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

CHAPTER ONE

he dark went on forever. The candle would not light.

Sweat rolled down my brow. I sagged against the bars of my cell, eyes fixed on the unlit candle, which stood crooked and dusty within a cobweb-coated lantern that dangled from a hook on the opposite side of the room. It was precariously close to a heavy velvet curtain, once green but now dull with long-dried blood.

One spark.

One spark, and the candle would go up, and then the curtains, and then I would have a flame big enough to manipulate even now, with my diminished magic. Once, I wouldn’t even have needed the candle at all. Once, I could’ve summoned the power of the sun in my palm. I could have burned my way out of here. Vampires were never quite prepared for it—the sun. They definitely never expected it to come from me, a vampire girl with big eyes and a bigger smile. I could always get so far on that.

My arm strained through the bars. A shaky breath escaped through gritted teeth as blood dripped a melody onto the floor. I reached for the magic that had once come as easily for me as breathing. Reached for the god who had once chosen me.

Please, my light, I begged him silently. Please.

But it had been more than a year now since Atroxus had answered my prayers. More than a year since I’d felt the warmth of his magic at my fingertips. Each attempt opened burns instead, as if to mock me: What else does the sun have to offer a vampire?

Tonight was no different.

I tried until my body gave out on me. Then I collapsed.

I pressed my forehead against the bars, shutting my eyes against the sting of tears and blood. I was covered in it. A lot of it was mine, but not all. The soldiers from the House of Shadow had killed a merchant, too, when they came for me. I relived the look on the merchant’s face as the Shadowborn arrow had pierced his throat, the way the soldiers had casually tossed his body aside as they descended upon me. He’d been kinder to me than I deserved. Maybe he took pity on me, a dirty, broken-down traveler in the middle of nowhere.

How had they found me? I’d been on my own for months now, and I was so careful to leave as little a trail as possible. Of the three vampire kingdoms, the House of Shadow had the greatest mastery of spycraft. They dealt in secrets, emotions, knowledge. If anyone could root out a single criminal, I supposed the Shadowborn were best equipped for it.

But I’d still been miles away from the border of the House of Shadow. And I was just one girl. They came for me like they knew exactly where I’d be.

Then again, I wasn’t “just” anything. I had murdered a prince of the House of Shadow.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew it would catch up to me eventually. That was why I’d left the House of Night, wasn’t it? To shield my friends from the consequences of my actions.

At least there was that.

My head swam. Maybe from the blood loss. Maybe not.

I choked back a sob and slipped my hand into my pocket. It was empty, as I knew it would be. The Shadowborn soldiers had taken all my possessions. I’d been half-conscious as they rummaged through them, their magic binding my thoughts, but I still had almost managed to reach out as they took Raihn’s letters.

Raihn’s unopened letters.

He had sent me so many of them. Oraya sent a few, too. They’d come to me if I was close enough to the capital of the House of Night, sent by their magic. Every week or two, I’d take a detour to circle back into range, and I’d cradle those wrinkled pieces of parchment like precious riches. I could imagine what they said. Raihn’s scrawled handwriting: Where the hell are you, Mish? Oraya’s looping script: Don’t make me send Jesmine to go hunt you down.

I could never make myself read them, though.

I couldn’t make myself throw them away, either.

I fiercely regretted both decisions now. I could still see Raihn’s face in the moment I’d told him I was leaving. That puppy-dog look of utter hurt. The memory made another near sob bubble up in my throat.

Gods, I had made so many mistakes.

I jumped at the sudden sound of stone grinding against stone.

The door swung open, strings of cold light flooding over the ground. I lifted my head and was punished with a powerful wave of dizziness. More blood dripped onto the floor.

A woman and a man stood in the door. The woman was nobility. I knew it the second I looked at her. She was tall and straight-backed, her hands folded delicately in front of her. Long tendrils of deep chestnut hair tumbled down her shoulders. She wore a gown of emerald velvet that wrapped tight around her body and brushed the floor. The bodice was tight, pushing her breasts up against a low neckline. A classic example of the Shadowborn style of dress—expensive stuff. She stepped forward, surveying me with a cold, piercing gaze.

Something about her was familiar in a way that crawled under my skin. It went beyond her appearance. I could feel it, even if I couldn’t place it.

