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

Chapter 30

CHAPTER THIRTY

“ G et up, Iliae.”

Asar’s voice was all sharp command, but his touch was gentle as he shook my shoulders. Almost pleading.

“Get up,” he said again, with a note of fear in his voice that made me think foggily, He really does like me, doesn’t he?

My cheek pressed against the bearskin carpet. Shades of gray danced across my vision. Distant screaming rang in my ears. I was dimly aware of pain pulsing through my left leg.

I lifted my head to see Asar leaning over me, letting out a breath of relief that he didn’t even try to hide, and behind him…

Wraiths.

Countless wraiths.

It took me a moment to make sense of what I was seeing in the formless morass. A wall of the house had collapsed, smoke pouring through slabs of broken brick. The wraiths crawled through the wreckage like ants overtaking a discarded piece of rotten fruit. One of them emerged from the smoke behind Asar, mouth open.

“Watch it!” I shouted.

He whirled around just in time. He had no weapon—he pushed it back with his magic alone, shadow clashing against shadow. But the one wraith was followed by another, and another.

I staggered to my feet. Esme had come downstairs. Gods, she was a force—truly terrifying. The ghosts and monsters I dreamed of as a child looked just like her. She was floating, darkness swirling around her like the churning water of the sea, tentacles of it reaching out to snatch faceless wraiths from the air.

There were so many of them. I didn’t even know where to look. Esme tossed us our weapons without looking our way. Asar snatched his from the air without even interrupting his fight. Mine, the clumsy steel sword, clattered uselessly to the ground several feet short of me. Luce grabbed it and dragged it to me while I wrestled with a faceless wraith.

“Good girl,” I rasped as I used it to hack through the thing’s midsection. It let out a scream and withered away.

I fought my way to my feet in that brief reprieve. The wraiths were everywhere. The comforting solace of Esme’s home had been destroyed. The two front windows were now shattered, globs of smoke and shadow pouring through them.

And from that smoke, Ophelia rose.

It was hard to believe that she had once been the pretty vampire woman I’d seen in Asar’s memories. Every time I saw her, she grew more distorted, like a translation copied many times over. Now, she wasn’t a person so much as an element, a living tempest of rage and pain and hunger.

“I have been looking for you,” she purred, rising into the sky, hands out as if in supplication to some dark god. “You never come this far, Asar. You cannot imagine what Secrets has waiting for you.”

Her eyes, empty and eternal, fell to me. Suddenly, I could feel Asar’s lips on my skin, as if the remnants of his kisses were as visible as my scars.

“And you,” she hissed. “Such enemies you have here. So many hungry souls search for you, Mische Iliae.”

Asar fought toward her. I wanted to reach out and hold him back. I couldn’t. Couldn’t stop fighting long enough to even try.

“They’ve done nothing to you, Ophelia.” His voice barely crested the rising buzz of the dead. “I deserve your anger. Let them go.”

Even before she responded, I knew that it was useless. It was sweet, in a way, that he thought his sacrifice could be enough to stop her. Ophelia had been betrayed by her entire world. There was no more logic to her rage. She didn’t want Asar anymore. She didn’t want justice. She just wanted to destroy in the hopes that it might bring her peace.

It wouldn’t. Maybe she even knew it. But that wouldn’t stop her, either.

Her lips twisted into a sneer. “You were always so naive, Asar. I was so in love with you that I could not see it.”

I cut down another faceless wraith. The hair prickled on the back of my neck, as if responding to an invisible breath. I had the eerie, unmistakable sensation that I was being watched.

I looked over my shoulder.

He stared back at me, a smile at that perfect mouth, his chest still open with my killing blow.

Malach, the Shadowborn prince, and my creator, stared back at me.

Fear paralyzed me as he stepped closer. “I have been waiting for you. I didn’t think I’d see you here so soon.”

Long, blackened fingers reached for me?—

Move, Mische. Move.

I snapped myself out of my haze. I rose my blade and swiped at him, but the cut was clumsy. He laughed as I stumbled back.

“Dumb luck that you managed to kill me.” His smile soured to a poison sneer. “I should have tied you down to that bed.”

My heart banged against my ribs like a caged rabbit, frantic to escape. When I would have nightmares about the man who Turned me, I would remind myself that he couldn’t hurt me anymore. But that wasn’t true. I’d known it even then. He could always hurt me. Even now, even in death.

I wanted to run. I wanted to crawl under the bearskin and pray he never found me.

Instead, I swung my sword.

But Malach knocked my blow away like it was nothing. My back slammed against the wall. I thrashed, but he held me there, hand around my throat. His teeth glistened in the darkness. I couldn’t look away from them—those fangs that had made me.

“You Turned bitch,” he snarled. “How dare you.”

He didn’t need to elaborate. How dare I kill him, defy him, have the audacity to keep existing after he’d left me to die.

I wouldn’t speak because I wouldn’t let him hear the tremble in my voice. There was nothing I could say that he deserved to hear.

I killed him, I told myself. I already won this battle once before.

But his touch, the grip of death, sucked the breath from my lungs. He leaned close, eyelids fluttering with the allure of the living.

Across the room, Asar’s head turned from the wraith he was holding off. His eyes met mine.

