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

Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I t was a lazy strike. Asar never would have allowed it to land under any other circumstance. Elias twisted the knife, yanked it from Asar’s flesh. Luce released a roar worthy of a guardian and lunged for Elias. I let out a strangled cry and jumped forward, but Chandra yanked me back.

“No! Don’t get in his way?—”

Asar recovered quickly, drawing his sword as Elias batted Luce away with a mighty blow. His magic flared, but it was erratic, lacking his typical skill. He was injured and disoriented.

I ripped free of Chandra’s grip, calling for fire that was too slow to answer.

Elias pulled Asar close, their weapons locked between them.

“You’d make a shit king,” Elias said, and gave Asar a forceful push, right toward the cliff’s edge.

I didn’t think. I just ran.

Luce dove after us. Chandra screamed my name. Asar’s eyes widened as he flew back, and I could’ve sworn he started to shake his head. No.

My body slammed against the stone, my hand grabbed Asar’s, and we were falling together. I tasted my own blood. Smelled Asar’s, thick and sweet as honey.

I grabbed hold of a ledge of stone at the edge of the steps, fingernails digging in. With my other hand, I held on to Asar?—

And then there was nothing.

No weight. No hand in mine.

I looked down and saw only a sea of endless, rippling red.

Asar was gone.

Luce—gods bless her—didn’t even hesitate. Her stride didn’t break as she dove over the cliff’s edge.

Elias knelt before me.

“I’d like your help getting back through Morthryn to the surface, since it seems to have taken a liking to you.” He offered me his hand. “The queen would be appreciative. Perhaps grant your freedom.”

Chandra was already getting ready to help pull me up. But I looked down at the blood below, still rippling where Asar had plunged into it.

If I fell, I’d be at the mercy of Psyche. Likely get gobbled up by a Souleater or torn apart by wraiths.

But if I let Elias take me, Asar would be lost.

It wasn’t even a choice, was it?

You always do the most reckless things, Raihn would always say to me. His voice crossed my mind now, and I had to admit, he was right.

I let go.

“Mische!” Chandra cried after me.

In those final seconds before I hit the ground, I pressed my hand to my chest—threw all my awareness into the anchor, into tightening the thread of connection between Asar and me.

And then the Sanctum of Psyche swallowed me up.

The years fell over me like rain.

I was two years old, five years old, six years old. A clay house in a bustling city, the deep green leaves of the forest I’d once loved, the endless roads of endless travel, and the hands of a sister who led me through all of them.

I was eight years old, kneeling at the Citadel of Destined Dawn before Atroxus’s light. I was so young. I didn’t know to be afraid. And why should I be? The sun had saved me, and a god was smiling at me. He cupped my young face in his hands, examining me.

You will be mine, he said, and I had never felt so happy in my entire life. When my body glowed with the sign of Atroxus’s divinity, -everyone was smiling at me.

But the only face I looked at was Saescha’s, beaming, tears in her eyes. She knelt before me, her hands on my shoulders. “Everything will be different now,” she said. “He has saved us because of you. A god has chosen you. Do you know what that means?”

I did—it meant we would be safe. I grinned at her, too overjoyed to speak. But then, my smile faded. I noticed something odd in the background, buried in the leaves of the forest behind her shoulder. A silhouette—a familiar silhouette. It was barely visible, just the faintest outline. It looked so familiar. Why?

A firefinch let out a shrill chirp, startling me. It perched on the statue of Atroxus’s visage. Its feathers were more brilliant than the sunrise, its song lighter than the breeze. But something was wrong. Its brilliance was too bright, too sharp. Its song was an octave too low, like a funeral hymn.

I reached for it?—

“It is not as beautiful as you are.”

I lowered my hand. The firefinch now sat in a magnificent cage of gold.

I was no longer upon the altar. I was in the highest room of the Citadel, a place of such incredible finery that I was afraid to touch anything. Dawn poured over the bed, the room, through the glass ceiling, creating a glittering symphony of all the gold treasure within. All offerings to Atroxus.

I was sixteen years old. I was wearing the most magnificent dress I’d ever seen. At every fitting, I had stroked the silk with such tentative fingers, in disbelief it was real. My friends, artisans at the monastery, had pored over its creation—painstakingly stitching beads and embroidery, designing flawless drapery to sweep around my body. It was more revealing than anything I’d ever worn, the bodice framing my cleavage, my shoulders and back exposed, two long slits revealing my thighs when I moved.

The first time I’d worn it, I’d tried to hide my self-consciousness. It felt like a costume, too heavy for my sixteen-year-old shoulders. But it was a wedding dress, or at least, the closest thing to one I’d ever wear. Shouldn’t it be grand?

Now, as I looked at myself in the mirror, gold makeup dusted on my eyelids and cheeks and cleavage, I realized just how well I fit within a room of offerings to a god.

The offering was not the dress. The offering was me.

Atroxus lounged on the bed, an apricot to his lips, watching me.

The ceremony had been completed, but he hadn’t yet laid me down on that bed. I was nervous and excited, my head spinning slightly from the wine I was now allowed to drink.

In this moment, I was happy.

