The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King (Crowns of Nyaxia Book 2)

People don’t really talk about how the days that make history, the days that change the course of entire civilizations, start in such mundane ways. Raihn and I got up and put on our leathers like it was any other night. We choked down a few bites of food, though my stomach was so nervous I could barely keep it down. We did a quick pass over our weapons. We broke down our tent.

All of it rote, unremarkable routine. We wasted no time. The sky was still stained purple with the remains of sunset. By the time it would turn pink with dawn, everything would be different.

Raihn and I didn’t talk. After yesterday, I didn’t have anything to say, or at least I told myself I didn’t, when the reality was just that I didn’t know how.

The map on my hand was now closer, the scale shifting and detail increasing as we ventured closer to our destination. We had only a short flight to the star, now at the center of the back of my hand, situated in the center of little illustrations of rocks and mountains that shifted with the angle of my hand when I tilted it.

We left the tent behind. No matter what happened, by dawn, we wouldn’t need it anymore.

We rose into the sky, the remnants of it disappearing below us. It was a mostly clear night, the sky before us bright with velvet darkness and silver stars, some thickening clouds lingering to the west, obscuring the distant skyline of Sivrinaj.

We flew for several hours, the deserts beneath us morphing gradually into rocky foothills. The distant silhouette of Sivrinaj grew closer, though still little more than smears of light through the clusters of clouds. I hated how much those clouds obscured our visibility.

“Look,” Raihn murmured, swooping close to me as we approached our target. He pointed out to the north, where some of the clouds had begun to part.

The smile broke out over my face before I could stop it—a big, stupid grin.

Because there in the sky was an unmistakable sight—a distant morass of wings, both featherless and feathered, blotting out the stars. They were far away, but if I squinted, I could make out the figures at their head: Jesmine, Vale, and Ketura, Mische in her arms.

And then, far below them, to the west, was another welcome sight: a wave of troops cresting the hills on foot, dressed in mismatched, makeshift armor and wielding scavenged weaponry, but bearing it all with their heads held high.

The humans.

We had a damned army. An unlikely, cobbled-together one, yes. But an army, nonetheless.

I let out a rough breath of relief, nearly a choked sob. I hadn’t allowed myself to think too hard about all the endless possibilities of how tonight might go. And yet the fear had remained in the back of my head—that Simon could have destroyed the rest of our forces before they even had the chance to make it to us.

The hope that seized me at the sight of them made the dark night a little bit brighter.

We gave them a wave of greeting they were probably too far to see, then soared down and landed among the foothills.

From above, this area had looked like nothing more than rocky desert, hidden in shadows and mottled moonlight. But from the ground, the scale of it all was staggering. Jagged stones loomed over us. What from above had appeared to merely be textures of the earth were revealed to be pieces of old buildings—stone beams and broken columns protruding from the sands, long-buried glimpses of some version of this society that had fallen long ago, worn down by time.

My skin burned where the necklace, ring, and bracelet touched it, the triangle of flesh that displayed the map tingling. A sudden sharp pain had me hissing an inhale when we landed.

Raihn shot me a questioning, concerned glance, and I shook my head.

“It’s fine,” I said. I cradled my hand and squinted down at the map. We were so close now that the lines reoriented with every step.

Glancing between the two, I stepped gingerly through the rocks, winding a convoluted path through the ruins. As the target grew closer, I got impatient, stumbling into a near run over the uneven debris.

I stepped beneath a half-buried stone arch, then tripped, barely catching myself before I went to my knees.

“Woah.” Raihn grabbed my arm. “Easy. What was that?”

Mother, my hand hurt. My head spun. The ground felt as if it was, very literally, tilting, to the point where I wanted to turn to him and say, Really? You don’t feel that?

I glanced down at my hand.

The black stones in my ring, and my bracelet, now glowed—an uncanny black light, wisps of shadow that brightened to rings of moonlight. But whatever I was feeling drew from deeper than the jewelry that sat at the surface of my skin. Like my blood itself was calling to…

To…

Raihn called after me as I pulled away from his grasp and stumbled down the path.

My eyes fell to a single fixed point ahead.

The door blended in so thoroughly with everything around it, partially submerged in the sand, hidden in the shadows of the tipped-over columns and shattered rocks. In any other circumstances, I probably would have passed right by it, oblivious to what was right under my feet.

Now, my entire being pulled me to that spot, even though every step hurt—like some invisible power was ripping me apart to get at whatever lurked under my skin.

“It’s here,” I said.

Raihn stopped beside me. He didn’t question me. He touched the stone, then yanked his fingers away.

“Ix’s fucking tits,” he hissed, cradling his hand—bubbling burns now marking his fingertips.

I unsheathed one of my blades and opened a shallow cut across my palm, then reached for the door.

“Wait—” he said.

But I didn’t hesitate.