Her companion closed the door behind her. Him, I recognized right away. He was a hulking man, with slicked-back dark hair and fine leather armor, a cloak that matched his mistress’s dress falling down his back. My gaze locked onto that cape. He hadn’t changed it since he’d dragged me in here. It was ruined. My blood was all over it.

The woman stood silently as her guard returned and opened the cell doors. She stepped into the cell.

“Get up,” she said.

Her voice was flawless, melodic, and for those two syllables, it was the most entrancing thing I had ever heard. My body was broken. And yet, at her command, I wanted to stand. No other possibility existed, every alternate snipped away like branches from a vine.

I was on my feet before I made the decision to rise.

Shadowborn magic, I realized. The magic of minds and compulsion, illusion and shadow.

When little human children in a country half a world away told scary stories at night, the vampires of the House of Shadow were the monsters that came to them in their nightmares. Sure, the Nightborn were intimidating, with the wings and the swords and all that battle prowess. The Bloodborn were frightening the way rabid wolves were, vicious and unpredictable.

But the Shadowborn were like ghosts. They manipulated reality itself. They drank up the darkness like wine and relished the notes of fear within it.

The woman circled me slowly. I swayed. My mind had obeyed her command, but my body wasn’t actually capable of standing right now. The floor felt like it was tilting.

Talk your way out of this, Mische, I told myself. But words, for maybe the first time in my life, felt so far away. And I couldn’t find any before she stopped in front of me, surveying me feet to head, and gave me a cruel, unimpressed smile.

That was what did it. The smile.

The realization barreled into me. Who she was. Why she looked so familiar.

My eyes widened.

A little ripple of pleasure passed between us as she chuckled.

“So this is the one who killed my brother.” Her smile soured, melting into a snarl. “What an embarrassment. A prince of the House of Shadow, murdered by some little bitch he Turned. He never could control his own impulses. That’s what happens when you spend your whole life getting everything you want, I suppose.”

She did look so much like…?him.

And more than that, she felt like him—I could sense it, that little echo of our shared magic in her hold on my mind. He had Turned me, had given me the cursed gifts of vampirism that I tried so hard to shut away. Her magic made something stir behind that door, my own recognizing a hint of its maker.

Deny it, the final dregs of my rational thought urged in the back of my mind. They have Raihn’s letters. Your guilt implicates the House of Night. You have to deny it.

It took every shred of my strength to force my charming smile.

“I think you have me confused for?—”

She rolled her eyes. Her magic ripped into my memories like claws through paper. My skull felt as if it was exploding. Flashes of my past flew by as she rummaged through my mind: the Citadel of the Destined Dawn, my sister’s face, the blue sky over the sea, the shores of the House of Shadow?—

Then him.

She stopped. My breath was ragged. I was against the wall, her hand to my throat, even though I didn’t remember her putting it there. The steady drip of my blood had gotten more rapid.

She smiled slowly.

“Ah. There it is. My brother’s death day.”

Her magic pushed through my mind like a blunt knife. She grabbed the memory and excised.

The prince of the House of Shadow was a devastatingly handsome man, and he was gazing at me like I was a pleasant surprise he looked forward to devouring. He stared at me from across the ballroom, and I dried the sweat on my palms against the gold fabric of my magnificent, ridiculous dress. Ten minutes ago, I’d felt beautiful in it. Now, I hated how much it made me stand out in this crowd. I couldn’t tell Raihn or Oraya. Not when so much hinged on this party going well?—

She pushed deeper. Pain split my head, seams between the present and the past popping.

“Careful, Egrette,” the man warned. His voice sounded a world away. “You can’t kill her yet.”

Egrette. I’d heard that name before. Distantly, it clicked together. The House of Shadow had a princess, too. A second heir, sister to the man I’d killed. But this knowledge flew by, lost beneath her assault on my mind. I barely heard her response.

“She’ll die soon anyway. Before she does, I want to see how she did it.”

She tore through my memories of that party—the coup, when Raihn had been kidnapped and Oraya disappeared. Pushed past the images of the Bloodborn guards dragging me away and locking me up, a gift for the Shadowborn prince’s favor.

And then she stopped—right there, right at the moment it happened.

I had the prince against the wall. Oraya was behind me. His hands were on my throat. I was so, so angry.

