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

Chapter 29

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

T he bath was incredible. I did not care even a tiny bit that it was imaginary water. It was hot and clear and full of bubbles that smelled like roses. I felt like a princess, and not the murderous vampire kind, the kind from the human storybooks Saescha read to me as a child.

By the time I sauntered downstairs again, I was practically glowing with happiness.

Esme set down her glass, looking me up and down, one brow arched. “Ah. I see my shadow friends have offered you one of my nightgowns.”

I stopped mid-movement. “Is that all right?”

“Yes, of course. You could not put that atrocity back on. Besides, this suits you. Better color on you than me.”

I was secretly grateful that I didn’t have to change. The nightgown had been waiting for me, laid out on the bed, when I got out of the bath. It was gold silk, trimmed with black lace. The neckline hung low in a deep V, thin straps crossing across my back. It was shorter than the dresses I typically wore, but then again, I rarely had the opportunity to wear dresses at all, let alone ones like this. The fabric was light and luxurious as a caress. The way it slid over my skin reminded me of how sunlight used to feel.

I adored it. I unabashedly adored it. I liked pretty things, and I’d missed them.

Still, I’d stared at myself in the mirror for too long before coming down. The nightgown revealed the full, terrible expanse of my scars. It had been some time since I’d looked at myself, and it struck me with a terrible knot of shame just how many of them there were. Not too long ago, they only covered my arms, elbow to wrist. Now, they had crawled all the way up to my shoulders and all the way down my hands. My tattoo languished, barely visible, beneath the mottled distortion of scar tissue.

I’d searched the room for something to cover myself with and found a flowing robe of equally luxurious silk. It was blue with white flowers—not exactly matching the brilliant gold of the nightgown, but who was I here to impress?

“I hope you don’t mind,” I said, touching the robe. “I was, uh, a little cold.”

Esme waved dismissively. “Of course. Though what a shame to cover up that magnificent décolletage. Don’t you agree, Asar?”

I wasn’t sure why I had avoided looking at Asar. He, certainly, was avoiding looking at me. But when his gaze at last rose, it hung there for a breathless moment, and I felt it on every inch of my bare skin. When he finally looked down at the book on his lap again, it was like he had to pry his eyes away.

“I don’t comment on décolletage unless invited,” he said coolly.

“Men today!” Esme sighed, then shooed him away to go bathe. He took awkwardly long to stand up, spending an inordinate amount of time rearranging the pages of the book on his lap, before at last closing it and excusing himself.

Esme and I sat together alone, watching the fire. I continued to munch on the seemingly never-ending supply of pastries. I supposed the upside of the food having no nutritional value was that I could eat as much of it as I wanted without getting full. One had to find joy in the little things.

Esme did not hide that she was watching me very, very closely, and I probably wasn’t any more subtle, either. I wanted to ask her so many questions. Asar not only liked her, but actually trusted her. I felt like I was being presented with a treasure trove of information about him, unsupervised, where he couldn’t tsk me for rummaging through it.

But Esme was the one to break the silence first. “The burns will not get better.”

I froze mid-chew.

“Excuse me?”

She gave me a cryptic smile. “This is my house. I see all things.”

I swallowed and self-consciously adjusted the sleeve on my robe. “I know I can’t heal them. I don’t try.”

“That is not what I said. I said they will not stop.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Luce had curled herself around my legs, and I reached down to scratch the top of her head, finding comfort in her little sigh of pleasure.

“Just a price I have to pay,” I said lightly. “Nothing is ever free, right?” I held up a pastry. “What is this? It’s?—”

“Asar likes you very much,” Esme said nonchalantly. “I can tell. He doesn’t trust many, that boy, and goddess knows no one can blame him for that. But you.” She tapped a long, manicured finger in my direction. “You, I think, he does.”

Unexpected warmth suffused my heart.

I shrugged. Smiled. “We’ve become friends.”

Friends. That was the first time I had even used that word aloud to describe Asar. It didn’t quite fit right.

Esme scoffed and rolled her eyes. “In the name of the Mother, girl, he could not stand up after he saw you in that nightgown. Friends, she says.”

Now my face was burning, and I was certain that Esme could see it. “I really don’t think he?—”

She raised a hand. “Spare me. I don’t care if you admit it. You are both welcome to skip along in your pretty ignorance. I only say this so you know the gravity of your decisions. Do you, girl? Do you understand what you have been entrusted with?”

My smile disappeared.

