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

Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

M orthryn no longer offered us hallways to travel between, not even the broken ones we’d used to get to Psyche. We had no choice but to travel on foot through the barren deserts of the Descent. Asar directed us on winding, convoluted paths to avoid the worst of the souleaters and wraiths. I was expecting that the journey would be difficult, and it was. But the harsh terrain and cold air were the least of our problems. The greatest challenge of being a vampire journeying to the underworld was that vampires required live prey, and there wasn’t much alive down here at all. Our injuries healed slowly. Asar had managed to salvage just one bottle of blood, the stash he’d personally been carrying, in the wake of Elias’s attack. We carefully rationed it, drinking what we needed to survive and not a drop more.

It was enough to keep us moving—for now—but not enough to keep the hunger away. The scent of Asar’s blood was torturous.

I grabbed onto whatever distractions I could. My favorite of these activities was asking Asar unrelenting questions—what’s your favorite color, what’s the prettiest place you’ve ever been, who was your first best friend, what’s your biggest petty annoyance? Asar must have really been suffering, too, or maybe he took pity on me, because he was shockingly tolerant of them (the answers being “Green,” “Morthryn at sunset,” “Luce, obviously, ” and, with a petty smirk, “This conversation,” respectively).

“What’s something you’ve always wanted to learn but never have?” I asked one night as we trudged through rolling, dusty dunes. The hills were so steep and the sand so fine that we moved in slow motion, each step falling out from under us.

Asar, to his credit, always took my questions seriously. He thought for a moment, then answered, “The cello.”

My nose scrunched. “The cello?”

“Is there something funny about that?”

“You just don’t seem like the cello-playing type.”

I’d seen instruments in his various chambers in Morthryn—several pianos, and a violin, once—but for some reason it had never occurred to me that they were there because he actually played them. I thought they were just artifacts from the prison’s mysterious, ancient past, like so much else in its halls.

Asar gave me a flat stare over his shoulder. It was so cold that his exhale puffed from his nose like cigarillo smoke, emphasizing his indignation. “What type do I seem like?”

“You seem like the type who likes…?books. And rules.”

“I do like those things.” He turned back, but sounded like he was trying not to smile. “But I also appreciate music, Iliae. Like all sophisticated people should. Is that really so surprising?”

I considered this.

No, I decided. It actually wasn’t surprising at all.

The version of Asar who regretted he hadn’t yet learned the cello might not fit with the image of the Wraith Warden, blood-soaked exiled son of the cruelest Shadowborn king. But I’d come to know a different version of him since he dragged me out of that party. And maybe that man—the man who loved his home with his whole stone heart, who considered his dog his best friend in the world, who devoted his life to fixing broken things—would love to learn how to play the cello.

I smiled, cheeks stinging against the cold. “When we get back, I’ll personally go find you a cello.”

When we get back.

I said those words so simply, because I had to believe them to be true. I pretended not to notice how Asar’s expression changed at the sound of them. I just as dutifully ignored the twist in my own heart, too.

We no longer had visibility into the world above, but we were very aware of what Elias held and what he could do with it if he had managed to make it back to the surface. And though we’d managed to avoid Ophelia, we knew she was definitely still following us. Even Asar wasn’t sure what we’d encounter once we reached the Secrets, but he seemed confident that whatever it was, it wouldn’t be pleasant. To make things worse, both Asar and I were feeling the weight of weeks of both physical and magical exhaustion.

Still, that didn’t stop Asar from constantly barking instruction at me, pushing me to practice my Shadowborn gifts. If this was how Oraya had felt under my instruction, I made a mental note to give her an apology. It was much more fun to be the teacher instead of the student. I liked coming up with my own ridiculous exercises more than I liked being given someone else’s, especially since boredom made Asar’s especially creative. Witnessing me use my Shadowborn magic in the Sanctum of Psyche had reinvigorated him. He had that air of petty victory about him, like I’d confirmed a suspicion of his.

And maybe he was right—I wasn’t sure if it was because of what had happened in Psyche or our descent closer to the underworld, but the shadows called to me louder than ever. I felt the pull of Asar’s magic constantly. The darkness offered a constant well of power, its beckoning temptation even stronger than my starving draw to Asar’s blood.

It terrified me.

I have always been loyal, I had told Atroxus. I’d offered the sun my life, my body, my soul. I’d already challenged the limits of Atroxus’s forgiveness by becoming the creation of his worst enemy. During our sparse moments of rest, when I listened to Asar’s steady breath beside me, I curled around myself and cradled the sour knot of guilt in my stomach.

