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

Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

W e trudged on for several long, gray days. Asar was quiet and sullen, even by his standards. Elias barely spoke, save to mutter angrily under his breath. Chandra continued with her whispered prayers. Morthryn grew darker and colder.

Asar did not come to get me to help with gates or to push me into training, and I was surprised to find myself oddly disappointed by it. He said nothing at all, actually, even to me. At least I got to rest. But resting just meant being alone with the nightmares, which were painfully vivid since returning from Breath.

The worst one came three nights in. I dreamed I was back in the temple. Wraiths surrounded me, broken bodies on a broken floor, the delicate silvery mist of spirits trailing weakly into the air.

I looked down at the souls scattered at my feet like dead leaves, half-eaten, barely alive enough to fear their own oblivion.

They would die here.

“I’m so cold,” a familiar voice said. “I just need to get warm.”

Eomin.

I dropped to my knees. Eomin looked up at me through a translucent eye. His body wasn’t solid anymore. Chunks of flesh had been bitten away. I tried to touch him, but my hands passed straight through.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I can help you.”

I can help you. Magic words. I tried so hard to always make them true. But now, they tasted like a lie.

A silver tear fell through his body, splashing on the tile floor.

Another voice, a woman’s, came from behind me.

“All we need is light, Mi,” she said. “That’s all. Please.”

That voice. It had been so long. I’d started to forget what it sounded like—a little like mine.

“Look at me,” she said.

But I squeezed my eyes shut. I was such a coward.

“I can help you,” I whispered.

I tried to offer light. But though the burns gnawed my skin, my god was silent.

“Please,” Eomin begged. “Please.”

“Please, Mische,” the voice pleaded. “I followed you. I trusted you.”

“I can still save you,” I wept. I forced my eyes open and turned around, but all that was there was a dead firefinch, its guts crawling with maggots.

I flew upright before I was really awake. My dream, thick and sticky, still clung to me. Morthryn was calling to me. I wasn’t sure when I started to feel like it was speaking to me, too, all those creaks and moans beginning to take on the cadence of sentences. The others slept, exhausted by our journey and already dreading the next leg of it.

Eomin.

It wasn’t just a dream. I knew nightmares, and this wasn’t one. This was a vision. I leapt up, running down the halls. I didn’t need to think about where I was going. Morthryn guided each step, all the way to the gate.

This one was in poor shape. The top of the arch had broken off completely, leaving just two lonely bronze pillars standing in a slightly crooked monument to death. The veil shifted anxiously, a little faster than it should be in the breeze that shouldn’t be there.

Eomin’s voice still echoed in my ears, tangling with those of the wraiths in the temple: I’m cold, I’m hungry, help me, Mische.

I trusted you.

He was here. I was certain, he was here. I expected to see him, that half-eaten wraith, clawing through the gate.

I ran to it?—

A firm grip stopped me.

Mische! the voices called, the veil rippling with the imprints of their fingertips.

“They’re coming for me.” I barely recognized my own voice. “The gate, they’re?—”

“You can’t touch it.”

Asar’s voice. I didn’t look back at him, railing against his hold.

“They’re right there. I can see them, I can hear them?—”

“Wake up, Iliae. Wake up. ”

Bitter cold pierced my cheek, piercing the veil of my dream.

My back was to the wall. Asar held me there, his brow furrowed, forehead bent toward me. His hands cupped my face, holding my gaze to his.

“Look at me,” he said. “Remember where you are. Breathe.”

I tried to, but my chest hurt. The inhale was a ragged mess. I was crying. Not just crying but sobbing.

“I—I?—”

“One more,” he commanded.

I obeyed, forcing in and out another shaky, painful breath.

He nodded, as if I’d passed evaluation. But he didn’t let go of my face, and even though it was probably because he wasn’t sure what I’d do if he released me, I was shamefully grateful for the touch.

“They’re here,” I forced out. But this time it was weaker, wavering with uncertainty.

“No one is here. The gate is standing.” He let out a breath, and then said it again, lower, as if to himself. “No one is here.”

I blinked, looking over Asar’s shoulder into the room. Nothing but dust and broken stone. No dead. No wraiths. No voices. The shattered door stood, silent and empty, in the gloom.

“It wasn’t a dream,” I said.

I was sure of that. I knew nightmares well enough to know by now.

Asar’s hands fell. Their warmth, and that press of cold, lingered on my cheeks, which now felt oddly exposed to the word. I glimpsed something green in his hand. Ivy, I realized—that was the chill against my cheek. He’d grabbed the nearest freezing thing and tried to shock me out of my vision. Now it thawed in his hand, his palm wet with the glistening remains of melted ice. He glanced at it briefly, but didn’t drop it, curling his hand and tucking it into his pocket as he turned to the desolate gate.

“We’re getting deep into the Descent now. The boundaries between worlds are weaker. And the rules of the mortal world are getting farther away. So far, the dead have been our biggest threat. But the next Sanctum is Psyche. Soon, our own minds will start preying on us, and that’s…?just as dangerous.”

His throat bobbed as he looked to that broken door. It occurred to me that it had been no coincidence he found me. Something had driven him here, too.

Who had he seen?

Her?

I closed my eyes, but just saw Eomin’s half-eaten face among those dead wraiths. Help me, Mische.

A fresh wave of nausea rolled over me. I leaned against the wall, my head spinning.

“Goddess’s sake, Iliae.” Asar steadied me immediately. “I just told you, it’s all right. Nothing is here.”

He didn’t understand.

“That’s the—that’s the?—”

Gods fucking dammit. I was crying again.

“It’s not about the gate,” I managed.

“Then what is it about?”

I sank to my knees, and Asar came right down with me. When I managed to get my eyes open, he was looking at me like I was an ancient tome that didn’t make any sense.

“What?” he pressed.

I finally managed, “We haven’t seen him. Eomin. Not at the recent gates, or in Breath. He’s gone. He was killed by a souleater or?—”

“Oh.”

I could’ve sworn Asar let out a breath of relief, though he hid it well, and I found his dismissiveness infuriating.

“He doesn’t deserve that,” I bit out. “Just nothing, like that? Forever? ”

Not even the suffering of his half death. Just…?nothingness. I couldn’t imagine anything more unjust.

I’d led him here, and that was the end he got?

Asar was silent for a moment.

Then he said, “Your friend was not eaten by a souleater.”

“How do you?—”

“I know.”

“But how?—”

“I just know.”

I sniffed. My sobs had subsided. Now I scrutinized Asar, whose face was a mask, save for the faintest, faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“How?” I demanded.

He didn’t answer.

I leaned closer to him, slowly, inch by inch, until my nose was nearly touching his.

“Asar Voltari, Wraith Warden, Prince of the Shadowborn, caretaker of Morthryn, I can read you like a gods-damned book,” I said. “And you want to tell me, because if you didn’t, you would have wandered off to go loom menacingly in the shadows by now.”

His brow furrowed. “Is that what you think I do?”

“How do you know? How do you know he wasn’t…”

The dream came back to me, powerful and unwelcome. Suddenly, teasing Asar seemed much less fun. It must have shown on my face because his smirk disappeared.

And maybe, just maybe, the notorious Wraith Warden of the House of Shadow actually felt sorry for me.

He sighed wearily, stood, and extended his hand.

“Come with me.”