I thought of Asar, hunched over his desk, scribbling his notes. Asar, lazily stroking Luce’s ears while she curled up at his feet. Asar, using every bit of his strength to pull another gate closed, and another, and another.

Asar, the way he looked at me when he cradled me into darkness at the Psyche temple.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“My cold soul cares for little in this life or the next, but it cares deeply for Asar. And perhaps I could tell you that you should be careful about how much of yourself you sacrifice to your sun god, because once that man decides that he cares for you, he will never stop. Not ever. Your sacrifice will become his, and I fear that fractured stone heart of his cannot bear another blow.”

She took a long sip from her glass, then set it down and shrugged. “I could say this because it is true. But I will not.”

She leaned across the table, eyes sharp.

“I will tell you that you should be careful how much you sacrifice to your sun god,” she said, pointedly, “not because of Asar, but because of you . Because you did not make it this far just to let yourself burn up like some pretty little candle. You killed Malach of the fucking Shadowborn, Mother’s sake. Have some self-respect.”

I stared at her for a long moment. Her words hung between us.

And then I laughed.

She leaned back and crossed her arms. “So now I am funny.”

“I’m just…?so, so surprised that Asar likes you so much.”

But even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t quite true. I actually could see exactly why Asar, someone who had spent nearly his entire life in exile, would have so much affection for someone who seemed to have no regard for the conventions of the life that had rejected him.

Esme gave me a wry smirk. “I would say the same to you,” she said, “but you have wonderful breasts, so I suppose I understand.”

I sputtered an uncomfortable laugh. “Thank you, but it’s just the nightgown.”

She rolled her eyes.

And I was ready to let this conversation die, but instead, I said quietly, “I have my past, just like he has his. But I won’t let it hurt him.”

Even as the words left my lips, they tasted like impossibility. Asar and I walked a wire between two sides of a divine collision. How could I protect him from the wrath of gods? How could I protect him from the consequences of my betrayal?

But I was Mische Iliae. I never shied away from the impossible, and here, alone with a ghost, I swore I’d make that vow true.

Esme’s mouth curled with a sad smile. She looked at me as if she, too, knew I couldn’t make such a promise, but that it meant something to her that I did, anyway.

“Every time he leaves,” she said softly, “I hope that I will never see him again. But…”

But he always came back.

Because Asar was devoted.

My chest hurt. I no longer had an appetite. I took a sip of the not-blood and wished that the alcohol in it was real.

Footsteps padded down the stairs, and Asar appeared in the doorway again. His wet hair stuck to his temples and his neck. He wore a fresh shirt, a black cotton one, which clung to the still-damp skin of his shoulders. He actually looked refreshed for possibly the first time since I’d met him. Even the pulse of light in his left eye seemed calmer.

“Ah, at last.” Esme clapped her hands together when he returned. “Now that you are fed and clean, I can put you to work.”

Asar’s eyes narrowed. They darted between Esme and me, like he suspected we had been talking about him but chose not to acknowledge it.

“Put me to work?”

She gestured to the corner—to a small piano. It was carved of gleaming black, ornate decoration lining its edges, ivory keys gleaming. A layer of dust coated its surface.

“Surely there must be new songs up there,” she said. “Play me something. I miss music. My little pets are terrible musicians.”

I gasped and leapt to my feet, hands together. “Oh, yes. Yes . Play for us.”

I was absolutely dying to witness this.

He started to protest, but Esme let out a dramatic sigh.

“I let you and your friend here into my home, and I, a lonely dead woman without a friend in the world, ask for only one thing?—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Asar rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth curled in amusement.

He shot me an apologetic look, then pushed aside the clutter to slide onto the piano bench. For a moment, his fingertips gently caressed the keys in a way that seemed nothing less than reverent.

And then he began to play.

Esme beamed in satisfaction. My mouth fell open.

Gods, he was incredible.

He launched into a dramatic, upbeat melody, the full layers of sound inflating to fill the room like a drawn breath. I crept closer, sliding into the armchair closest to the piano, my knees up against my chest.

I watched his fingers, long and deft, marked by ink and scars, dance over the keys.

“That’s amazing,” I whispered before I could help myself, and a barely there smile glinted in Asar’s momentary glance my way.

Then, delicate whorls of his magic collected around his hands, supplementing his playing, the sound so rich and full it sounded like it didn’t even belong in this mortal world.

“Wonderful, Asar. You still have it.” Esme spun, her velvet skirt swirling around her, then extended a hand my way. “Dance with me, Mische. It’s been too long since I’ve had a partner.”

