The Primal of Blood and Bone (Blood and Ash, #6)

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

That everything done to prevent what was coming had only ensured that it would. Without the capability to love and hate, rejoice and mourn, gain and lose, there could be no balance. For every hardship, there must be prosperity. Hate could not exist without love. There could be no joy without knowing grief.

I saw Ancients who had gone to ground and ones yet to Awaken claw their way free, shaking the realms. And I knew they were no longer the great givers of life and the anchors that kept the essence of the realms stable. They were the end that erupted mountains and turned days into endless nights, toppling cities of steel and drying oceans. I saw them rise, full of ruin and wrath.

I saw the desperate King with the golden crown of laurel the ten Ancients had dreamed—the man who had descended from that tiny babe the true Primal of Life had held in his hands. I saw it all: the great power that rose as heir to the lands and skies; she, the first Chosen to fail, who was the true Primal of Life; and what the union between the bringer of life and the bringer of bone would unleash.

Two daughters. Two Kings. And the Great Conspirator. It was inevitable. The end would come.

Every beginning has an end. But for every end, there must be a new beginning. That’s what the ten dreamed. The fall of ruin and wrath. And the rise of blood and bone.

We were staring at an old Atlantian symbol—two symbols, actually. The circle with the line through it meant life, and the one at the top meant death. Combined, they stood for life and death. Blood and Bone.

“Casteel?” he called. When I faced him, he stared back with eyes churning with eather. “Be good to her.” I frowned. What a strange fucking thing to say. But I was too weary to point that out. “Always.” The smile returned. “And forever.”

“And you are that someone. You are the start of a new pantheon.”

“He’s not just named after Attes’s vellám. He is Attes’s vellám.”

“I’m half-Atlantian. My mother was an Elemental, and…” “Your father?” It was almost as if he couldn’t say it. “Was—is—a god,” he admitted.

“Your father?” I shifted my weight as the air hummed with the rise of eather. A breeze picked up, stirring the jacarandas’ limbs. He nodded. “He’s Attes’s son.”

Valyn took a deep breath. “Elian.”

“No. I’m a…demigod,” he muttered, dropping his hand as he looked up. “Not a demis or a deity. Just a demigod.”

Slowly, it all clicked. “You weren’t born in the mortal realm.”

“No, my father took my mother back to Iliseeum before she gave birth.”

“All I was ever told was that Attes angered the Fates by messing with the threads of his bloodline. I’m not sure exactly why that would do such a thing, but I know damn well I wasn’t the first demigod. I might not even be the last.”

The ramifications of Seraphena’s choices left my head feeling like it might spin off my shoulders.

The Primal God of Death and Destruction.