This man had taken everything from me. He had Turned me into a beast undeserving of everything I’d devoted my entire life to. He was the reason I had lost my magic. He was the reason my god had abandoned me.

I thought about nothing but that hatred as I grabbed the sword Oraya had given me.

As I drove that blade straight through his chest and kept going, and going, and going, until I couldn’t push anymore—until the prince’s perfect face went slack?—

Egrette stopped. Her magic clung to that image—her brother in his moment of death.

She smiled.

“Poor, poor Malach. How very sad.”

But I could feel her emotions through the thread that connected us, too. She wasn’t sad at all.

She released me, and I fell to the ground in a gasping heap.

“No use in lying,” she said. “Besides, killing him was the most useful thing you’ll ever do. Not a lot of time left to top it anyway.”

I tried to roll over, tried to push myself to my hands and knees. But a delicately slippered foot emerged from beneath the princess’s skirts, pushing me back to the stone, pointed toe burying into the worst of my wounds.

“Egrette,” the man warned.

“Oh, pssh. The extra blood will add to the effect. My father will enjoy the suffering of a spy.”

Spy?

“I’m not a?—”

“Spare me. I just came to survey the quality of my gift before I hand it over.”

“Gift?”

The word was slurred and gummy. Black blood gushed onto the cobblestones. Egrette watched it with a faint line of disgust over her nose.

I lifted my gaze past her, to the unlit candle hanging in that dusty lantern.

I could envision so perfectly what her face would look like engulfed by flames. Vampires burned differently than humans did. Humans melted, but vampires went up like dry paper, skin cracking and peeling and withering to white ash.

Mere months ago, I could have had her alight in seconds.

But instead, I just heaved helplessly as she rolled me over with her foot.

“I’ve seen what I need to,” she said. Her voice faded. My lashes fluttered closed. I curled up around the open wound in my side. Death lingered in the shadows.

And still, my god was silent.

But why should I expect any different? Why should I deserve any different?

I was not a chosen one anymore.

The candle remained cold.

Saescha used to scare me with stories of vampires when I was a little girl.

“They’re evil beasts,” she would tell me. “They are more dead than alive, and they resent humans for having what they can’t. And do you know what they like to eat the most?”

Sometimes, if I was feeling playful, I’d turn it into a game—Toes! I’d giggle. Ears! Belly buttons! But usually, I’d say proudly, “Blood!” I liked to be right.

And Saescha would shake her head slowly, lovely face drawn into dramatic seriousness. “No, Mische. That’s a common misconception. What they really, really love, more than anything else, are souls. They’ll eat your soul in one big gulp. And they especially love the souls of little six-year-old girls with curly hair!”

And then she’d lunge at me, tickling me as she pretended to chomp chomp chomp at my throat, and I’d laugh and laugh until I couldn’t breathe anymore.

The memory of Saescha’s voice drifted by like a lonely cloud in an empty sky, but I was not laughing now.

Maybe this was what she had been talking about, because I felt like my soul itself had been unraveled. Dreams rolled over me like the steady beat of waves on the shore, drawing me to reality only to cruelly drag me away again. Egrette’s vicious rummaging through my mind left my thoughts ransacked, memories gushing together like blood from torn flesh, just as deadly as the wounds on my skin.

I lost track of who I was, where I was. Lost track of the boundaries between the past and the present.

You’ll die here, I told myself.

Do something, I begged myself.

But I couldn’t pull myself back to reality. I reached for a sun that rewarded me with burns. I reached for a god who wouldn’t answer. I fell back into dreams.

At first, I thought the hands were a dream, too.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d lain there when the figure leaned over me. I could barely open my eyes, and even when I could, they refused to focus. I couldn’t make out anything but blurry shadow. A delicate scent wafted over me that I couldn’t place—something cold and clean, and faintly floral, like poppies dusted with frost.

Someone was touching me. Someone was rolling me over. The strain it put on my injuries made me cry out. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t move. I thrashed weakly, but the figure hissed, “Shh! Enough.”

They grabbed my wrists, pushing me back down to the floor.

Rip, as they tore open my already tattered shirt from the bottom. I slurred a groan of protest, but?—

The hands pressed to my stomach, right over the worst of my wounds.