I don’t want it, I told myself.

I belong to the sun, I told myself.

But what would Atroxus say if he knew what I had done? I’d done it to survive—to fulfill the mission he’d given me. I could tell him that, and it would be true. But I had also enjoyed it. That was the sin.

My fingers would trace the tattoo on my arm, fighting back tears.

How much did Atroxus see of me, down here?

Did he already know?

What were the consequences of a bride of the sun betraying the god she had given herself to?

Sometimes, I would roll over in the darkness and watch Asar sleep. Even then, he was so serious—like some other version of him was still trekking to the underworld, never to truly rest. No wonder he always looked so exhausted.

In these moments, my mind would riffle through a thousand terrible answers to a terrible question: if I completed my mission, what would happen to Asar?

Would Atroxus see him as just another tainted son of his traitorous cousin? Another scourge to be purged?

Doubt was a disease. The harder I tried to wipe it out, the hotter the fever blazed.

I would save Asar, I told myself. I could earn back Atroxus’s love, and with it, convince him to spare Asar. It was my greatest weapon. My only currency.

I had saved countless souls before. What was one more?

“Where are we going?”

It was the fifteenth time I had asked that question. I wasn’t sure why I thought Asar was going to give an answer now.

When we’d woken up, Asar had taken one look at Luce and me and said, “This is unacceptable.”

“I don’t look that bad,” I’d grumbled—though I probably did look that bad. The exhaustion and the hunger were starting to get to me. Even poor Luce was beginning to seem a little worse for wear, the shine of her skull dulled and angle of her tail a little lower. She’d taken to curling up with me at dawn, which had dented my prayer time, but it was so sweet I couldn’t bring myself to care. Asar had touched his chest when he’d seen it. “The betrayal wounds, Luce,” he’d said, but he’d scratched her behind the ears in a way that seemed to say, Good girl.

Now, we trudged along a rocky, narrow path. We’d been traveling mostly through wide-open plains, avoiding the packs of souleaters who wandered in the distance, but today, Asar had taken us on a complex, treacherous side path. We walked until he found a gap in the cliffs so narrow that I laughed when he’d pointed it out—it seemed that ridiculous that we could squeeze through it. I wasn’t sure how we managed. Maybe it was good we were starving because if any of us had as much as an extra pound, I didn’t think we would’ve fit.

“Almost there,” Asar said when Luce let out a disgruntled whine. “Stop complaining.”

“Almost where?” I asked, exasperated.

My patience for Asar’s secretiveness was wearing thin. But just when I thought I couldn’t stand a single second more, the path opened up.

“Here,” Asar said, triumphantly.

We emerged from the cliffs into a field—an actual field, with actual grass, not the dusty bone deserts we’d been trekking across. Fine, the grass wasn’t exactly green—more of a luminescent gray—but it still was a welcome sight. It shivered under the breeze, rippling like a silver sea. Ahead, a house perched atop of the hill.

I blinked at it, confused.

It looked far too normal to be real. This was not one of the ethereal temples that dotted the Descent. It was a stone building, with two crooked spires rising from it. Smoke rolled from a lopsided chimney. It looked like it had been plucked from some farm out in the land of the living and dropped here, out of place in every way, right down to the warm browns of its stone and the distinctly mortal imperfections of its slightly askew wooden door.

Luce perked up immediately, and Asar gave her a smile and a scratch on the head.

“This is why you trust me,” he said, and the two of them started down the path to the house.

“What is why we trust you?” I asked, half running to keep up.

I decided that maybe I didn’t trust Asar.

We reached the door and he lifted his hand, but it swung open before he could knock.

A woman with dark ash-brown hair piled atop her head, streaks of white swirling in it like cream in tea, leaned against the frame. She wore an elegant dress in the classic Shadowborn style, tight, dark velvet following the shape of her body.

“Well, well,” she purred, with a fanged smile. “A visit from the warden. What a special surprise.”

I stopped short, my eyes widening. My hand went to the sword at my hip.

Because she was a wraith—semi-transparent, the other side of the room barely visible through her abdomen. A brutal wound cut straight through that admirable cleavage, dripping black down the center of her dress.

“Asar—” I squeaked.

But Asar actually smiled. A real, full smile.

“It’s good to see you, Esme,” he said. “It’s been too long.”