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

Chapter 40

CHAPTER FORTY

“ S oul will be next.” Asar’s voice was distant. We were both uncharacteristically quiet as we entered the dark arch leading us out of the temple and into the shadowy world beyond. It was warm and silent out here, the ground dusty gray sand, the sky dark, the path before us surrounded by what appeared to be great tree trunks—except where one would expect branches or leaves, they just extended up into the mist forever. There were no wraiths, no souleaters. If I listened very carefully, I thought I could hear their mournful cries in the distance, but even that might have been a trick of the wind.

Asar still insisted that I hold his sword, which banged against my hip. He had carefully wrapped the arrow and placed it in his pack along with the other relics—three monuments of love and one of betrayal. The golden light seeped between the stitches of the pack.

“How long until we get there?” I asked.

It felt like such an inane question, all things considered.

“I’m not sure. A week or two, on foot.” A pause, then, “Less, maybe. Secrets and Soul are closely intertwined. The boundary between them is very thin.”

“So the wraiths?—”

“If something wants to follow us badly enough, it likely can.”

He answered quickly enough that I knew this was on his mind, too. Ophelia, Malach. Saescha.

A muscle feathered in Asar’s jaw. He barely looked at me. Something was wrong. Whatever he had seen in that temple had shaken him as much as my encounter had shaken me.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, as if reassuring himself. “We only have to get in long enough to perform the rite.”

“Isn’t there one more relic?”

A pause. Then, “The Sanctum of Soul is more a doorway than anything. The passage itself will act as the fifth relic.”

I supposed that by now, I should have stopped trying to apply logic to any of this. It was magic. None of it made sense. I’d relished that for most of my life—that my magic was driven by the emotions in my heart, unbound by the rigid rules that I’d chafed against in the Citadel.

I could use some rules now. A loophole to slip through.

We walked a few steps in silence. Asar was serious, a line of concentration between his brows. Even the light of his scarred eye was dimmed. Yet, he reached for me like it was second nature, long fingers twining around mine.

I couldn’t make myself pull away.

My gaze fell to the pack at his hip and the light pulsing from within, even through the fabric and leather.

“Do you think that was really intended for her? The arrow?”

Even as I asked it, I knew the answer. I just wanted to rail against it. Nyaxia had always struck me as so lonely. I didn’t want to think that her one love had been tainted by this hidden betrayal.

“Some believe that the gods’ power is communal,” Asar said. “Perhaps they were afraid that the addition of a thirteenth major god would dilute their strength. Or maybe they were just threatened by her because she wouldn’t do what she was told. She was a runaway, after all.”

That was an uncomfortably familiar story.

“So they…?sent Alarus to kill her? Was that what he was supposed to do when he found her?”

The stories always made it sound so fortuitous. That Alarus had rescued Nyaxia when she stumbled, starving and injured, into his territory. She had wandered for weeks in the lands between the mortal and immortal worlds. Maybe she’d even wandered here, on the path we now walked.

“Perhaps,” Asar said. “Alarus had always been looked down upon by the rest of the White Pantheon. Maybe he saw Nyaxia as an opportunity. Leverage against his fellow gods.”

“But he decided not to do it.”

“He still kept the weapon.”

My heart hurt.

I shook my head. “No. He loved her.”

Asar’s mouth twisted into a wry, sad smile. “People hurt the ones they love all the time. It might be the one thing we have in common with the gods.”

I knew he was thinking of Ophelia and how he had damned her. Saescha’s face flashed through my mind, too. Eomin’s. All the others.

I stopped walking. My hands curled at my sides.

“ No. Not always. Sometimes people just love each other and do right by each other and always make up for it when they make mistakes. Sometimes people are just happy together for the rest of their lives. Sometimes—sometimes it all works .”

I needed to believe that. I thought of the last time I saw Oraya and Raihn, standing on that balcony together, nose to nose. That was love. I believed that with my whole heart. And I needed to believe it could last for them. That good things could exist in this world for good people.

I had lost so much of my faith. But I couldn’t lose that.

“I need to believe that it all can be worth it,” I said.

Looking at Asar’s face was like staring into a mirror. He was so much more expressive than I’d realized when I first met him. I just hadn’t known how to see it then. Right now, I could see all the conflict beneath the surface. Because he wanted to believe it just as much as I did. His heart was just as tender as mine. That was why he had devoted his life to fixing broken things, just as I had.

He approached me slowly, footsteps silent in the dust. His fingertips brushed my cheek and tilted my face toward him. He kissed my forehead.

“It will be worth it, Iliae,” he murmured.

I so wanted to believe him.

I really, really did.

We walked for a long time before we stopped to rest. Neither of us seemed eager to confront the things that would catch up to us once we stopped moving—things that were, somehow, so much more frightening than wraiths. Asar and I lay beside each other in the sand, staring at the sky. At first, I’d thought nothing was visible up there but the mist, but staring into it long enough, I realized that I could actually see our entire journey if I looked hard enough—the distant rivers of blood, the silver ghosts of the mortal world above, the deserts and the ice and pools of crimson. The hazy silhouettes of souleaters drifted in and out of the clouds, so far away that they looked like lazy shooting stars.

I felt the warmth of Asar’s body beside me, and I was painfully conscious that the last time we had lain down, it had been intertwined with each other, naked and spent. It felt like a lifetime ago.

“You’re quiet, Dawndrinker,” Asar murmured.

“You’re quiet, Warden.”

I turned my head. He was propped up on one side, watching me, a wrinkle between his brows.

He paused before speaking again, like he had to summon the courage to do it.

“Regrets?” he asked.

Gods, did I have regrets. I regretted the pain I’d brought to so many people I’d loved and who had loved me in return, even when I didn’t deserve it. I thought of my sister’s final moments, Raihn’s hurt face at my goodbye, the way he might look when he learned of my death. Because surely, I was going to die when this was done. I tried not to think about that, but it didn’t make it any less true.

I had regrets.

But I knew what Asar was asking with that searching, tentative stare. I don’t want to be something you regret.

I folded my hand over his, scars against scars.

“I told you I’ll never regret you,” I said. “I meant it.”

He said nothing at that, the wrinkle of concern still not fading. But he held my hand as he slept, and I traced my thumb over the shape of his—raised scars, knobby knuckles, elegant fingers.

No, I would never regret Asar.

But I knew that one day, he would regret me.