A Shadow in the Ember (Flesh and Fire, #1)

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

“You will not disappoint us today, Sera.” The words came from somewhere in the shadows of the chamber. “You will not disappoint Lasania.”

I hated the dress, the bath, and the grooming that had come after that, even though I understood the purpose. I was to entice, seduce.

My mother’s dark brown eyes met mine briefly in the mirror, and then she walked around me, the crown of golden leaves upon her head shining in the candlelight.

She studied me, searching for a stray hair out of place or where one didn’t belong, for a flaw or sign that I wasn’t the expertly crafted bride. The price that had been promised two hundred years before I was born.

My mother placed the Veil of the Chosen over my head.

“You may not be Chosen, but you were born into this realm, shrouded in the veil of the Primals. A Maiden as the Fates promised. And you shall leave this realm touched by life and death,” my old nursemaid Odetta had once said.

But, once again, I looked like the Chosen—those third sons and daughters born in a shroud, destined to serve the Primal of Life in his Court. I spent my entire life hidden behind this veil, and even though I had been born in a shroud and treated like most Chosen in many ways, I was also the Maiden.

What they were destined to become after Ascension was the highest honor that could be bestowed upon a mortal in any kingdom. Celebrations would be held throughout the lands in preparation for the night of their Rite, where they would Ascend and enter the realm of Iliseeum to serve the Primals and the god...

There were no celebrations and feasts. Tonight, on my seventeenth birthday, I would become th...

Mother leaned in. “You’re ready, Princess Seraphena.” Seraphena. It was so rare that I heard my full name spoken, and never had I heard it said with the official title.

Through the veil, I saw Queen Calliphe smile, or at least her lips went through the motions. I’d never seen her really smile at me, not like she did with my stepsiblings or her husband. But even though she had carried me for nine months and brought me into this world, I had never been hers. I had never been the people’s Princess. I’d always belonged to the Primal of Death.

“Little sister,” came the voice. “You’re as still as one of the statues of the gods in the garden.” Sister? My lip curled in barely contained disgust. He was no brother of mine, not by blood nor bond, even though he was the son of the man my mother had married soon after my father’s death. He didn’t carry a drop of the Mierel bloodline, but because the people of Lasania didn’t know of my birth, he had become the heir. Soon, he would be King, and I was sure the people of Lasania would face a different crisis even after I fulfilled the deal.

But because of his claim to the throne, he was one of the few who knew the truth about King Roderick—the first King of the Mierel bloodline and my ancestor—whose desperate choice to save his people had not only sealed my fate but had also damned future generations of the very kingdom he sought to protect.

“You know what they say about him—about why he’s never been painted nor had his features carved into stone.” He lowered his voice, packing it full of false empathy. “They say he’s monstrous, that his skin is covered in the same scales as the beasts that guard him. That he has fangs for teeth. You must be terrified of what you must do.”

“But then again, you’ve been trained to carry this through to the end, haven’t you? To become his weakness, make him fall in love, and then end him.”

“I know about the time spent under the tutelage of the Mistresses of the Jade. So, maybe you’re not nervous,” he continued. “Maybe you can’t wait to serve—” He lifted a hand toward me. I caught his wrist, digging my fingers into the tendons there. His entire body jerked, and he cursed. “Touch me, and I will break every bone in your hand,” I warned. “And then I will make sure the Princess has no reason to fear her wedding night or any night she is doomed to spend at your side.”

“You’re so incredibly lucky,” he snarled. “You have no idea.” “No, Tavius.” I shoved him back, a reminder that my training hadn’t only consisted of time spent with the Mistresses. He stumbled but caught himself before he hit the mirror. “It is you who is lucky.” His nostrils flared. Rubbing the inside of his wrist, he said nothing as I stood there, motionless once more. I spoke the truth. I could snap his neck before he even had a chance to raise a hand against me. Because of my destiny, I ...

winding halls of the Shadow Temple, located just outside the capital’s Garden District at the foot of the Cliffs of Sorrow. The halls were just as numerous as the tunnels underneath, connecting to all the Temples in Carsodonia—the capital—to Wayfair Castle.

She reached back, curling her arm through mine. The unexpected contact caused me to flinch, and I was suddenly grateful for the veil. Like any of the Chosen, my flesh should not encounter another’s unless related to my preparations. It spoke volumes that Lady Kala had touched me.

Shadow Priests. They’d taken their oath of silence to all new heights, having stitched their lips closed. I always wondered how they ate or drank. Based on their wraithlike, sunken frames under the black robes, whatever method they used wasn’t exactly working out that well for them.

I didn’t look at the empty pews. If I had truly been Chosen, those benches would be full of the highest-ranking nobility, the streets outside alive with cheers. The silence of the room chilled my skin.

Shadowstone was the color of the deepest hour of night, a marvelous material that could be polished until it reflected any source of light and whetted into a blade sharp enough to pierce flesh and bone. The throne was the glossy sort, absorbing the glow of the candlelight until the stone appeared as if it were full of dark fire. The back of the seat had been carved into the shape of a crescent moon.

The exact shape of the birthmark I bore just above my left shoulder blade. The telltale sign that even before I was born, my life had never been mine. Tonight, there were two thrones.

If they ever discovered that Roderick Mierel—the one the histories of Lasania called the Golden King—hadn’t spent day and night in the fields with his people, digging and scraping away land ruined by war until they revealed clean, fertile soil… That he hadn’t sown the land alongside his subjects; his blood, sweat, and tears building the kingdom… If they learned that the songs and poems written about him had been based on a fable, what was left of the Mierel Dynasty would surely collapse.

His presence would raise too many questions among the Shadow Priests. Would reveal too much. That I wasn’t the beacon of Royal purity, but rather the wolf dressed as the sacrificial lamb.