When was the last time I’d danced? I used to love it, a long time ago. A slow grin spread across my face. I took Esme’s hand—which felt solid and not at the same time, somehow—and the two of us whirled around the living room. It was no practiced dance, no careful steps. But my body knew how to move to Asar’s music, following a rhythm that felt as intrinsic as a heartbeat. The silk of my nightgown flared around my thighs, the robe wrapping my twirls in a smear of night. Esme laughed, lost in the mortal joy of it all. Even Luce’s tail thumped against the rug in time to the music as it built faster and faster, like a bird taking flight.

I looked over my shoulder at Asar. And I almost stumbled at the sight of him—eyes shining, hands moving, a little dot of water that had dripped from his hair hanging onto the tip of his nose for dear life. And he was smiling in a way that made the entire world stop, a smile that reminded me of the way the sun looked when it crested the horizon the first time I saw it at the Citadel, and I had thought, I am home.

I am home.

Eventually, we wore ourselves out. I lost track of how many songs Asar played at Esme’s demands. But she was the first to excuse herself, stifling a yawn.

“You are a good enough musician to exhaust the dead, Asar. And I suppose I should let the two of you get some rest, too, if you’re to set out again on your fool’s mission tomorrow.”

The mention of our mission sobered both of us, it seemed, though neither of us acknowledged it. I wondered if wraiths actually did need to sleep, or if Esme had just decided that it was time to let Asar and me be alone, now that she had sufficiently stirred the pot.

The silence definitely felt heavy with her gone.

Asar and I remained in the living room. I would sleep on the couch, and Asar insisted on taking the rug, though I’d offered many times over. (“I can sleep anywhere!” I’d told him. “It’s a very special skill of mine.”) But though my body was aching after weeks without comfortable rest, sleep was oddly unappealing. I had the strange desire to cling to this moment before it slipped through my fingers. If I closed my eyes, it would be gone when I opened them.

I curled up on the couch. Luce had fallen fast asleep by the fire, lightly snoring—who knew spirit wolves could snore?—while Asar still sat at the piano bench. We didn’t speak. He had a glass of blood wine beside him, which he sipped more and more frequently. I knew the feeling. My hunger sat low in my stomach. The temporary relief of the taste was doing less and less to quell it.

“You should get some rest,” he said at last. “We have a difficult journey ahead. Even this was probably too much of a detour.”

“I’m glad we came here,” I said. “Esme is nice.”

He snorted. “That’s not a word I typically hear used to describe her.”

“I like her. I can tell she has a good heart.”

“She has a wicked heart, which is why it ended up skewered. But a loyal one, for the select few she deems worthy.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.”

He let out a low laugh. “Perhaps so, Iliae. Perhaps so. I can hope.”

I liked to watch Asar smile. It felt like a victory every time. I traced its path across his face now and wondered when I’d memorized the shape of it.

He was right that we needed the rest. But the thought of sleep seemed impossible. I was too jittery beneath my exhaustion.

“I can’t sleep,” I admitted.

“Nervous?”

I wondered if he was. Nervous didn’t even seem the right word for it. Nervous was for exams at the Citadel. What I felt now was the future weighing down on me, possibilities closing in. I couldn’t confront them yet.

I wasn’t ready to let this night slip away.

“I think we need one more song,” I said.

“Greedy of you. I’ve played you dozens of songs.”

“Yes, but there’s one thing you haven’t done.”

He raised a brow in a challenging, Oh, is that so?

I stood. “One more song, Warden.”

“Because I’m at your beck and call.”

I batted my lashes at him. “You can’t deny me.”

He stared at me for a moment too long. The joke landed awkwardly between us, heavy with all the ways we both realized it was true.

He cleared his throat and lowered his eyes to the keys. Another song poured forth from his fingers—a song that put all the others to shame. Mournful notes that sounded like hope after heartbreak, like the rise of the stars in the sky, like a flame warming a hearth.

Even after hearing his talents all evening, this one struck me straight to my soul.

His gaze flicked up at me. “Happy?”

I was toying with danger, I knew. I should go to bed and end this night now.

But I said, “Not yet. You’ve been watching Esme and me make fools of ourselves all night long. But I haven’t seen you dance once.”

He scoffed. “Nor will you, Iliae.”

I couldn’t imagine what Asar would look like dancing, and that was exactly why I was desperate to witness it. I pressed my hands together. “Please, great and terrible Wraith Warden, King of the Shadowborn. Please. ”

“You’re right, I’m a king now. Kings don’t dance.”