I swore that the entire world rearranged around his rage. The shadows at the corners of the room trembled and shivered, as if preparing to answer his call. Light poured from his left eye in a sudden burst.

He yanked his sword from the wraith and turned toward us.

He didn’t need to say anything—no get your hands off her, no don’t you dare touch her . No snarled stake of possession.

But the living and the dead, and all in between, felt it.

Malach felt it.

His head turned toward his brother, and I seized his distraction.

This time, when I struck, I seized every shred I could of the magic that cracked through the darkness.

Malach wasn’t expecting that. The split second of shock on his face was a treasure. I wanted to put it in a locket to wear around my neck.

He released me, air flooding my lungs, as he stumbled back. But he regained his footing quickly. He’d set his sights on Asar now.

“Hello, little brother. It’s been quite some time.” His gaze fell to Asar’s forearms and the Heir Mark that adorned them. His lip curled. His violent want rotted in the air. All that remained of him in death.

“Those belong to me,” he snarled.

Asar did not dignify this with a response. He and his brother collided in a crash of darkness. I tried to jump in, tried to help, but the waves of wraiths were too much. Esme was trying fiercely to hold off the tide, but even in all her magnificence, she was failing.

Ophelia rose above it all like smoke into the sky, a smile on her face. But even that expression was joyless. None of this would bring her peace.

And then, the sound of glass shattering rang out from the back of the house. The force of it sent me back against the wall, and ripped Asar and Malach apart, sending Malach hurtling into the chaos. But the reprieve was a temporary gift.

Wide-eyed, I shot Asar a panicked glance. Esme whirled around, her hand still around a wraith’s throat. Even Luce hesitated in dread.

I spun around to see countless more dead pouring into the cottage.

Too many. I knew it right away. We’d barely managed to hold off the first wave. This doubled—maybe tripled—their numbers.

We had to run.

But my eyes found a face in the crowd. A face I’d know anywhere. A face that made my heart stop, my lungs empty. I couldn’t move.

Saescha looked just as she had in death, her throat torn open, blood smearing her face. And through a crowd of countless faces, I still knew she was looking for me. Her eyes speared straight through me.

Someone grabbed my shoulder and dragged me through the back door, the one corner of the house that had yet to be overrun. I found myself looking into Esme’s face. Her other hand held Asar’s wrist, tight.

“Go,” she ground out. “Go. If you insist on taking on this ridiculous task, then go now. Quickly, before they notice. I’ll create a distraction for you.”

Asar scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“We’re not leaving you here,” I said. “If we’re running away, then you’re coming with us.”

Esme laughed. “I do not flee. Not from my own home. Besides…” Her eyes slipped over her shoulder, where Malach pushed his way through the dead. “There are some souls here I would not mind some time alone with.”

“You’re being foolish, Esme,” Asar said. “Just because you’ve died once doesn’t mean there isn’t worse?—”

“I am the only one here not being foolish,” she snapped. “You are the one who insists you must do this. Then do it, Asar. Do it. Don’t die here for me.” Her gaze flicked pointedly to me, and Asar’s followed. His mouth thinned.

And this time, when Esme pushed us again toward the back door, he took my hand and let her, even as I protested.

“Don’t let them win,” he said. “The Descent would be miserable without you.”

She laughed. “They aren’t as good at this game as I am. Of course they will not win.” Her face softened. She touched Asar’s cheek. “It was good to see you, my friend. I hope that if I don’t again, it’s because you are destined for better things.”

That sounded far too much like a goodbye.

I shook my head, digging my heels into the dirt.

“No. We aren’t leaving you alone.”

But her face was resigned when she turned to me. “And you. I hope you watch them all burn.”

“Esme—”

But she melted into the shadows as another shatter cut through the air, and then Asar was pulling me as we fled into the cold night air.

“Asar, you can’t. We can’t leave her alone.”

His jaw was tight. The fleeting nightfire light caressed the feathering muscle in his jaw. I could feel his reluctance, too—more painful than his wounds.

“The best thing we can do for her is leave. She can hold them back. But it’s not her that they want. If we’re gone, they’ll lose interest in her. And Esme is no delicate flower. She’ll have her fun in the meantime.”

It didn’t feel right. And when Asar’s stare lingered on me, I knew in my heart that if I were not here, he would’ve gone down fighting with Esme until the end.

We ran into the fields beyond the cottage. The sky was heavy with smoke, which undulated in unnatural swells. It blotted out the distant rivers of blood and the silvery remnants of the terrain above them. It was so thick that when I looked ahead, my eyes simply saw nothingness.

Two more steps, and I realized: it wasn’t just the smoke.

It was because there was actually nothing ahead of us. The ground simply ended.

Oh gods. I hated heights. I didn’t even like jumping off cliffs with Raihn, and he had actual wings.

I chanced one more look back—one more look at the burning cottage and the wave of lost souls that consumed it. And I could have sworn I saw her there, watching us go. She was a distant silhouette against the flames, but sometimes you know someone so well, you’d just recognize them anywhere.

Another plume of darkness, and she was gone.

“Hold on,” Asar said, and looped his arm around my waist, clutching tight.

I cringed, squeezing my eyes shut.

And then we hurled ourselves into nothingness.