The Ascended (The Aesymarean Duet, #1)

by Bree Grenwich

shaped the lights with my thoughts, forming them into a small fish that swam through the air above my hands. The light cast blue shadows across my skin, beautiful and forbidden and terrifying all at once. This was the secret that could destroy everything—the power I'd been born with, the reason we could never leave Saltcrest.

So they created the Trials of Ascension. Every decade, those with gifts were gathered, tested, broken down, and rebuilt in the gods' image. A few would ascend to join the pantheon. The rest would die, their power reclaimed by the Aesymar.

"Him. Olinthar." The name felt strange on my tongue. It was the first time I'd said his name aloud in years. The King of Gods himself, ruler of the Twelve Aesymar, master of light. The creature who had sired us.

"And I think maybe adventure isn't always about going somewhere new. Sometimes it's about finding something worth staying for."

For a moment, I let myself imagine what it would be like to be the kind of woman someone could love without reservation. One who didn't carry secrets—who could give her heart freely instead of sharpening it like a weapon.

"Osythe lives with her lover in Draknavor now," Dorna finished. "Their son ascended in the last Trials—Xül, Warden of the Damned.

He was tall and lean, built like a weapon wrapped in divine flesh. Bronze skin stretched over sharp cheekbones and a jaw that could cut glass. His hair was braided and woven with golden beads. But it was his eyes that stole my breath—one burned pure gold, bright and predatory as a hawk's. The other was completely black. And settling over his full lips, hung a golden ring pierced through his nose.

The Aesymar thought they'd captured two terrified mortals. They had no idea what they'd actually unleashed.

I was Thais Morvaren, wielder of stars, and I had come here to learn how to kill a god.

"The problem is that you held a blade of pure starfire and used it as a shield. The problem is that when the choice came down to kill or die, you hesitated."

"The Trials won't coddle you. They won't pause while you wrestle with your conscience or your pathetic squeamishness about spilling blood."

"You think you could break me?" "Break you?" His laugh was cold. "Breaking would be such a waste. I'd much rather watch you bend."

"During my Trials, there was one contestant the others were explicitly told to eliminate. They were promised rewards if they succeeded, divine favor if they removed the... aberration." Xül. "By the third challenge, he'd raised those who'd tried to kill him after he slaughtered them. They became his undead army for the remainder of the trial. Quite poetic, really."

"He's arrogant, controlling, and being around him makes me want to commit violence." "Sounds like foreplay to me."

"You know," he said, his voice dropping lower, "it's easy to joke about, but I'm beginning to think you have no idea how to properly kneel at all." "Oh, I’ve found myself on my knees more than a few times,” I shot back. "But I have standards when it comes to those I deem worthy of such devotion.”

"Oh insufferable lord of the afterlife," I drawled, with an exaggerated flutter of my hand, "how truly special it feels to bruise my knees for you."

“Your ship.” I blinked. “You have a ship.” “Did you think I walked everywhere?” A hint of amusement colored his voice. “I thought you just... appeared. Dramatically. With unnecessary flair.”

“He used to watch the sky for hours as a child, you know. Even in a domain like this, he always loved the stars.”

"Do I have permission, starling?" He leaned closer, his scent filling my lungs. "Can I make you burn?"

"I see someone who looks gods in the eye without flinching," he said, his voice taut. "Someone who calls out every lie, who slices through pretense effortlessly. The woman who stood on that beach her first night here, utterly exposed and completely unashamed. Defiant."

"She doesn't hide behind martyrdom. She fights—not because she expects to win, but because surrendering isn't in her nature."

"The one who refuses to play by rules she didn't make. You're..." He paused, seeming to search for the right words. "You're the most honest person I've ever met. Even when it costs you. Especially then."

"Every time you enter a room," he said, his voice dropping lower as he finally touched my throat, "I feel it like a physical force. Every time you speak, I find myself leaning toward your voice like it's the only sound that matters."

"Beg me to taste you."

"You want to know what I am?" His voice dropped to a whisper that caressed my every nerve ending. "I'm a man who's been hard for you since the moment I laid eyes on you. I'm a man who's spent every night since then stroking myself to thoughts of you."

"I'm a man who dreams about having you spread out beneath me, begging me to fill you, to claim you, to make you mine in every filthy way I can imagine."

"You taste like starlight and sin,"

“Are you ready for me to ruin this perfect body until you're addicted to the way I make you feel?”

"I won't be gentle. I won't treat you like some fragile flower. I'll take you exactly how I want you—hard, demanding, unrelenting. Do you understand?"

"Because I knew once I had a taste, I wouldn't be satisfied with just that."

"I'd want to devour you whole."

“You look like you’re mine.”

"Good girl,"

"Only you would face down a god of death at his most unhinged and complain about his emotional unavailability."

"You're playing with fire, starling." "Good," I replied, freeing him. My eyes widened at the sight of him. "I want to burn."

"Harder, starling? As if I hadn’t already planned on marking you so thoroughly that every god in every realm would know you belong to me."

"Leaving my handprints on your thighs, making sure you carry the evidence of my claim on your body."

"And I'm yours," he growled. "Every part of me belongs to you, Thais. My body, my heart, my fucking soul—it's all yours."

"I'll be the one looking like I'm about to commit several acts of treason for a woman."

"Love makes fools of gods and mortals alike, my son."

"I don't need anything from you." His voice was fierce. "I just need you to exist. To be here. To let me help carry this until you can carry it yourself again." "And if that's never?" "Then I'll carry it forever." He said it like a simple fact. Like the sun rising. "That's what loving someone means." Love. What a cursed, vicious thing.