I gasped when my skin touched the slab. For a moment, I lost my grip on the world.

I am the King of the Nightborn, in possession of something that no living being should ever possess. I thought that holding such a thing would make me feel powerful, but instead I feel smaller than ever.

Beside me, she leans close. Her eyes are white and milky, her goddess’s magic coursing through her. She looks otherworldly when she does this—beautiful in a way that frightens me.

She touches the door—

I pulled my palm away.

When I opened my eyes, the stone door was gone. In its place was a tunnel of darkness. Goosebumps rose over my skin, already reacting to the magic of whatever lurked within.

“Every shred of my being is screaming not to let you go down there,” Raihn said.

Every shred of mine was beckoning me closer.

“This is it,” I said.

I’d doubted the existence of Septimus’s god blood before. And maybe whatever my parents had hidden in this cave might not be blood, but I now found it hard to believe it was anything but touched by the gods. No one who felt this could deny it.

This wasn’t of this world.

Raihn reached for the door, but I slapped his hand away.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” I snapped. “You can’t go in there.”

He grimaced, glancing at his burnt fingertips, recognizing the truth even if he didn’t like it.

“So what? You go down alone?”

“We always knew that would be a possibility.”

I stared into the abyss. A slow, cold fear wrapped around my heart.

Fear is a collection of physical responses, I told myself.

Even though the darkness before me was frightening in a way that seemed so much bigger than a few fangs.

For a moment, it boggled me that those were my biggest problems, a year ago.

Raihn was getting ready to argue with me. I knew what that looked like by now. But just as he opened his mouth, his eyes flicked up to the sky.

“Fuck,” he murmured.

Something about his face told me exactly what I was going to see when I turned around. And yet, when I did, the sight of the wave of Rishan and Bloodborn warriors, emerging from the clouds and over the terrain in a seemingly-endless tide, still made me stop breathing.

There were just so many of them.

The army I had just been so relieved to see now seemed so pathetically small. We had been so worn down, fighting with the loyal fragments of forces cobbled together into something that had to be—Goddess, needed to be—enough.

I needed to believe it would be enough.

I whirled back to Raihn. His jaw was set, brow low over his eyes, the shadows making them seem redder than ever.

I knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth.

“You go,” he said. “I’ll hold them off with the others.”

Now I understood how he must have felt when I told him I’d go into this tunnel alone, because every part of me screamed in protest at that sentence. The impulse to stop him, to beg him not to go up against the man who had almost killed him, was briefly overwhelming.

I didn’t.

Raihn could not come with me where I was going, either, and I knew he wanted to stop me just as much.

Neither of us gave in.

I had no choice but to walk through that door, and no choice but to do it alone. Raihn had no choice but to lead the people who had followed him into the shadow of death, and no choice but to be the only one who might—might—be able to hold off Simon long enough for me to secure this weapon.

Neither of us had chosen our roles. But they were a part of us anyway, seared onto our souls as clearly as the Marks on our skin.

It’s hard to describe the sound of thousands of wings. A low, ominous, rolling roar, like thunder rising in a slow build. I was a child the last time I’d heard it, peering out the window to see the wings blotting out the moon.

I’d lost everyone that day.

They were approaching fast. When I spoke again, I had to raise my voice over the din.

“Give them fucking hell,” I said. “Alright? Don’t you dare let him win.”

The corner of his mouth quirked. “I don’t plan on it.”

I started to turn away, because the pressure in my chest was too much, the words I couldn’t say too heavy. But he grabbed my wrist and pulled me back, holding me close in a brief, fierce embrace.

“I love you,” he said, in a single, urgent breath. “I just—I need you to know that. I love you, Oraya.”

And then he kissed me once, roughly, messily, and he was gone before I had the chance to say anything else.

Just leaving me standing there, swaying, with those three words.

I love you.

They lingered too long. I wasn’t sure if it was them or the magic that made me so dizzy, unsteady on my feet, chest tight, eyes burning.

I watched Raihn’s silhouette rise into the air, soaring toward that wall of darkness.

A single speck, against a wave.

Suddenly, I felt so incredibly small. Like the human Vincent had always told me I was, helpless and weak, in a world that would always despise me. How did I get here, standing at the foot of my father’s legacy, fighting to rule the kingdom he told me I couldn’t even exist in?

I turned around and faced the doorway.

The darkness was unnatural, all-consuming.

You don’t want to see what’s inside there, Vincent whispered in my ear. He sounded oddly sad. Ashamed.

No, I thought. You don’t want me to see those things.

For nearly twenty years, I had seen only what Vincent had wanted me to see. I had become only what he wanted me to be. I had forged myself by his hand, by the bounds of the mold he’d poured me into, and never further.

It had been comfortable.

But now, too damned much was relying on me to not venture beyond those walls.

I stepped into the darkness.