CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A
troxus lay on the bed, meeting my gaze through the mirror. His eyes were not
the sparkling gems of pleasure that they had been before. They watched me
the way one watches a snake slither through tall grass.
“You told me you had never been disloyal,” he said.
I turned around, panic driving a spike through my chest. “I -haven’t, my light.”
His eyes traveled down to my dress—my ceremony dress. I looked down and gasped, balling the fabric in my fists. Once it had been brilliant gold. Now, the silk
was ink black.
He rose, unblinking.
“You told me you are committed to your calling.”
“I am, my light. Always.”
He lifted my chin, staring into my face. His brow furrowed, like he was seeing something new in me, and he didn’t like it.
He said, “Show me.”
I
trim uneven bone—were lined with books and dusty paintings.
“We’re back in Morthryn,” I said.
“One of the last safeholds. It will be a more difficult journey from here on out.”
“You really do say that constantly.”
The corner of his mouth tightened. “Am I ever wrong? We were lucky the temple gave me a quick path here. If it hadn’t…”
He didn’t need to finish. How many wraiths had been in that temple? Hundreds?
The full weight of what I had done crashed over me as the memories pieced together.
The worst part wasn’t that I had done it. It was that I had loved it. The magic.
The darkness. Even my damning judgment of Chandra in her final moments.
And there was nothing more dangerous than a sin that felt right. Nothing.
My hands felt so filthy. I wanted to scrub them until the skin peeled off.
Maybe my face changed, because Asar said quietly, “You were magnificent, Iliae. Never doubt that.”
Magnificent. The word fluttered up my spine. My hand still rested in his, and that brush of skin against skin captured all my awareness.
Another sin crashed over me:
Asar’s touch sliding between my thighs in our shared dream. The trembling want in his breath against my throat, in the way my legs opened for him. Hunger beyond anything I’d ever experienced. And he had felt it in me, just as I had in him.
Perhaps it was a dream. Perhaps he didn’t remember it. Who knew how the Descent worked?
But my gaze fell to his hand, perfectly still, thumb pressed against my wrist.
To the ripple of goosebumps on his forearm, visible even beneath the ink of his Heir Mark.
My eyes flicked up to meet his, and the sheen of desire gleaming in his stare made my breath catch.
His thumb slid quickly from my hand, and he looked away. I was happy to do the same. He would ignore it, and I was grateful for that. Psyche had hacked into
our subconscious like a butcher.
It didn’t mean anything.
It couldn’t mean anything. I was loyal to the sun. I wouldn’t betray him, not even in my mind. Not when he would be able to see the black marks piling up on my soul and punish me for them appropriately.
Instead I pushed my mind to more pressing thoughts.
Asar’s hands were now folded in his lap. The deep red ink of his Heir Mark swirled over them, delicate strokes that followed the bones of his hands. He followed my stare and stretched them out before him, one open eye and one closed staring back at us.
“A part of me thought it was part of Psyche’s tricks,” he said grimly. “Too
simple, apparently.”
“I’m sorry about your father,” I said.
“I’m not. He was a bastard.”
“I’m sorry that your sister tried to kill you.”
Sometimes there was no delicate way to say it.
He scoffed. “I should have seen it coming. Egrette wants nothing more than she wants that throne. She chose the perfect time to move. She could have tolerated being second when Malach was alive. But for the bastard, exiled half brother to get the crown over her…” He shook his head. “But I can’t fault her for how she turned out. She was the spare daughter to the cruelest king the House of Shadow has ever
seen. You’ve been a vampire for long enough to understand what that had meant for her.”
I nodded. Vampire lifespans made their offspring their greatest liabilities. They typically groomed a single heir, and any other children were either killed or maimed —unnecessary risks when succession nearly always came at the price of blood. The House of Night was the most notorious for this practice, but vampires of the House of Shadow were no less ruthless about protecting themselves. They just valued appearances more. Maybe the Shadowborn king hadn’t hacked off Egrette’s legs or stripped her of her magic, but I had no doubt that he’d been shackling her for years in other, less obvious ways.
Maybe she, too, had spent the last century thinking that she could pay her dues, earn her keep, and finally, finally, be given the acceptance she so craved.
