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

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

ASAR

I sit alone for a long time. I don’t mind. Although I have many vices, impatience is not one of them. I can wait.

I’m not sure where they take me. The time after Mische’s death runs together. I don’t remember what I did after they dragged me away from her corpse. I don’t remember what the gods said to me or to each other.

I do remember the sight of Shiket’s blade driving through Mische’s heart, though. I remember it vividly. I think of it over and over again.

The White Pantheon isn’t sure what I am. I’m not sure what I am, either, so I cannot blame them for not knowing what to do with me. They chain me up and leave me in a room of black. I had never felt quite right among the living. But now, I’m more disconnected than ever from my mortality. I don’t feel hunger, not even for blood. I don’t sleep. Some part of me did not come back when Mische pulled me out of that ritual circle, and something new replaced it.

I wait.

The gods come to visit me sometimes, in what I think are attempts to understand just how much of Alarus I hold within me. Perhaps they’re less concerned about the power than the memories. Ix was the one to lure Alarus to his ambush; Srana was the one to craft the blade that cut him up; Vitarus was the one to scatter his body. They watch me with wary stares, like I’m a snake that might strike at any moment—wondering if I’m really their betrayed brother in disguise, ready to punish them for their misdeeds.

I may hold Alarus’s power, and I may hold a drop of his blood in my veins, but I do not hold his memories.

Still, they’re right to be concerned.

Because while I don’t remember their betrayal of Alarus, I do remember what they looked like standing over Mische’s broken body.

I remember what she looked like going up in flames in the hands of the god of the sun, whom she had once loved more than anything.

I remember how the god of vitality had dismissed her like she was nothing more than a wounded animal.

I remember how the goddess of justice had inflicted the horrific injustice of her death.

I remember all of it, and I hate them more for that than any two-thousand-year-old betrayal. The death of one woman, one woman who was better than all of them, who had given everything until she had nothing left, was worth more than all of it.

But I’m patient. I’m determined. I have plenty of time to think about Mische and what I will offer her when—not if—I find her again.

If I were the god of the sun, I would have given her endless dawns and warm hearths.

If I were the god of the sea, I would have given her cool rains on hot nights and currents that always brought her home.

If I were the god of vitality, I would have given her sweet fruit and spring flowers.

I would have given her anything, everything, because that was what she deserved—every single thing she had loved, fully and completely, about mortality.

But I am not the god of any of those things. I have only one gift to lay at her feet.

And so, I wait.

End of Book III

Mische and Asar’s story will continue in book IV of the Crowns of Nyaxia series, coming soon.