I almost pointed out that actually, kings have to dance all the time—I’d seen Raihn dance many more times after his coronation than in the decades before, and always unwillingly. But I didn’t need to say a word.

Asar held my stare. Maybe we both heard the echo of my joke: You cannot deny me.

“We don’t even need music,” I said, holding out my hand.

He made a face, offended. “That would be ridiculous.” Writhing tentacles of his magic again worked from his hands, lying over his fingers. And when he stood, they kept playing in his place.

My smile brightened. “That’s amazing.”

I meant it. Of all the great feats I’d seen Asar perform, this music topped them all.

He held out his hand—the scarred one, with the closed white eye on his palm.

And even though I had asked for this, a momentary spike of fear bolted through me. I heard my sister’s voice from so many years ago, crying, It’s dangerous, Mische!

But I took his hand anyway.

This song wasn’t one of the dramatic waltzes he’d played for Esme. It was slower, lighter, deeper. The melody still carried my body just as easily, but I was so painfully aware of how close it brought it to Asar’s. His other hand settled at the small of my back. He swayed awkwardly with me.

I scowled. “You aren’t trying. Your feet aren’t even moving.”

“I’m a musician, not a dancer.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, scrunching my nose. “You. Aren’t. Trying.”

He met my gaze. The way the firelight flickered against the panes of his face, traveling along the texture of his scars like rivulets of liquid silver, struck me speechless. How could I ever have thought they ruined his beauty?

A spark of determination flashed in his eyes as an amused smile twisted his mouth.

And then suddenly, his arms tightened around me. He released me, spinning me into a twirl that I only barely managed to catch, and then he pulled me forcefully back to him, our stomachs pressed together, foreheads nearly touching. It happened so suddenly I couldn’t prepare myself. The scent of him, the blood so close to the surface of his skin, briefly overwhelmed me. I wondered if he felt my breath hitch. Or if he knew that I noticed the way his did, too.

Danger, Mische, the voice in the back of my head warned again.

“Better,” I said. “I guess.”

He let out a psh . His mouth was so close that the sound skittered across my cheek.

The silk of this nightgown was so thin. I could feel the shape of his body against my stomach, my pelvis, my breasts. I liked it. I shouldn’t like it.

I was so hungry.

We were both so hungry.

“I don’t recognize this song,” I said, trying, unsuccessfully, to defuse the tension. “It’s different from the others you played.”

“Nothing fancy. Just something I came up with.”

My brows rose. “You wrote this?”

“Wrote is a strong word. I just…” I was too close to him to see him, but I felt his muscles shift as he shrugged.

And then he said, after a moment, “I just played the notes that sounded like you.”

I stiffened. He spoke the words so softly, with such tender vulnerability. Like a confession to a priest.

So kind it hurt.

Danger, Mische. Danger. This is not what you’re supposed to do.

But still, I didn’t pull away.

I murmured, “It’s beautiful.”

And he whispered, “Yes.”

Our movements had grown slower, more languid. We drifted closer, verging on embrace. I so fiercely wanted to melt into it, let my head fall against his shoulder, let my face bury into the soft flesh of his throat, where his pulse hammered. What would happen if I did?

Would he kiss me?

Would he lay me down on this bed of furs and stifle my cries of pleasure, just like he’d promised me?

Danger.

The thought dizzied me. It was so brazenly wrong. My hunger was twisting my thoughts. Making it hard to think.

I was a bride of the sun.

But maybe I was weak, because I just kept pushing, drinking up another second.

I pulled away slightly, enough to look into his face, and grinned.

“You know, when I first met you, I never would have thought you were such a sensitive soul. The exiled prince of the Shadowborn, Wraith Warden, and skilled piano composer.”

“I’m a lot of things. Just like you.”

“No, I’m simple.” The response, the smile, it all came so easily, a refrain I’d repeated countless times before: Don’t look at me. I’m not the one this story is about.

He let out a low scoff. “Mische Iliae, you are full of secrets and surprises.” The music swelled, and he twirled me again. When he caught me this time, he cradled me close.

Pull away, I told myself.

I didn’t. I couldn’t. My body begged for one second more, and another, and another.

“I should have known right away,” he murmured. “What you were. A bride of the sun.”

I stiffened. I missed the next step.

