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

Chapter 35

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I t was dark. So dark. Panic climbed up my throat.

Light the candle.

I called to the sun. But there was no answer.

I tried again, again, again?—

“Let me help you.”

A gentle hand offered a blossom of flame. It caught the wick, and the room ignited into the light of a summer day.

I stood in my chambers in the Citadel. My knees were weak, my thoughts mushy. I’d just been so afraid, but I wasn’t sure why. I stood in front of a mirror, wearing a golden dress.

“Let me help you,” my sister said, buttoning up the clasps in the back.

My sister.

Saescha.

A wave of emotion struck me, even though I wasn’t sure why. I watched her in the mirror, unable to tear my eyes away. She had our father’s elegance—the high cheekbones, the slightly deeper skin, the rich black hair. Even at eighteen years old, when she had led us to the Order of the Destined Dawn, she’d had the grace of someone twice her age. It was impossible to be scared when Saescha was around.

She smiled at me, pushing a lock of curly hair behind my ear before adjusting the fit of my offering dress over my bust.

“You look beautiful, Mi.” Her eyes shone. “I am so proud of you.”

I strove for Saescha’s pride more than I strove for anything. Secretly, sometimes I wondered if I treasured that more than the love of Atroxus.

“I’m nervous.” I spoke like it was a shameful confession. And it was, wasn’t it? This was the greatest honor that anyone in the Order had been gifted in centuries. I felt like I shouldn’t be feeling anything other than unfettered elation.

“Why?” Saescha said. “To be chosen by him is the greatest gift. He saved us because of you. And now, because of you, you will always be cared for.”

You, she said. But I knew it really meant we . The Order might have sent us away if Atroxus hadn’t chosen me that day. Saescha had risked everything to find us both a life of abundance and safety. As one of Atroxus’s chosen, I would never have to worry about either again, and by extension, neither would she. I could repay her for everything she did for me.

Eternal fealty didn’t seem like such a high price for that.

“It won’t hurt too much,” she said. “If that’s what you’re nervous about. I’m sure he’ll be gentle with you. Just follow his lead. He will be happy.”

Even that instruction now felt so intimidating. Follow his lead. He will be happy. He was a god. He had so many chosen, and surely had bedded countless others beyond them. I was a sixteen-year-old girl. I couldn’t imagine my virginity being all that captivating.

Saescha was experienced. She had worked as a prostitute for a while, to earn enough money to help us travel to the Citadel. She didn’t talk about it, but I knew. And what right did I have to complain about offering myself to one man—one god—in exchange for a lifetime of prosperity, when she’d had no choice but to offer herself to many just to help us survive?

I stared at my sister—my gorgeous, wise, kind sister. She was the better priestess, the better magic user, the better heart. I often wondered why Atroxus hadn’t chosen her that day. She deserved it more.

She cradled my face between both hands. “This is your highest calling, Mische. The rest will fall into place.”

The corners of the room wavered, but I thought I’d imagined it.

My eyes fell over her shoulder, where other acolytes prepared offerings for Atroxus’s arrival. One priest held a firefinch, carefully affixing a jeweled collar around its throat.

The bird stared at me.

Something nagged at the back of my neck. I grabbed that fraying thread.

Pulled.

Saescha.

Gods, Saescha .

Reality crashed over me. The weight of all these years. The knife of my grief over Saescha’s death. My eyes widened. I clapped my hands over hers, squeezing them tight.

We were in the Sanctum of Secrets. In the Descent. Was this a vision? Or . . . ?

“Saescha,” I gasped. “Is it—are you?—”

Are you real? I didn’t want to ask because I didn’t want to know. I touched her face, her hair, her shoulders. She felt real. She smelled real. That smile was real, serene and endlessly wise, the greatest stabilizing force of my world.

She blinked, as if awakening from a haze.

“Mische?” she whispered. She touched my face, too, tentatively. The smile broadened. “Light bless us, it is you.”

Tears stung my eyes. A lump rose in my throat. I threw myself against her in the fiercest hug. Gods, she smelled the same. Like childhood safety. Like home. Like innocence.

“I missed you. I missed you so much, Saescha.”

For a moment she didn’t move, startled. But then her arms tightened around me. “I missed you, too, Mische. You can’t imagine how much.”

