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

Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

S omeone hauled me onto the shore. Blood ran down my face in rivulets. I coughed it up onto smooth ivory. My head spun. The world smeared. My hand went to my chest, which throbbed in twin rhythmic beats. The anchor.

Asar.

He was near. That had been him, in my memory, even if he hadn’t meant to be there—I was so certain of that, even if I didn’t entirely know why. All it had taken was that single second of locked eyes.

I had to go back—I had to?—

“Mische!” Delicate hands grabbed my sleeve, stopping me before I could throw myself back into the sea. “Stop, for gods’ sake! Stop! ”

Chandra.

The shock of seeing her forced me to catch my breath. She leaned over me, brows furrowed, silver hair whipping around her. The cliffs stood behind us. Ahead, the temple loomed, a jagged collection of ivory spires dipped in black red. It sat at the apex of multiple rivers, the streaks of blood all flowing into arched passageways beneath it, as if to provide a constant source of food for an eternally ravenous host.

It was windy and cold. The skies roiled, darkening in waves as spatters of red rain painted blood on the ivory patches of solid ground. The cliffs and earth trembled. And gods, the wraiths—so many of them. They crawled over each other deliriously. They dragged themselves from the blood, over the rocks, through the distant abandoned ruins, and it was only a matter of time before they descended upon us.

“We have to go,” Chandra said urgently. “Hurry, child, before they get here! Elias can help us get back to the surface.”

She thought I had fallen. She didn’t know I let go.

I was briefly offended on Asar’s behalf that anyone would ever think Elias could navigate Morthryn on his own. Then I noticed the hungry, hopeful way Chandra was looking at me, and I wondered if maybe there was a reason beyond benevolence that she came for me.

Still. I appreciated that she did. It was kind of her.

“I—thank you, but?—”

The anchor throbbed at my chest, and I got to my feet too fast, swaying. It was harder to see anything with the wraiths panicking and the waters churning.

Something about a mission and Atroxus and a holy task jumbled in my mind, but the truth was, none of it loomed nearly as large as my imminent fear for Asar.

“I have to go,” I said, but Chandra caught my elbow.

“Where are you going? This is our chance for freedom. Atroxus has given us this blessing. We need to take it!”

She forced me to look back at her, and for a moment, I was struck by just how much of a toll this journey had taken on her. She looked little better than the dead—gaunt and hollowed.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Atroxus had nothing to do with this. Nor the time.

“You go,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

But she didn’t release me. “Don’t die for one of them, ” she spat. “He’s a fallen soul. Leave him. You’re different from them. You’re a child of the light. Let it save you!”

A gust of wind whipped past me, and with it came a familiar bark. My heart leapt. I turned to see Luce at the edge of the shoreline near the temple, pacing frantically.

“Go without me,” I said, and ripped my arm from her grasp.

But then, when I’d only made it a few steps, another tremor shook the earth. Chandra’s frantic scream split the air. A sweet, unmistakable scent hit me—human blood.

I spun around to see Chandra thrashing on the ground beneath a wraith woman. The wraith had dragged herself out of the water and now snarled as she crawled over Chandra, red dripping from her fanged teeth. A second was clawing up the shore to join her, too, her blackened fingers wrapping around Chandra’s ankle.

You took them, the first hissed. I remember you. I remember it all.

Chandra wailed and thrust her hand out for me. “Help me! Gods, help me! Don’t let them take me!”

Of course I wasn’t going to leave her there. I didn’t think before I dove back for her and grabbed her outstretched hand.

At her touch, I saw it. Felt it.

Her past crashed through me, keening with the pain of its ghosts.

I saw Chandra, a young woman, brought to the House of Shadows’ shores in chains. I saw her kneeling before labor bed after labor bed, guiding screaming vampire women through their difficult deliveries.

And I saw her hold those tiny vampire babies, so much more fragile than what they would one day become, and snuff them out.

Bile rose in my throat. I tried to yank my hand away, but she clung to me. She saw the horror on my face—she knew what this place had shown me.

“Don’t let them take me!” she begged. “I don’t deserve it. I did what I had to. You understand.”

I did understand. She had offered every one of those tainted vampire lives to our shared god. She had culled the population of the creatures that had kidnapped and abused her.

She believed it was right.

An acrid sensation curled in my stomach—something I tried to deny I was capable of at all.

Hatred.

Behind me, Luce’s barks grew more distraught. I couldn’t save them both.

Chandra fought the wraiths’ hold as they dragged her into the river. Her eyes were wide with betrayal as I wrenched my hand free.

“Please, Mische. You can’t leave me!”

Under the laws of Atroxus, there were few greater sins than killing a fellow acolyte. My soul was already tainted. I could tell myself that I was not killing Chandra at all. I could tell myself that my inaction was not the same as murder.

