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

Chapter 39

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

T ears streaked my face when I awoke. I didn’t stop to question, even in the hazy half second between sleep and waking, whether it was a dream. That was no dream. The fresh burns throbbed, stinging under the salt of my tears. I was wearing the clothes Atroxus had thrown at my feet. And I was alone.

I sat up, disoriented. I was no longer on the altar, but I recognized this place as part of the temple right away—the same white stone and big glass windows, overlooking thick, misty fog. No more storm. No more wraiths banging at the door.

The room was empty, save for a single set of stairs that curved up.

I stood, knees trembling.

“Asar?” I called.

Fear pooled in my stomach. I went to the stairs and climbed.

In the distance, I heard a distinctive yip, and my heart leapt.

“Luce!”

Another yip, this one hopeful. A moment later, Luce bounded around the corner. I dropped to my knees and wrapped her up in a hug.

“You’re feeling better!”

She nuzzled my cheek with her snout, wriggling against the hug. But gods, I’d missed her. Maybe she sensed something was wrong, because she momentarily stopped squirming and curled around me when I buried my face against her neck.

But then I heard another voice:

“Mische?”

The note of panic in it made my heart skip a beat.

Luce barked and broke free, as if to say, Found her, found her! I got to my feet, climbing up the rest of the stairs, and?—

Just as I turned the corner, the scent of ice and ivy was all around me, and a wall of warmth surrounded me, and Asar was clutching me like I was a gift returned to him.

I fell into his hug like it was a natural state. My arms wound around his neck, face against his chest. He was solid and safe and gods, how had I missed him so much in so little time? I wanted to fall apart here, melt into his love, let him take care of me as I spilled out every ugly truth.

I couldn’t, of course. But it meant something that I wanted to.

I was so grateful for his embrace that it took me a moment to realize that he was shaking. He clutched me fiercely, face pressed to my hair like he was breathing me in. He held me and held me and didn’t move for a very, very long time.

I flattened my hand over his back, brow furrowing. Something was wrong.

His blood had spilled over that altar, too. Had he gotten a visitor, like I had?

“Asar,” I whispered. “What happened?”

“I just—I’m glad to see you.”

His hand touched my face, right over the burn that Atroxus’s touch had left. I flinched, hissing with the pain.

Asar’s eyes snapped open. Fell to that wound. His entire demeanor changed.

“What happened?” He tilted my head, examining the burns. Did they look as bad as they felt?

I could have sworn I felt the shadows in the room tremble. “Is this a handprint ?” he growled.

Every word sounded like a death sentence.

I pulled away. “It’s not bad.”

“There is a handprint on your throat?—”

“I saw the past,” I said. “That’s all. It’s…?not happy.”

Asar’s face softened. “Who?”

I hesitated. I hated lying. Especially to Asar, when he was looking at me like I was the most precious thing in the world.

“My sister,” I said.

A partial truth.

My gaze swept over Asar’s face. He looked unhurt, though something about him looked different in a way I couldn’t place. And he was shaken. I didn’t have to see that on his body—I could feel it. Even now, he touched my hand, like he was afraid to let me go.

“Did you…?see something?” I asked.

“Secrets manipulates your mind. We should have known that even in the temple, we wouldn’t be safe from that.”

“Is that a yes?”

A hesitation. A wince flitted over his face.

“Malach?” I said.

He paused. And then, like it pained him, he nodded. “Yes.”

It wasn’t the truth.

At least, it wasn’t the whole truth.

But I could let him lie to me. I didn’t care. I just wanted him here. I wanted to drink up every second I had with him until the end.

For the first time, I took in our surroundings. We stood at a landing between two staircases, the one I’d come up and an identical one behind Asar. Another, grander set of stairs spiraled up to our right, while a smaller door led down to our left.

“I woke up down there,” he said, jerking his chin back toward the stairs behind him. “Luce was with me.”

He rubbed her head affectionately, and I scratched her chin as her tail thumped in satisfaction. Of course Luce would have found Asar the moment she could. Of course she would have guarded him until he woke up. She was the very best girl.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better, Luce,” I said.

She gave a disinterested snort, as if to chide me for worrying about her at all. Still, she leaned into those head scratches, willing to accept the praise regardless.

I looked up. The ceiling was high above us. It looked like layers and layers of stained glass, all in conflicting designs, built on top of each other.

“Are we still in the temple?”

“I think so.”

I stared up at that design. Why did it look so familiar?

And then it hit me.

“We’re under the floor.” I pointed up. “Those are the mosaics. The underside of them.”

Look beneath, Atroxus had said.

Asar turned to the staircase leading down.

“There’s a relic here,” he said. “We were wrong. It wasn’t missing.”

His voice sounded off in a way I couldn’t place. Oddly certain.

He took my hand in his, and together, we went down the stairs. As we walked, the opulence fell away. There were no more columns, no more carved decorations, no more tapestries on the walls. The hall grew narrower, the steps uneven. By the time we reached the bottom, this was no longer a shrine at all. This was an unmarked tomb, meant to hide something away.

A door stood before us. It was stone, the surface smooth and polished. A bird was carved upon its center, wings spread, flames rising from it.

“A firefinch,” I said.

“A phoenix,” Asar corrected.

I touched the tattoo burning beneath my shirt sleeve, buried beneath years of scars.

“Atroxus’s contribution, I take it,” Asar said. He shot me a glance. “Now it’s worth it that I saved your life. I was beginning to wonder.”

He often sounded a little awkward when he joked, but this one was downright flat. His hand touched my back as I approached the door.

For a moment, I doubted whether I would have the magic to open it. My skin was covered in the marks of my god’s disappointment. But I had a purpose to fulfill. He wouldn’t abandon me completely until I’d finished it.

I laid my hand over the phoenix’s chest and called upon the sun.

It burned. But it obeyed my command, molten light flooding the carvings, igniting the bird in flame.

The door opened.

The room within was small—barely big enough for all three of us to fit. An empty black arch sat on the opposite side. Two skull-faced marble alligators curled around a cracked, circular hole in the floor.

Luce approached and sniffed them.

“Cousins of yours, Luce?” I asked.

Maybe Luce was a guardian. She was loyal enough.

We stepped through the door and knelt beside the hole. And when we leaned over it, the past—Alarus’s past—collided with us once again.

The Sanctum of Secrets is the Sanctum of shame, of desire, of everything you do not wish the world to see. This is true of all beings. Mortal, or god.

I kneel at the circle, holding my greatest regret. I hate those who put this in my hands. I hate myself more for accepting it. I could have destroyed it. I could, still, in this moment.

I do not.

Instead, I lower it down, down, down, far beneath the ground. It will be buried here for millennia. It will remain here, where my beloved wife may never find it.

She will never know what was once intended for her heart.

The images faded, leaving Asar and me breathless.

I peered into the crevice.

I expected darkness. Instead, light bathed my face. I reached down, my fingers closing around Alarus’s secret relic.

A golden arrow.

God-crafted—that was obvious. The divine light pulsed through my bones. It was long and slender, the tip death-sharp. Yellow feathers curled at its end. I recognized them immediately: firefinch feathers.

The nature of what I was holding settled over me.

This was a weapon. A weapon crafted by the gods to kill a god.

If Alarus had done what was asked of him from the beginning, Atroxus had said, what a better world this would be.

Asar met my eyes. Understanding fell over us both.

This was a weapon that had been intended for Nyaxia. Alarus had been meant to kill her all along.

And now, this was the weapon that I would use to kill the god of death.