Oh, I could imagine. I could really, really imagine.

Saescha’s hug grew tighter. Tighter.

Words bubbled out of me like a broken fountain. “I’m sorry. I love you. I missed you so much. I never meant it. I thought of you every day. I—I?—”

It was getting difficult to speak. Saescha’s grip was unrelenting. I gasped a laugh, patting her back. “I really missed you, Sae.”

Tighter.

“I gave you so much, Mische.” She spoke low in my ear. “You don’t even know all the things I did for you.”

A prickle at the back of my neck.

“Saescha—”

Tighter.

I opened my eyes. It had gotten so dark. Across the room, I watched the priest holding that little firefinch. The collar constricted and constricted, until?—

Snap.

I gasped at a jolt of pain.

The gruesome truth of this reality hit me.

If Saescha was here, she had not passed on to the underworld.

If Saescha was here, she was a wraith.

The tapestries on the wall smoked, flame nibbling at their edges.

“Saescha,” I pleaded. I was fighting her now as she clung to me.

“Why did you let this happen to me?”

Her voice cracked. Her pain was a serrated blade, gutting me like hunted game. I wrenched free, stumbling back against the wall as I gasped for breath. Saescha was transparent, bleeding into the ghost of our old home. Her serene composure had shattered. Blood smeared her throat, which was torn open, crimson soaking the white of her Dawndrinker robes. For a moment, the sight of her like this—how she had looked in death—paralyzed me with horror.

The edge of a terrible memory brushed past me.

“Look at me, Mische.” Her elegant face twisted in agony. “Look at what has become of me. Years and years and years I wait. I pray and I pray. But no one answers. Why doesn’t he answer?”

Saescha’s despair spilled through me. I knew it so innately. What it felt like to be abandoned by the one you had devoted your very soul to.

“I did everything,” she ground out. “I gave him my life. I followed the rules. Why am I here?”

The flames consumed the tapestries, the visage of the Citadel now a blazing inferno. Heat clawed at my flesh. Smoke burned my tear-filled eyes.

She was right. None of it was fair. She was the better acolyte. The better sister.

“I will help you, Saescha,” I said. “I’ll find a way. You’ll pass on and I’ll?—”

But she dove at me. My head smacked against stone. When my blurred vision cleared, all I could see was her face. Her hunger surrounded me. “I was so proud of you. My sweet sister, my good sister. Bride of Atroxus. You had everything. Why did you have to ruin it?”

She was right. She was right. She was right.

How many times had she said that to me? Count your blessings, Mische. Appreciate what’s under your two feet, Mische. She had known that I never should have climbed up to that vampire corpse that day.

But I was so fucking stupid. So impulsive. So reckless.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. When was the last time I had seen Saescha weep?

“And now, look at you . I raised you. I protected you. You were my child, not just my sister.” Her mouth twisted, a sob, a sneer, a hiss. “And look at what you’ve done to that innocent baby I raised. I was a baby, too, once. Who protected me?”

She inched closer. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. My fingers were tight around the hilt of Asar’s sword, but though its magic called to me, I refused to use it. This was no souleater—this was my sister.

I would help her. Asar would help her. She could pass, like Eomin. I just had to get her to him. I had to—I had to?—

She lunged for me, and in my clumsy attempt to evade, I crashed through a half-ajar door. My back slammed against the floor, shadows and flame filling my vision. Someone called my name. I looked up to see Asar through the fire, barely holding off another figure. Though the smoke obscured his opponent’s features, I still recognized Malach immediately. You don’t forget the man who Turned you.

Asar’s eyes widened, looking over my shoulder, and he raised his hand, magic flaring?—

“No!” I threw myself in front of Saescha before he could let his strike fly. It was a rash, stupid move. Saescha’s poison grip nicked my arm as I sent myself sliding into the wall. My head banged against stone, pain exploding with the impact as I threw out my hands to steady myself.

I had only a split second to feel the carvings beneath my hand. I frowned down at it, sliding my palm away to see swirling marks carved into the wall?—

Saescha lunged for me again, and I barely managed to evade her this time. Her touch singed the edge of my sleeve. She would have grabbed me had Luce not leapt between us, snarling. It bought me precious seconds to steal another glance at Asar. He wasn’t just fighting, I realized. He kept going back to that inner wall, lips moving in silent spells as he pressed his hands against it.