I knew it wasn’t true. Not in my heart.

No, I couldn’t save them both, but I wouldn’t have tried even if I could.

Chandra let out a final, agonized cry as I turned away and bolted for Luce.

The wraiths were everywhere now. The entire Sanctum seemed to have awakened to our presence—or maybe even the Descent felt the power shift that had just happened. I wove through them, avoiding their reaching hands, until I met Luce at the shore.

There, there! she seemed to say, thrusting her snout to roiling red. If I looked closely, I could maybe make out a silhouette that could have been him, rapidly falling.

“You’re coming with me, right?” I said to Luce, and she yipped in agreement.

Dogs. We didn’t deserve them.

Third time I’m saving his life, I thought. Lucky man.

And jumped.

The little boy knew he shouldn’t be crying. Still, tiny dots of silver fell into the dead dog’s fur, dampening patches of congealed blood.

I recognized him right away, even though he looked so different now. I stood over him. It didn’t occur to me to speak. How could I? I had no throat, no mouth. I was floating, bodiless, watching a memory that wasn’t mine.

Asar had a lovely face, big dark eyes that peered from beneath a mop of messy dark brown hair. But the rest of him was disheveled, his clothes once fine but now patched and slightly too small. He knelt before what had once been his dog. Her long, slender legs tangled, two of them broken. Her sleek black fur was matted with red, but the wounds no longer bled. No, there wasn’t much blood left in her at all.

Malach stood over him and laughed.

“No tears, little brother,” he said. “What will our father say if he hears you’re weeping over food?”

Malach was cruel, arrogant, and vicious. Everything the heir of a vampire kingdom was groomed to be. Asar understood this, even at his young age. You are a king, his mother would slur between glasses of wine. Let them hate you. It will taste better when you eat their hearts.

It had been a mistake to tame the dog. A bigger one to love her.

Asar scrunched his eyes closed, hoping he could will the tears back inside of him. His arms wrapped tight around Luce’s mangled body, as if maybe she might offer him this one final gift of this one final comfort, when he needed it most.

But still, the tears came.

Malach knelt before him and smiled a perfect, vicious smile, fangs still wet with the blood of a beloved pet.

“Cheer up,” he said. “Just think, it could have been you.”

And then he sauntered away, leaving Asar alone, crying over his dead pet.

He didn’t understand, Asar thought.

Malach thought that the tears were sadness. And indeed, Asar was sad. But the tears that rolled down his cheeks weren’t of mourning. They were of rage —rage that boiled over inside of him, that made his small body shake as he drew his former best friend close.

In this moment, the boy made a vow:

They could beat him, they could break him, they could hurl fists and ugly words at him, and he would endure it.

But they would never take another precious thing away from this world ever again.

“Never,” he whispered, voice trembling with fury. “Never, never, never.”

I looked down at myself, lifting my hand. It was a shadowy outline, too faint to even be called a silhouette. I tried to reach for the child, but the memory faded away.

Reality reformed around young Asar in a dark room filled with bookcases. Luce’s corpse lay before him as a tall man enshrouded in dark stood over him. “Your father would like to see if you are capable of it,” he said. “Think of it as a test.”

I saw young Asar painting the glyphs under his instructor’s careful watch. I saw him collecting five little trinkets that represented the sum of his beloved pet’s soul.

The creature that Asar’s first attempt at necromancy created did not look like Luce, but he knew it was her. His instructor was impressed. Even his father was satisfied. None of that praise was worth nearly as much as Luce’s lithe body settling beside his, her snout nuzzling his cheek in a way that said, Thank you.

Memories blurred past me, years condensed into moments.

Asar, still a boy, before his father, who told him, “We shall make the most of your talents.”

Asar, training over magic, over glyphs, over swords, over knives, over countless different instruments of violence, as the years passed.

Asar, now a young man, putting that training to use. He wielded death like an artist. Delivering it quickly or drawing it out slowly. Promising it to those who feared it or denying it to those who begged for it. Driving a body to its brink only to pull it back again at the precise moment he desired. He could distill death to a single breath, a single heartbeat. He could haul back a soul who had met it prematurely. He delivered it in mercy, in revenge, in punishment, in reward.

He was committed to his craft, and he mastered it.

The memories withered again.

I stood in the center of a grand party. Shadowborn—I knew it instantly by the bronze, deadly pointed architecture, the tapestries of emerald and black, the ivy and roses that covered the walls. I felt strangely heavy, and I looked down to see that I did, indeed, have a body now. I wore an elaborate golden dress, smooth, unmarked skin exposed in a plunging neckline and slitted skirt.

My offering dress.

But no one seemed to take any notice of me. The party overflowed with vampire debauchery. Buffet tables had been picked over, the table-cloths now a collage of blood and discarded food. The air swelled with music, magically enhanced, shaking every corner of the ballroom at once. Vampires draped themselves over human blood vendors, suckling lazily at wrists or necks or inner thighs.