I wouldn’t just fulfill the deal that King Roderick had struck. I would end it before it destroyed my kingdom. Determination filled my chest with warmth as it did whenever I used my gift. This was my destiny. My purpose. What I would do was bigger than me. It was for Lasania.

What if he didn’t show? Why wouldn’t he? This was his deal. When King Roderick had grown desperate enough to do anything to salvage his lands ruined by war and save those who were starving after already suffering so much loss, I imagined he’d expected a lesser god to answer his summons—which was far more common for those bold enough to do such a thing. But what had answered the Golden King was a Primal. And when he’d granted King Roderick’s request, this was the price the Primal of Death had requested: the firstborn daughter of the Mierel bloodline as his Consort. The Primal had to come.

The people of Lasania had no idea that the Rot was a clock, counting down. It was an expiration date on the deal the Golden King had made, one that had started with my birth.

A mist seeped out from the tear, licking across the stone floor and seeping toward the pews. Tiny bumps erupted all over my skin in response. Some called the mist Primal magic. It was eather. The potent essence that not only had created the mortal realm and Iliseeum but also what coursed through the blood of a god, giving even the lesser, unknown ones unthinkable power.

A male stood there, garbed in a hooded cloak and surrounded by pulsing, churning tendrils of deep shadows laced with luminous streaks of silver.

But he was a Primal, and in the stories written about them in the histories, they were sometimes referred to as giants among mortals. He appeared broad of shoulder—or at least that was what I thought the deeper, thick mass of darkness was that took the shape of…wings.

There was no way he could know that in the two hundred years it had taken for me to be born, the knowledge of how to kill a Primal had been obtained. Love.

Make him fall in love, become his weakness, and end him. That was my destiny.

“You,” he said, his voice smoke and shadow and full of everything that awaited after someone took their very last breath. “I have no need of a Consort.” My entire body jerked, and I whispered, “What?” The Primal pulled back, the shadows retracting around him. He shook his head. What did he mean? I stepped forward. “What—?” I said again.

“You,” my mother said. While her voice was not smoke or shadow, it was just as final. Her eyes glistened. “You’ve failed us. And now, everything—everything—is lost.”

I held his stare, an act I’d surely be reprimanded for later, but only a handful of people in the entire kingdom knew that I was the last of the Mierel bloodline, a Princess. And even less knew that I had been the Maiden promised to the Primal of Death.

I slipped my hand through the thigh-high slit in the gown, curling my fingers around the handle of my dagger. The iron warmed to my touch, becoming a part of me. I felt the edge of the blade just above its sheath. Shadowstone. The shadowstone dagger was rare in the mortal realm.

From what I’d been taught about Iliseeum, their hierarchy was similar to that of the mortal one. Instead of kingdoms, each Primal ruled over a Court, and in place of noble titles, they had gods who answered to their Courts. Ten Primals held Court in Iliseeum. Ten that ruled over everything that lay between the skies and the seas, from love to birth, war and peace, life, and…yes, even death.

“You’re a feisty little thing, aren’t you?” Feisty? Little? Thing? I was neither little nor a thing, but I was feeling all kinds of feisty.

Even in the moonlight, his skin was a lustrous, golden-brown color, reminding me of wheat. His cheekbones were high and broad, his nose straight as a blade, and his mouth…it was full and wide. He had the kind of face an artist would love to shape with clay or capture with charcoal. But there was also a coldness to his features. As if the Primals themselves had crafted the lines and planes and forgot to add the warmth of humanity. I looked up to his eyes. Silver. Eyes that were an incredible, luminous shade of silver, bright as the moon itself. Beautiful. That was all I could think at first, and then…I saw the light behind his pupils, the wispy tendrils of eather. “You’re a god,” I whispered.

Thick, wavy hair fell against this god’s cheeks as he dipped his head. His gaze snared mine, and I couldn’t look away—not even if the Primal of Death himself appeared beside us. Not when the wisps of eather swirled through the silver of his eyes.

“Kiss me,” he ordered. My temper flared. I hated being told what to do. And if I were being honest, that had started long ago. Maybe that was one of the reasons I’d been rejected. But his demand made sense. It would appear quite odd for us to just stand here like this, doing nothing but glaring at each other. So, I kissed him. A god.

Good gods… Slowly, he drew his mouth from my finger as his gaze flicked up, catching mine. “My apologies. I should’ve elaborated. I’m very good at pretending to enjoy things I do not, but I was not pretending when I had your tongue in my mouth.”

“You going in there?” I spun at the sound of the god’s voice, hand halting above the hilt of my dagger. “Gods,” I spat, heart racing as he stood there, the hood of his black, sleeveless tunic up, creating a shadow over his face. I hadn’t even heard him follow me. “I apologize,” he said, slightly bowing his head. I saw then that he wore a silver band around his right biceps. “For startling you.”

As the Maiden, it wasn’t even a desire that could take shape as I grew and got older. It was never part of the plan because even if I had been successful and managed to make the Primal of Death fall in love with me, creation of a child wasn’t possible between a mortal and a Primal.

The true power lay with the Primals and their gods. And all Primals, all gods, answered to the King of Gods. The Primal of Life.

“So, you know that the stone is quite toxic to a mortal’s flesh?” he said, and of course I knew that. If it came into contact with a mortal’s blood, it would slowly kill them even if the wound didn’t get them.

“You’re not unworthy. You’re not a curse or anything like that. You carry the ember of life in you. You carry hope within you. You carry the possibility of a future,”

!!

A god could be killed if their brain or heart were destroyed by shadowstone. And paralyzed by it if the blade were left in their body.

But a Primal was different. Destroying their heart and/or brain would only injure them, not kill them. It would weaken them but not enough to make them truly vulnerable to shadowstone. But they could be killed. By love.