I gasped.

The touch reached past the surface of my flesh. It settled into my lungs like air; it slipped through my veins like blood. All of it was as natural as a forgotten song, a hymn that had been at the tip of my tongue suddenly restored.

“Stop—” I moaned.

“Let me help you.” There was no comfort in the voice. The words were harsh and direct. The hands moved over my wounds, then to my arm, pushing up my sleeve. I moaned and thrashed, instinct more than anything, because I knew what my bare arms would reveal—years’ worth of burn scars, the natural punishment of a vampire wielding the magic of the sun.

The marks of my failure.

“Stop,” I tried to say. But unconsciousness had taken me again. I was falling beneath the waves. My visitor rolled my sleeve back down and pressed a hand to my brow.

And this time, the darkness didn’t feel like a punishment. It felt like an embrace.

I had so many strange dreams.

I dreamed that someone came to visit me, a slew of pretty -people with ornate clothing and impeccable uniforms. I dreamed of a tight white dress and silver chains around my wrists. I dreamed of endless commands—stand here, turn there, sit, stand, put out your hands, walk, Mother’s sake, faster than that. I dreamed of voices—the king will be pleased, won’t he?—and eyes and hands, and though these touches were much softer than the ones I’d felt before, I knew, even in my dream, that they were much crueler. Still, it never even occurred to me to fight. My mind was limited to a single tunnel of options, none of which included disobedience.

I dreamed of stone and a starry night and a palace made of knives. I dreamed of a door and?—

Wake her up, a lovely voice said.

Someone touched my face.

All at once, I wasn’t dreaming anymore. Reality crashed down around me like an avalanche, frigid and catastrophic.

“Shit,” I squeaked, before I could stop myself. My knees almost gave out, though someone grabbed me to hoist me upright again.

Several hundred sets of vampire eyes stared at me.

I was at the center of a magnificent ballroom, which seemed to be in the middle of a party befitting its grandness. Gods, the only other time I’d seen a place like this was in the House of Night’s palace—and perhaps fittingly, the only other party I’d attended that was this grand was the one that had ended with me killing the prince of the House of Shadow, which seemed like a cruel joke.

The style of this room was very different, though, than the House of Night’s castle. All hard edges instead of those rounded curves, sharp metal instead of smooth marble, velvet instead of silk. My eyes bounced between columns of intricate, glistening black steel, crafted to look like twisting vines, and then the real vines that covered them, dotted with roses of black and red. I could practically taste the blood from the fingers of the craftsmen who had worked on it. It was the kind of beauty that made you certain that surely, someone had to have suffered for it.

The people who surrounded me held that same painful allure, smooth faces of high cheekbones and full lips, hair tamed into severe updos or sleek waterfalls. They wore elaborate finery, bodies of men and women alike highlighted in impeccably tailored velvets and brocades. Women’s blood-spattered bosoms heaved over tight corset bodices. Men’s gold-laced jackets, likely once buttoned up to their throats, had been loosened, too, revealing smears of black and red.

The scent of blood—human blood, hot and sweet—nearly made my knees go out again, my stomach lurching and dry mouth watering. Gods, how long had it been since I’d drank? My eyes landed on a human man, a blood vendor, who sagged against a feast table. Blood ran down his throat and coated his upper thigh over torn fabric. I had to force myself to look away, ashamed of myself.

I was wearing a white gown in a similar style to the others—tight brocade, with a bodice so restrictive it made my ribs hurt. The fabric was thin. I looked down to see that my blood from my injuries had soaked through it—black spreading like rose petals on my waist, my right shoulder, my left forearm.

Intentional, I realized. Part of the presentation.

I could feel pressure on my mind encroaching from every direction, plucking at scraps of my fear like greedy fingers pulling the skin from a turkey carcass, but I straightened my back, lifted my chin, and hoisted my mental walls as high and firm as my feeble mind could handle.

And it took everything inside of me to keep them that way when my gaze landed on the man before me.

Oh, gods.

“Father,” the Shadowborn princess said, voice smooth and yet booming through the massive room. “My gift for you on the auspicious night of your birth. I present to you, the murderer of your son.”

The King of the House of Shadow leveled his gaze at me, a thousand-year-lifetime’s worth of hatred in their depths.