A man stood at the edge of the dance floor. My eyes found him immediately, though he seemed to be trying to disappear into the shadows. He held an untouched drink in his hand. The fine clothes fit him now, though he still looked like he was wearing a costume, as if everything was just slightly ill-suited.

He had no scars. His face was perfect. Made for paintings and sculpture.

“Asar,” I whispered. The shape of the name on my tongue cut through the haze. I started closer to him, sliding deeper into his memory.

Asar hated these parties. He knew he didn’t have much of a choice in attending—his father was not the kind of man one said no to, and besides, he was grateful that he was finally invited to them. Or at least he was supposed to be grateful. The Shadowborn king had decided to cultivate his spare heir, which, of course, Malach did not like. Fuck him.

It was almost worth it to suffer through it for the look of joy on his mother’s face when she saw the invitation. See? she told him. You are a king. I told you.

Asar knew that his mother saw him as a pawn, a stepping stone to power and acceptance in the court. And he knew just as well that her hopes were futile. One day, the Shadowborn king would decide that she had outlived her usefulness, and Asar would come home to find her dead in her bed, just as he had found Luce all those years ago. And he knew when that happened, he would mourn her, even though he spent his whole life trying not to love someone who did nothing but abuse him. But then again, so had his father, and here he was, kissing his ass at a party he didn’t want to be at.

He looked into the untouched blood wine?—

I forced my thoughts to untangle from Asar’s memory. I pushed through the crowd. My shoulders jostled against some other partygoers, but no one reacted to me.

“Asar!” I called. Gods, he seemed so far away.

Asar paused. His eyes, black as the night over the ocean, landed directly on me. That signature line between his brows deepened. He cocked his head, and I could’ve sworn, just for a split second, I saw the ghost of scars over the left side of his face.

His mouth opened?—

But just as he was about to speak, someone touched his arm.

The memory pulled him back.

Asar turned, barely tilting his drink away in time to avoid dumping it all over the woman’s dress.

“Oops,” she said, looking down at the flecks of blood on her hand. She was the perfect image of vampire nobility—dark auburn hair that ran over her shoulders in a silky waterfall, an immaculate black velvet gown, and fair eyes that assessed him with something between hunger and curiosity. A bright red scarf wrapped around her throat, striking against the pale of her skin.

Her gaze flicked to his glass. “That’s your fault for having a full drink this far into the night.”

Her lush lips curled. Asar watched them. She was nobility. He was a bastard, and no one let him forget it. He needed to focus on his work, not pretty smiles from pretty women.

Still. He watched.

“Ophelia,” she said. “If you were going to ask.”

Asar told himself that he had not been going to ask.

But when she extended her hand, for some reason—even though he knew he shouldn’t—he took it.

“Asar!” I called, but the world fell apart again, the party shredding like paper. I threw my hands up in front of my face as a loose scrap sliced my cheek, leaving a trail of blood. The memories moved faster now, coming apart before they even had time to form.

I felt Asar’s happiness.

No, not quite happiness—satisfaction. But for someone who had been striving his entire life, what was the difference? Ophelia was everything he was not. She manipulated hearts the way he manipulated death. Her weapon was shrewd charm, and her battlefield was Shadowborn high society. She was every bit as good at her art as he was. And he knew that he was another tool in her arsenal, a strategic decision. It didn’t matter. He had forgotten what a soft touch felt like, and he could not imagine giving it up again. They loved each other in all the ways that counted. It was already more than he could ever ask for.

Until it all came crashing?—

I held my hands up, pushing through an onslaught of the past. A little house in the city. Party after party, this time navigated with Ophelia’s astute skill, contrasted by rotting bodies and open hearts and bloody last words. A gathering at the palace. A sword gifted to him by his father, the swell of pride in his chest at the recognition. The hateful gaze of a jealous older brother.

It all rushed by, faster and faster, until I lost my footing and tumbled along through nothingness.

I landed on a hard wood floor, body cracking with the impact. The edges of my vision pulsed, as if someone was tearing at the edges of this reality, trying to rip through it.

But the memory was so vivid.

Asar knelt on the floor of that little house in the city. He was wearing the cape of the House of Shadow’s royal guard. The sword he had been so honored to receive, a weapon he’d once felt could do anything, had clattered uselessly to the floor when he came in.

I pushed myself up to my hands and knees. I had to fight for it. Everything about this memory was repressed, driving me down.

Asar was crying.

And in his lap was Ophelia, her body torn apart, blue eyes staring unseeing to the ceiling. Just like Luce all those years ago, they didn’t leave much blood in her, either.