“It’s only the start,” he went on. “She won’t settle for being a queen. She wants to be an empress. If what Elias said about the House of Blood is true, if they did indeed conquer a human nation… that sets a precedent that I know Egrette will want to seize.” His jaw tightened, and I followed his stare to the coffee table. I hadn’t noticed when I woke up, but items had been neatly lined up atop it—the
relics. The branch, the ring, and—
My brow furrowed.
Four red petals.
Four. Not five.
“Shit,” I whispered. “When did he—”
“I don’t know.” The words were a frustrated growl. “Elias was—he’s more competent than I gave him credit for. We used to work together. I should have known.” His throat bobbed. “I let my personal… issues with him cloud my
judgment.”
Issues.
I thought of what I had seen in Asar’s memories. His tears on Ophelia’s mutilated body. The work, surely, of more than one man.
Then his words to Elias after we’d returned from the Sanctum of Breath: You can’t handle witnessing the results of your actions.
The pieces snapped into a sickening picture.
Asar let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Your face keeps no secrets, Iliae.”
“Was he—did he—” I didn’t mean to ask.
“Malach gave him orders then, and he followed them. Just as he followed Egrette’s now. He wasn’t the one who tortured Ophelia or killed her, but he was there. I was blindsided by them because I thought we were friends. But this time I was blindsided because I let myself think he was an idiot.” He shook his head sharply. “A bastard, maybe. But not an idiot.”
Elias had a relic of Alarus in his possession—albeit a small one. The thought made me nauseous.
“I can still conduct the resurrection with what we have,” Asar said. “Elias wasn’t so stupid as to strip me of my ability to do that, just in case Nyaxia did come knocking. But if he makes it back to the surface and offers that power to Egrette…”
“What can they do with it?”
A muscle twitched in Asar’s jaw in a way that, I knew by now, meant he was trying to avoid saying I don’t know.
“Use it for its own power. Or offer it as a consolation prize to win Nyaxia’s favor if I fail. Countless other terrible things. Probably better that we don’t find out.”
And yet, I felt like I already knew. It would be bad if Egrette used the relic as a source of power in itself. It would be even worse if she used it as leverage to become Nyaxia’s new chosen champion if Asar failed. My head swam with the visions Atroxus had showed me. I felt as if the air had curdled with a rapidly shifting fate. As if all those bloody futures had just swung sharply closer to reality.
“But she can’t do anything yet,” I said. “Because you’re the Heir, not her.”
Asar didn’t answer for too long.
He pulled up his sleeves to reveal the full, glorious expanse of his Marks. My brow furrowed. I’d missed it before, but under the light…
“Why are they doing that?” I asked.
The tattoos flickered ever so slightly, as if the ink strokes were shadows from a shifting lantern.
“Because right now, I’m closer to dead than alive,” Asar said, “and a dead Heir isn’t much of a king.”
“Does that mean Egrette is up there with half an Heir Mark?”
Again, that long pause, the one I knew meant I don’t know.
At last, he said quietly, “You should go back.”
My brows lurched. “I should what?”
Even Luce lifted her head, as if this shocked her, too.
“I can help you back to the nearest roots of Morthryn. Elias will be moving slowly. You’re better at navigating these halls than he is. You can catch up to him.
Tell him whatever bullshit he wants to hear. Say that you escaped me. He’ll give you whatever you want. Or leave him to rot, and go free yourself.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Why would I—”
“We’re getting very close to the underworld now. Morthryn has collapsed down here. Even I can barely get to the next two Sanctums, Secrets and Soul. They’ll be more dangerous than anything we’ve faced so far, and with Ophelia—”
He bit down hard on her name. He stood and turned away, tucking his hands into his pockets, as if to physically raise a shield between us. I understood the impulse. But there was no escaping what we’d seen in each other. The weight of his memories hung heavy between us.
“She’s stronger than she was the last time I—the last time I saw her,” he said.
“And she will keep following me until the end.”
“Can you do the—” I actually didn’t have the word for it. “The thing? Can you help her like you helped Eomin?”
I knew Asar was serious, because he didn’t even seize upon that perfect opening for an arrogant correction. Instead, he flinched, like the answer to this question was viscerally painful.
“No. I can’t. I’ve tried. I’ve tried so many times.”
One more time, he had said to her, the first time we encountered her. Opening his arms to her.
