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

Chapter 43

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

O phelia’s face was distilled devastation. She wrapped herself around me. Wind whipped around us as we hurtled through the air. She barely resembled a mortal form now, a face that flickered in and out of view, too many limbs that bent the wrong way and stretched too far. She tightened and tightened around me, prying my thoughts open and sliding inside.

I saw myself, a child kneeling at the altar of the Citadel.

Lying on the bed in my wedding gown.

Smiling with Saescha. Laughing with Eomin. Praying. Eating. Sleeping. Swimming. Faster and faster, as she tore through my memories like she was rifling through a drawer.

She drew back, thrusting me back to reality. We were on the ground again, my body aching and broken. The upside-down world of mortals spun above me. The underworld thrashed below. I looked up and glimpsed the tower looming over us. I tried to move my head to look for Asar, but she grabbed me and forced it back again. Her breath was cold, quick, a useless mimicry of life—one of the only ones she had left. I felt her pleasure, tangled hopelessly with pain, as she licked the remnants of my life off her lips.

I started to scream for Asar, but she lowered her mouth to mine, plunging back into my past.

I was in the temple of Secrets, weeping before an altar.

Asar’s hands were on my skin. His mouth. His body. I was crying out his name as he pushed into me?—

Ophelia recoiled. A shock of her pain and jealousy pulsed through me—but that paled compared to her yearning hunger. I had never felt more alive than I had in those moments, and she sensed that.

“He is such an attentive lover,” she breathed. Her darkness reached deeper, again, into those memories?—

I was on the altar, on top of Asar, his blood on my lips as we held each other?—

She withdrew. I saw her face for a moment, taut with pain.

“He never held me like that.”

For a moment, she sounded…?confused. Sad. Not angry.

She sounded young. She sounded almost mortal.

My brow furrowed. My lips parted.

But then the sound of my name cut through the air. My gaze leapt beyond Ophelia—across the mirrored-glass plains, where Asar fought toward us.

The dead overwhelmed him, but he pushed through. His gaze, even from this distance, was fixed upon me, that one scarred eye shining star-bright against the dark, plumes of silver pouring from it. His mouth opened, and though the sounds of the death drowned him out, I knew he was calling my name.

He was too far away.

Ophelia watched him too. Her sadness reverberated between us.

“How he calls for you. He called for me that way, once.”

Then the sadness shattered, her face snapping back to me.

“I called for him seventy-two times. Seventy-two unanswered calls. How many will you make before the end?”

She lunged for me again, invading me, splitting me open. The pain tore muscle from bone, soul from flesh. I didn’t mean to scream, but my body had no other reaction to what was happening to me.

I was nineteen, on a boat to the land of vampires.

I was four, sitting on my father’s lap.

I was twelve, watching Atroxus bite into an apricot.

I was here, body failing, head lolling, pain consuming, helpless as Ophelia killed me.

I’d dropped my sword, and even if I hadn’t, it would do nothing to her. I lashed out blindly with my magic, but she absorbed it as if it were nothing.

Distantly, I heard Asar calling my name. Still too far. Too slow.

And what could he do, anyway, to stop this?

Ophelia was no wraith or souleater. She was?—

She was?—

I forced my head up. Forced my eyes open. She drew back, wiping my life from the corner of her mouth. For a moment, I saw her face—really saw her, as she had once been. Asar had remembered her as a flawless being. A representation of everything he had never been able to attain. Noble, respected, cruel, beautiful.

But that wasn’t all she was.

Bloody tears streaked her cheeks. I reached out and touched her cheek. At first, I felt nothing—she had no solid body—but then…

There. Her fear. Her vulnerability.

Sometimes they just need someone to listen, Asar had once said of the dead.

How many times had I done that, as a missionary? I knew how to mend a broken soul. And Ophelia’s was shattered.

I reached through the connection she’d forged between us. I let her anger and grief and agony flow through me. I let myself feel everything within her.

She had suffered so much for so long.

And just as she was about to descend upon me again, I murmured, “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

I meant it.

She jerked back. Brief confusion overtook her face, only to drown beneath rage. Her mouth twisted. “You are sorry? How does your pity help me now?”

Her grip tightened, tearing a little more of my soul apart. The pain left me breathless.