Asar’s agony flooded me. Pain and grief and rage, rage, rage . He held Ophelia’s lifeless corpse close. No one was here to jeer at him this time, but he could hear the taunts nonetheless. He knew what had happened. He knew that Ophelia was punishment for rising too fast. A beautiful life with so much potential, ended for nothing but his brother’s petty jealousy, his need for dominance, his desire to destroy something just because he could not have it.

Dread rose in my chest, choking me, drowning me. I crawled toward Asar, reaching for him. His pain ached in my heart. I wanted to soothe the wound before it festered and became something so much worse.

But it was too late. Asar shut the door against the tender parts of his grief and opened the door to his violent fury. He had made a vow once, a long time ago, and he would fulfill it.

No, I tried to say, and I thought that maybe I heard it echo somewhere else, too, deep in the shadows.

But Asar was already rising, his damnation sealed.

Darkness fell over me. The floorboards under my hands splintered, then reformed. It was so, so cold. I was in the same house, but so much of it had changed—clutter everywhere, rancid carcasses in the corner from feeds, the air thick with the scent of death. Asar had painted every inch of the walls and the rafters with glyphs in white and red paint. The furniture had been pushed to the walls. Ophelia’s corpse lay in the center of the room, a circle painted around her.

He knew that it was not wise. Selfish, even. Ophelia had been dead for days by the time he found her. Wherever her soul had wandered, it would be gone now.

His necromancy had always been conducted in service to his father’s crown. To do it unsanctioned—let alone upon a noble-blooded vampire—would be punishable by death. Asar had sacrificed to earn the position he held. He’d scraped together those flimsy morsels of respect with blood and spit and guts, by doing the things that no one else wanted to do, things that kept him awake in long daylight hours, things he could never unsee. He would lose it all for this.

It wasn’t that Asar was not aware of the consequences of what he was about to do. It was that he simply did not care.

He had made a vow. He was a man of his word.

So he drew the circles, placed the items of Ophelia’s soul around her with the same care with which he smoothed the matted hair from her face, and he began his work.

The magic was so forceful that it stretched the seams of the universe itself. The corners of the room darkened. Red poppies bloomed through the floorboards, slinking over Ophelia’s lifeless limbs. I watched, unable to move, unable to speak, as Asar guided the mortal and the immortal worlds to collision. And for a few precious seconds, it was all so stunning—I had to admire it, the way a lifetime student of painting admires the work of a master.

But so quickly, it went so wrong.

The darkness kept coming and coming. The poppies multiplied too many times, pulling Ophelia’s body to the earth, the petals withering and rotting. Ophelia began to stir. A smile twitched over Asar’s gaunt face, the hope in it clear as a summer’s night. But my heart clenched. No. It was wrong.

Dread.

Maybe the first flutter of Ophelia’s eyelashes was her, the way she used to be. But the magic spun out of control. A tear of darkness ripped through the center of the room, catching her body in its grips. She let out a terrible wail, rolling over and clawing at the floor as her flesh and her soul were pulled in two different directions.

Asar’s little smile of hope so quickly soured to fear. He tried to dive to the center of the circle, but the forces of the dead surged through the tear he’d opened with more force than he could match. Countless hands stretched through the spell, cleaving straight through Ophelia.

He managed to get to his feet, grab his sword. He sliced the hands of the dead off Ophelia, or tried to, but he had been sloppy. The magic was powerful, but unstable. He had offered the dead what they wanted more than anything: a path back to life, and they would tear Ophelia apart to get it.

Ophelia lifted her head. Her eyes were pits of darkness, her mouth open in agony.

“What have you done to me?” she cried. She held on to him as the ceremony finally collapsed, the hole to death itself in the center of the room at last splitting open. Asar’s left arm fell into the shadow as he tried to hold on to her. The hands reached up his arm, clawing at his shoulder, his chest, his face, tearing at his left eye.

Ophelia screamed and screamed, the most inhuman, terrible sound.

“ What have you done to me? ”

I tried to crawl forward as Asar sank into the depths of death. Tried to get myself to my feet. But the floor shook violently, shards of burned paper falling from the ceiling. Was the house shaking, or was the memory collapsing? Did it make a difference? Either would eat him alive, savoring his agony with every moment.

Ophelia drew him closer. Tentacles of darkness now surrounded her, wrapping around him like chains.

“Asar!” I managed to choke out. “Come back!”

And I could have sworn that he hesitated—just for a moment.

But Ophelia’s death eyes snapped open.

They landed on me. A slow smile spread over her lips.

Run, I told myself. Run, run.

But my body wouldn’t move.

“Nosy, nosy bird,” Ophelia purred.

Asar looked up. His eyes met mine. Realization crashed over him. He leapt up and dove for me, my outstretched hand brushing his.

Someone grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled us up, just as Ophelia lunged.