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

Chapter 48

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

T he sun beat down hot on the back of my neck. The scent of flowers surrounded me, almost dizzying in its strength. I knelt in the garden, damp earth on my knees, staring at the pile of golden feathers.

“Ugh.” Saescha’s sound of disgust jerked me awake. “Get away from that, Mische. It’s dirty, and it’s already gone.”

It didn’t seem dirty. The firefinch’s body lay among the roses as if it had all been arranged intentionally, an artful tableau of death. Its wings splayed among the ruby petals like it could, at any moment, leap into flight. The splashes of crimson echoed the blood on its chest.

A realization fell over me, like a word that had been on the tip of my tongue now springing to the front of my mind.

I looked up. Saescha was gone, and so was the sun.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think it is.”

I reached down, and the bird ignited, golden feathers twisting into flames. It leapt up into the sky, burning against the velvet night.

I smiled up at it, touching an old tattoo on my arm. It was a phoenix after all, just as I thought.

Asar’s voice was warm against my ear.

“Do not be afraid of death, Dawndrinker. Make death afraid of you.”

I watched the bird burn, and I let myself rise.

I lay in a field of flowers. Dust filled my mouth. Mist shrouded my eyes. I closed them, opened them, closed them again. I wanted to let myself float away. Wanted to sink into the earth and let flowers sprout from my flesh.

No. Not yet.

Not yet.

I opened my eyes and stared up at the sky. Endless colors danced against the darkness—the green of fresh spring, the purple of nightfall, the red of blood.

I lifted my hand. There was no more blood on it. Just smooth brown skin.

Smooth brown skin, with a faint silver sheen to it, the sky peeking through the slightly translucent outline.

Footsteps approached. Someone knelt next to me.

I turned my head to see a man peering down, brow furrowed. He swept moon-silver eyes over me and pushed a strand of blond hair from his face.

“Get up,” he said.

He didn’t bother to introduce himself. But maybe he knew he didn’t have to. I recognized him.

I took his hand, and he helped me stand.

“Welcome to the underworld,” Vincent, dead King of the Nightborn, said to me. “I hear we have some work to do.”