I knew he’d seen it in Psyche, just as I had experienced all his worst memories, too. But he hadn’t acknowledged them these last weeks, for which I was deeply grateful.

“Why?” I said. “Because I seem that special?” The joke was strained and flat.

“Because I know what it looks like to be so desperate for redemption, you would sacrifice anything.”

My stomach turned. “It isn’t like that.”

Asar pulled back just enough to look at me. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting—judgment, or pity. But there was only compassion.

“How old were you when he picked you?”

The hunger muddied my thoughts, brought my emotions too close to the surface. I opened my mouth intending to change the subject.

But maybe that was the other great temptation. Maybe I wanted someone to carry those secrets beside me.

Before I could stop myself, I whispered, “Eight.”

The sheer sadness in his face at that sliced my heart open.

“It was a gift,” I added quickly. “It’s what I was always meant to be. It’s not Atroxus’s fault that I?—”

That I ruined it. That I ruined myself.

“What you were always meant to be?” Asar repeated. The words were low, but blade-sharp, sliding straight into my heart. “You were meant to be bound to a god from the time you were a child? You were meant to be one of hundreds of wives? You were meant to sacrifice yourself for him?”

The defensiveness jumped up like the tender hurt of an open wound. “Sometimes love requires sacrifice, Asar.”

My voice came out weaker than I wished it was. A plea more than a declaration.

We had stopped moving. He stared at me for a long moment. And then, so slowly, his hand slipped from mine. His fingertips landed on my collarbone, just barely touching the edge of the robe.

His gaze pierced me, unblinking, asking permission for what came next.

Step away, I told myself.

Tell him to stop, I told myself.

Don’t let him see, I told myself.

But I swallowed thickly as, with a feather-light touch, he pushed the silk from my shoulders. The fabric was so delicate. It slid down and pooled on the floor.

I was shaking.

I felt naked. So exposed. Asar’s gaze held on mine for several long seconds, before finally breaking free, roving over my bare flesh.

My breath hitched as his fingertips traced my clavicle, my shoulder, the swells and dips of my bicep. And gods, that touch—it was like his hands over the piano keys. His scars against mine. Mistakes against mistakes.

I closed my eyes. Tears prickled at the back of my throat.

“It is an injustice, Mische, that this is what you got when you asked for love,” he murmured. “This isn’t what love should feel like.”

It isn’t? I almost said. Because this was what I was taught that love was—something you hurt for, something you bled for. You give your god your life, your blood, your virgin body. You give your charges your devotion and never accept theirs. You give and give and give until you have stripped your soul bare.

I should have told him, That’s faith. Don’t you understand?

But my tears slid down my cheeks. My hunger burned. Gluttony won out in the end.

I asked, “What should it feel like?”

Asar still held my wrist like a precious gift. He lowered his head, his dark lashes falling against those sculpted cheeks.

“Like this,” he whispered, and brought his lips to my skin.

His kiss was so gentle, so tentative, that it was barely a brush against my flesh. Still, the touch sent a bolt of lightning through my body.

He lifted my arm a little more and kissed me again, higher, at the next cluster of scars. He lingered, the warm, soft stroke of his tongue making me draw in a shuddering breath.

Higher—my bicep. Then my shoulder.

“It should feel like this,” he whispered against my skin.

Two tears slid down my cheeks.

I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t pull away.

I had been hurting for so long that I had forgotten what it was like for something to feel good. And gods, it felt so good that it hurt. It reached past my scars, past my wounds, to the neglected version of myself that I’d long ago abandoned.

That version of me knew he was right.

It was what I would want for any of my friends. It was what I had wanted for Raihn, for Oraya.

I even secretly wanted it for myself.

I wanted to slip the straps of this nightgown from my shoulders and offer him more to worship. Let him kiss away all those scars, all that shame.

I wanted it like I wanted the sun. No—like I wanted blood.

But I cupped his cheek, lifting his head. I tried not to meet his eyes and failed.

His face changed, that pained want falling away in favor of concern. His thumb captured a tear over the curve of my cheek.

“Mische,” he whispered.

When he said my first name, it felt like such an indecent intimacy. More sensual than his mouth on my skin.

“Don’t do that,” I rasped. “Don’t.”

The last of his glazed-over desire fell away. “I’m sorry. I?—”

But then the blast cleaved us apart.

One moment, I was standing with Asar. The next, the world tilted. A deafening roar drowned out all sound.

I thought, This all hurts a lot for a house that is supposedly not real.

And my back slammed against the wall as smoke enveloped us.