I’d had a wonderful day surrounded by people who loved me. The god I adored was now looking at me as if I were a delicacy. The pos-sibility of my physical offering still lay before me, ripe with hope.

“Come here, a’mara,” Atroxus said. His command was dawn—inevitable. He finished the apricot and left the pit discarded on the sheets.

But a strange sensation prickled at the back of my neck. I looked at the firefinch. There was a shadow beside it. An odd trick of the light.

I started to move toward the bird.

“Stay here,” Atroxus said.

I paused, a brief glimmer of clarity falling over me.

That wasn’t how it had gone. He hadn’t said that, just as I had not reached for the bird. But there was such pity, such compassion, in his voice. More than I had ever gotten from him in life.

Stay here. Stay in this moment, when you’re happy and you have purpose, when everyone loves you, and you’re wearing a gorgeous dress that your friends worked so hard to create for you, and you truly believe that what he feels for you is love.

Stay in this moment, before he opens you up and takes you like another meaningless offering, before he leaves you alone in a room of gold, staring at the dress he ripped off you and discarded.

Stay in this moment, before you have that little crack of doubt.

Because the doubt would lead to the desperation, and the desperation would lead to the mistakes, and the mistakes would lead to my downfall.

But I was never very good at listening.

I reached for the bird anyway.

I stood on a ship at the edge of the world, a candle in eternal darkness. My friends were with me, people who trusted me more than anyone. Saescha’s mouth was drawn into a thin line.

“This is a mistake,” she said.

“It will be wonderful,” I countered. And the worst part was, I believed it—believed that our god would protect us, that we would find a vampire soul to save in his name, that we would return home heroes. I believed it because I had to. I had to earn his love, and the price to keep it just went higher and higher.

None of us were na?ve. We had endured horrors that would make most pale—starvation, war, abuse. But it’s a strange cocktail, suffering and faith. A dangerous one that makes you think you can survive anything.

I looked up at the firefinch, perched on a leafless tree upon the shore. It hurt to look at it, its feathers too bright against the darkness of the Obitraen sky. Someone stood next to it, but I couldn’t pull them into focus.

Mische, someone called.

“Wait,” I started to say, the word sticky on my tongue. But I couldn’t get it out. After all, one cannot change the past.

The world shifted again.

I sat in a memory that had long since abandoned me.

I was sitting in a garden beside my soul to save. His beauty rivaled even that of Atroxus—full lips, high cheekbones, smooth skin. I knew he was old, likely centuries so, but he barely looked older than me. All except for his eyes—his eyes were black and ancient. I kept staring into them. They reminded me of the dark brown of someone I knew—someone?—

The vampire leaned close to me. He slid his arm around my shoulder. Gods, he was so stunning. I kept slipping back into that allure like a shore that wouldn’t relinquish me.

“Come with me,” he whispered. “And you can show me all the ways I have sinned.”

An open door loomed beyond us, a promise of a future that hadn’t happened yet—one that, in this moment, still could be everything I wanted it to be. Stay, the memory begged.

But my gaze rose over his shoulder, to a little golden bird.

A little golden bird, perched on the shoulder of a man.

I could not see his face, which was shrouded in shadow. But one eye glowed silver, light trailing from it.

Something nagged at me.

The vampire’s mouth was on my throat now, tongue pressing against the most sensitive parts of my flesh. A kiss, or a taste.

My breath hitched, but my eyes still locked on that bird—that shadow.

“Stubborn girl,” the vampire murmured. “What would it take to make you stay?”

He pulled back to look into my face, and I startled.

It was no longer the face from my memory. A different vampire prince—vampire king—stared at me now. I hadn’t realized that I’d memorized Asar’s face so clearly. Every harsh angle and soft curve. Even the intricate arrangement of his scars.

“Is this more your taste, Iliae?” he said. The hand moved farther up my skirt, a shock running through me as fingers stroked the slick there—even that one touch more attention to my pleasure than Atroxus had ever offered.

My lashes fluttered as he kissed my throat.

“You’ve seen how I’ve studied you,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t stop until you were so exhausted from pleasure that you begged me for rest.”

One finger slipped into me, and I gasped, his groan vibrating against my throat.

His tongue darted out against the angle of my jaw, pressing to the pulse of my jugular vein. His other hand moved up my body, thumb rolling over my hardened nipple.

It was so easy. My body opened for him like a blooming flower. His cock, hard and straining, ground against my core. His mouth moved to mine.

“Let me defile you, Dawndrinker,” he murmured. “Please.”

I tensed.

What was it that dragged me back to reality? Was it the odd, sad tinge to the way he said that word? Please .

I struggled to force myself to awareness. Where was I? What was this?

It hadn’t happened this way.

I opened my eyes. The firefinch perched right above us now, screaming a cacophony of warnings.

“Asar,” I whispered.

I drew back from him. He stopped, too, as if he were waking up from a dream. He blinked the desire from his eyes.

He had said that Psyche would try to draw us in. It would offer us bait.

Bait. We were each other’s bait.

His eyes widened. “Iliae,” he breathed. And as the realization crashed over us, he was already starting to fade, fingers tightening around me?—

But a violent force yanked me away, and our strange, tangled memory unraveled.