“She isn’t fully dead,” he said. “She isn’t fully alive. And she isn’t what she used to be. She’s… Perhaps if I can resurrect Alarus, he can…” He swallowed thickly, like he was afraid to even give voice to this hope. But understanding fell over me.
“It’s her,” I murmured. “You’re trying to help her.”
He was quiet for a long moment, a muscle flexing in his jaw. “You saw. That night. It was wrong from the start, and I was too selfish to care. The Descent is crumbling with neglect, and I dealt a blow to it that night. Ophelia is not the only lost soul trapped here. The others just don’t know enough to blame me.”
“What’s happening to the Descent isn’t your fault, Asar. Even I know that.”
He shook his head. “No. But I feel a responsibility for it all the same. And yes.
For her, too.”
I heard the echo of what he’d said to me the first time I helped him close a gate:
The world is built atop the invisible, abandoned souls. They needed someone.
A pang twisted in my heart. Sadness for him. Maybe something else I didn’t want to examine too closely, because I felt it too deep.
I thought of Atroxus and the secrets I kept carefully tucked away behind my mental walls. Uncertainty spilled through me because I could stop it. For a moment, the outrageous thought of telling Asar the truth flitted through my mind. Of course, I couldn’t—for Asar’s sake and mine. I couldn’t back away from my task now, not when the terrible fate Atroxus warned of was swinging closer than ever, and not when my redemption was so precarious.
And yet, I found myself so easily stepping into Asar’s dream with him.
“All right,” I said. “So we continue, and we resurrect Alarus, and—”
“I deserve this,” Asar cut in, “but you don’t.”
I couldn’t help it. I rolled my eyes.
He scowled, getting to his feet so he loomed over me. “I’m serious, Mische—”
I’m serious, Mische. I couldn’t count how many times protective men had said that to me.
I threw out my hands, gesturing to the room around us. “I’ve already made it halfway through purgatory, you self-sacrificing idiot.”
“I’m the self-sacrificing one?”
My smile disappeared under the scalpel of his tone. I didn’t know why it hurt a little to have that little jagged shard of my past—something I had entrusted to no
one else—wielded against me.
A second later, the smile was back.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
He took a step forward. He was now so close to me that I could feel the warmth of his body.
“I appreciate your boundless optimism,” he said, voice low. “But some things are serious, Iliae. Some things are dark. It isn’t all jokes and games and smiles. And I don’t want to watch this destroy you.”
My anger caught me off guard.
“Do you think that I don’t know what darkness is?” I said. “Why? Because I smile too much? Because I talk too much? It’s my choice to be the way that I am. A choice that I make even when it’s hard. That doesn’t make me weak, Asar.”
“That’s not what I—”
“I know what you meant.” I drew in a deep breath and let it out, my anger fading. “You meant that you care about me.”
I half surprised myself by even saying it that way. Asar’s brows twitched, like he was surprised to hear it. And maybe both of us were equally surprised to realize how true it was.
I gave him a weak smile. “You have a good heart, Asar. Thank you for trying to protect me. But just because I talk a lot and smile a lot doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I know what I’m asking for. You can’t do the rest of this alone.”
“You don’t deserve to die for this,” he said.
“You were the one who told me that everyone in Morthryn deserved to be here.”
He winced. “I didn’t—”
“You were right. It wasn’t an accident that I ended up here. You saw—” I swallowed thickly. I wasn’t ready to acknowledge aloud what Asar had seen of my past. One step at a time.
His gaze softened, like he knew this, too.
“I’m here because I’m meant to be,” I said. “And I know you won’t admit it, but you can’t finish this without me. So stop being such a stubborn oaf and just let me
help you.”
“A stubborn oaf?”
“I stand by it.”
He was quiet for a long time. Then his gaze flicked up, a smirk tightening at one corner of his mouth. “Does that make me your latest project, Dawndrinker?”
Was he? For a while there, I’d thought that was what I felt toward him—that familiar euphoria of a wound to heal. But that had always been so comforting. Safe.
Simple.
Nothing felt safe about the way he looked at me just then.
But I just grinned slyly at him. “That’s the trick, Asar. You’ve been my project from the start.”
He snorted. The tension broke as he leaned back, shaking his head.
“If anyone can melt a stone heart.”
