He reached for me as they cast him into the dark.

Take me home ? —

I lurched after him on instinct, before I stopped myself.

After the final wraith was through, Asar collapsed to his hands and knees. I approached him, uncertain, and when I drew closer I could see black blood plastering his shirt to his body. But save for one confused glance, he barely acknowledged me. He dragged himself to the right side of the door and pressed his hand to the bent silver frame. His lips moved with silent words. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple, pasting down a perfect swirl of deep brown hair.

He needed help. I knew he did, but I didn’t know how, or why, or with what. The ghost of the wraith’s grasp still burned on my skin, making me dizzy.

“What are you?—”

“Concentrating,” he barked.

With a rough shove, Luce pushed me to the opposite side of the arch. I stumbled against the frame, knees hitting the ground hard. Darkness sloshed within the arch like water raging against cliffs. A wordless scream was building, building, in my ears, and I couldn’t tell if it was from beyond the door or within my own head—both?

I ran my hands over the metal frame. Carvings had been etched into it, which now erratically pulsed with faint, flagging light. I pressed my fingers against them, trying to discern the shapes. Glyphs. Not any kind I recognized, but?—

Luce jabbed my back. She frantically darted between me and Asar, who now sagged, barely conscious, against his side of the door.

Tell me what to do, I started to say. But then the ether within the door surged, and I pressed my hand to the glyphs in just the right way, and awareness flooded me.

I could feel it all.

Could feel the door, metal and magic and a thousand invisible forces more, straining to hold back what thrashed beyond. Could feel the sharp edges of broken glyphs and tired spells, uselessly twisted like scraps of rusted iron. And most of all, I could feel the hunger of what lay beyond that gate—ravenousness that could crush the world in its starvation pains.

The threads of Asar’s magic flapped free like a frayed net. He was trying to restore those broken glyphs and pull the gate closed again. He poured everything he had into it—I so acutely sensed his exhaustion, just as I sensed, beyond any doubt, that his remaining strength would not be enough.

The answer was so close, so easy, so natural. Like gulping down a breath of air when your head broke the surface of the water. I didn’t even consciously choose it.

Asar’s open invitation was right there, a sentence waiting to be finished, and I took it. Power flooded me, from his unfinished spell, to the shadows in the corners of the room, to the pool inside myself that I’d been ignoring for the last fifty years.

The gate snapped closed.

The force sent me flying back. My head smacked against the ground. I tasted blood at the back of my throat. I thought perhaps I saw Atroxus’s disapproving face, but he was gone before I could reach for him.

Luce stared down at me, dancing urgently in place.

Get up get up get up ? —

I sat up.

The gate was now just an empty arch, silver bars crossed over it like arms across the chest of a resting corpse. Visually unassuming. But power still pulsed at its edges—want howling beyond it.

Asar was crumpled in a heap next to the gate.

Luce trotted over to him, nudging him, circling him, before returning to me.

“I’m coming.” I stood and almost fell back to my knees. When I made it over to Asar and knelt next to him, it was tempting to just lie down with him and go to sleep.

Luce let out a small whine as I rolled Asar over, gently prodding him with her nose.

My heart warmed. She really loved him.

“He’s all right,” I told her. “I promise.”

Was he, though?

Asar’s eyes were closed, his lashes dark against his cheeks, even in contrast to the shadows that perpetually ringed his eyes. He was breathing, but shallowly. Did I imagine that his scars looked more severe?

I shook him. “Asar. Asar. ”

Luce whined impatiently.

I raised my open palm just as Luce jabbed him hard with her nose.

Asar’s eyes opened just before my hand made contact with his face. It was too late to stop.

“Shit,” I squeaked. “Sorry!”

“Fuck,” he groaned.

It was a bit satisfying to hear Asar curse.

But even that was short-lived. His lashes fluttered. A sweet, heady scent hit my nostrils. He was bleeding so much that my knees were soaked through with it.

Gods, why did his blood smell like that? Better than human.

“Up,” he ground out.

“Up?”

His arm twitched, like he was trying to point but couldn’t make his body cooperate.

“Where?” I said. “Asar, help me here. Where? ”

Luce darted to the staircase. She ran up a few steps, then back down. Up. Down.

Follow. Follow.

I looked down at Asar, who teetered on the edge of consciousness. Then back to the stairs.

My first instinct was to laugh. Asar was lean, but he was still much larger than me. But Luce’s distraught whines twisted a knife in my heart. They left little to argue with.