But I managed to say, “Sometimes someone else just needs to feel it with you. Like when you’re a child with a scraped knee. Do you remember that?”

She hesitated. Blinked. Her face came into view again, holding its form a little longer than before.

“You were little once,” I whispered. “Do you remember what it was like to feel that way? Like someone else’s affection could fix everything.”

Her memory, weak and distant, flickered by. A tiny child with long dark hair, crying on a stone step. The safety of a brief, passing embrace.

Human or vampire. It was the same.

Ophelia, I knew, had not thought of her mortality for a long, long time. It shook her. Her sadness was overwhelming, grief for the life she’d once had, nearly powerful enough to break us both. But I held on through it, pulling that connection closer.

Quickly, her vulnerability hardened again. Pain wrenched through me as she grabbed me, claws biting my flesh.

“It was not supposed to end this way. It was such a—such a terrible, terrible end.”

I felt it with her. Saw how Malach and his friends had drawn out her suffering. I felt every one of those seventy-two unanswered calls for help.

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.”

“I live it every moment. Over and over again. I cannot escape it.”

“I know.”

Because of what she was. Because of Asar’s butchered attempt to bring her back to life.

Her face was clear now, her nose nearly touching mine. She blinked, and the tears that slid down her cheeks were clear.

“He was supposed to love me. And yet, he did this to me.”

Asar. I felt the pain of her attempted resurrection. From the start, it was wrong—I could see that now. She’d known it. She’d tried to resist it, but Asar had just kept pulling her back.

“He didn’t mean to, Ophelia. He loved you.”

She shook her head.

“He did not love me. He did not even see me.”

“That can all be true at once.”

She looked dismayed, like a frightened child.

“It shouldn’t be that way,” she wept.

“No,” I murmured.

I reached further into her soul, and for a moment, she balked, preparing to push me away. I was so exposed that if she’d chosen to, she could have killed me. For a moment, I was sure that she was going to.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Asar getting closer. Almost close enough to reach me.

Don’t, I wanted to tell him. Not yet.

Ophelia acquiesced, letting me see the true nature of her. Gods, no wonder she’d become so destructive. If the fate of the wraiths seemed horrible, this was torturous—half of her soul living, half of it dead, and all of it twisted and deformed beyond recognition. She fed on wraiths and emotion because she was starving for life, but she was also so tired. Utterly exhausted.

She looked it now, her icy eyes starting to flutter closed. She felt more solid against me. I could almost wrap my arms around her.

“I’m so tired. I’m so hungry.” Her forehead leaned against my shoulder. I laid my hands over her back.

“Let yourself rest,” I said softly. “It’s all right. I promise.”

“I’m afraid.”

“You won’t be alone.”

I lifted my gaze over her shoulder. The waves of dead were thinning, scattering. She’d let go of her call. And Asar ran for me, Luce at his heels, sheer panic on his face.

I lifted one finger. Wait.

I understood now why Asar hadn’t been able to explain to me how he helped souls pass. Even I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I could see Ophelia’s broken spirit, all the places where her wounds had been stitched together. I soothed them all, one by one. I saw all her darkest fears. All her shattered hopes. I saw her for everything that she was.

This was how Shadowborn magic could heal. Shadows were the negative space of a soul. I let myself spill through them.

“I want to go,” she told me.

If I opened the door for her, she would step through. But here, I faltered. I didn’t know how to pierce that veil for her, how to draw back the curtain?—

Then, magic that mirrored mine enveloped us. Asar’s thumb swept over my back in a way that said, Thank you and I’m proud of you and I’m so glad you’re alive.

But I didn’t look at him, and he didn’t look at me. Instead, he reached into that darkness with me, and he opened the door for her.

Ophelia lifted her gaze to him.

There was no more anger. No more hunger. No more heartbreak. Just sadness and exhaustion.

And, at last, relief.

“I’m sorry, Ophelia,” he said softly.

He meant it. His regret had ruled him for so long. It seemed a little cruel that it was why he hadn’t been able to help her all these years. He couldn’t help her pass because he couldn’t let go of everything that tethered him to her. Not love, but regret and shame.

She stared at him as the veil parted for her.

She didn’t forgive him. That would be too tidy.

But she let go of her anger. Let go of her pain.

Her body disintegrated like ashes into the wind.