Glyphs.

This was a door, I realized. The hallway here was curved, running in, I suspected, a circle. The glyphs were designed to gate off whatever sat within, and Asar was pulling it closed.

His gaze met mine. He extended his magic to me, a thread for the needle of my wielding. When I accepted it, my breath shuddered. The intensity made my steps falter—so much more powerful than it had felt in Morthryn’s halls.

Saescha finally managed to throw Luce, grabbing her by the scruff of the neck and tossing her aside like a discarded doll. By then, I was already running, hands dragging along the wall, searching for that next glyph. The first two, I could sense, had already been connected. If the construction was the same as the gates, there would be five total.

My fingers brushed indents in the wall. I grabbed Asar’s magic, infused it with my own, poured it through.

Three.

The wraiths crawled from the floor, the ceiling, beneath the tapestries. These were faceless, formless, like they’d been here so long they had lost even the basest remnants of their mortality. They reached blindly for me as I pushed through them. Behind me, Saescha gained ground.

Another glyph. Four.

“Look at me, Mische,” Saescha begged behind me, and coward that I was, I couldn’t. She sounded sad now, not angry.

Storm clouds brewed overhead, the false sun of my memories of Vostis devoured by hungry darkness. My body was so innately attuned to the magic around me that I felt suspended in it, like a spider by her web. I rounded the next curve and saw Asar on the other end of the hall, weaving his half of the gate with Luce at his side.

Gods, he looked like more than a man. His scarred eye was bright white against the eternal black that surrounded him, wisps of lightning dancing in its midst. I could feel the power tugging at the connection we shared, stronger than I’d ever felt it before, barely tethered.

A door sat halfway between us, closed, though light pulsed at its edges. The apex of the gate, maybe? It flickered as a rumble of thunder shook the ground. Wind swirled through the halls, sweeping my hair behind me.

“You can’t leave me again,” Saescha pleaded as I dragged myself toward the final glyph.

Six steps.

“I won’t,” I whispered, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me—knew she wasn’t listening at all.

Three steps.

My bloody hand trailed black over the marble. My eyes settled on Asar, pulling himself toward me as Malach’s wraith bore down on him. He extended his hand, reaching for the final set of glyphs.

Saescha barreled into me, her touch burning around my wrists.

I pressed my bloody hand to the final mark.

A flare of power surged through me. Saescha let out a horrific, animalistic scream. The door sprang, and Asar barreled into me at the exact moment that it did, hauling me inside.

The last thing I saw was Saescha’s wide eyes as she reached for me.

“Don’t leave me?—”

Asar thrust his hand out, and the door slammed shut.

The magic drained away in a sudden exhale. A heavy blanket of quiet fell over us. The screams of the dead sounded like they were miles away. Thunder trembled in the rafters, the tempest raging against the glass ceiling far above.

Asar, Luce, and I ended up in a pile on a tile floor. Luce was splayed out oddly, letting out a high whine. I rolled to my back and stared up at the ceiling—a gold-lined glass dome—and the storm beyond it, a sea of billowing silver that reminded me eerily of Asar’s left eye.

I couldn’t get Saescha’s face out of my head. Her voice. Her touch.

The screams on the other side of the door sounded as if they were miles away. But I could hear them still.

I could hear her.

Don’t leave me.

Asar lifted himself slowly. He assessed me first, but then, when his gaze fell to Luce, his face paled.

She tried to get up and promptly collapsed again.

Asar dropped to his knees beside her as I crawled closer.

“Luce?” I said.

She let out a rattling whine, as if to weakly—and unconvincingly—reassure us. Asar cradled her head.

But then, when he lifted his eyes, he whispered a curse and stood.

I followed him.

We were in a temple. This room no longer wore the skin of the Citadel. This was all the Descent—bone pillars, ice-dusted ivy, roses frozen in a forever-dead bloom. The room was circular, with nested steps leading up to a platform at its center.

Asar approached, then fell to his knees before it.

I followed, then sank down beside him.

No. No, no, no.

At the center of the circle was a grand marble box covered in markings of the language of the gods.

It was open. It was broken.

“Fuck,” Asar whispered as he sagged over the shattered stone.

It was empty.

There was nothing here at all.