I grabbed Asar’s limp arm and slung it over my shoulders. I could barely keep myself upright. I didn’t know how I was going to manage this.

“You’ve got to give me a little help here,” I said. “Please?”

He moaned a sludge of almost-words. I chose to believe it was meant to be, Whatever you need, Mische, because I am so, so grateful that you’re saving my life. Again.

I started climbing.

Luce was practically dragging us both along by the time we made it to the top of the steps. I had been expecting that we’d end up back where I started, in the hallway near the others. But instead, when Luce summoned me to the landing with an urgent yip, only a single wooden door stood before me.

Maybe I’d gotten my directions mixed up. Or maybe Morthryn just didn’t follow the rules of the physical world. I couldn’t bring myself to care in the moment. The edges of my vision blurred, and my muscles screamed. It took all my focus just to keep myself standing.

I shifted Asar’s weight to free up a hand to open the door, but it swung open in an unprompted invitation.

I wasn’t about to question that gift, either.

“Thank you,” I said, because it seemed like it was probably best to be very, very polite to the sentient, god-touched prison.

With Luce’s help, I dragged Asar inside, and the door shut behind us.

It was a bedchamber. Light spilled from dying candles over neat bookcases, a desk, an armchair, a cramped upright piano. A slightly ajar door in the corner revealed a glimpse of a washroom. A large bed stood in the middle of the room, velvet blankets smoothed over the mattress but still bearing the imprint of whoever had last sat there.

It was all so…?lived-in. Fine, clearly belonging to someone of means, but not nearly the level of cold opulence that I’d seen at the palace. It was inviting.

That bed looked incredible. Hell, I’d take the carpet. I wanted to curl up in those furs and sleep.

I wanted it so, so, so much. Gods, I was exhausted?—

A bark made my eyelids snap open.

Luce stood beside the washroom door, dancing from one foot to the other.

“Not the bed?” I asked.

Why were my words slurring?

She growled her disapproval.

I sighed. “If you say so.”

The ten steps across the room were more painful than the flights of stairs before it. Asar was now useless, his head hanging back, feet dragging. The scent of his blood was unbearably distracting.

A copper claw-footed tub sat at the center of the washroom. It was already filled with…?water? No, not water. My eyes couldn’t focus on it. The surface was blurry, ripples blending into ripples. Depending on how the light shifted, it looked clear, or white, or black, or red.

Luce took Asar’s now-limp hand in her jaws, dragging him toward it.

“You’re not making…?this easy, Luce…”

My voice sounded very far away.

And then I was slumped against the rim of the tub, Asar’s body leaning on mine. Luce was trying to hoist him in, tentacles of shadow pulling at him. His clothing was disheveled. We’d lost the jacket somewhere in the stairwell and now his torn shirt had slipped down his shoulder to reveal tan skin and black scars.

My blurring vision settled on the lines of black-blue spreading over the muscles of his chest. It’s very pretty, actually, I thought. Like flower roots.

Luce jabbed at me. My eyes snapped open. My cheek was pressed to the copper.

Help me, she commanded.

She positioned herself under Asar. With her help and a dizzying wave of pain, I managed to hoist him into the tub—barely. His forehead smacked against the metal, one arm dangling free, blood dripping from his head to the tile floor. The liquid within splashed a waterfall over the edge, drenching my trousers.

I sagged, breathing heavily.

Something hard sharply pushed at my backside. I swatted at it in annoyance. I was so tired. I could sleep right here on the tile floor.

A rough bark.

Luce wound herself under my stomach, tendrils wrapping around my wrists. She barked, firmly.

Get in.

In the tub?

“Silly girl,” I slurred. “He’s already in there.”

Asar, I was certain, wouldn’t like it if I climbed into the bath with him.

But Luce just kept barking.

Get in, she insisted. Get in, get in.

“Fine, fine!” I mumbled.

I managed to throw myself into the water. I landed against Asar, his arms cocooning around me, my head tucking beneath his chin.

He’ll be very unhappy when he wakes up, I thought, but I couldn’t make myself move. His body was warm. The water was gentle. He smelled like ivy. I was so, so tired, and being here made it easier to stop thinking about the disfigured face of a boy I used to know.

The last thing I saw was Asar’s blood running down hammered copper—or was it mine?

Luce licked my dangling fingers, as if to say, It’s all right. Let go.

But I didn’t have a choice. I was already gone.