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July 27 - August 10, 2025
Poppy pressed against my side, her palm resting just below my chest as Malik placed a trembling hand on the top of Delano’s bowed head. Malik’s eyes closed as Poppy’s fingers curled into my shirt, his features pinching as he turned his head, dragging his shoulder along his cheek. I knew what Poppy had to be sensing. The emotion was clearly etched into Malik’s face. Sorrow. Preela, Malik’s bonded wolven, had been Delano’s sister.
Aww ugh i diint.know that
A sea of white tents sat at the edge of the River of Rhain and at the foot of the Rise, where— My godsdamn breath snagged in my chest. Banners. Gold and white banners rippled from the battlements atop the Rise, each one bearing the Atlantian Crest—the one Poppy had chosen with the sword and arrow fixed in the center of the sun at equal lengths. Gods. She’d done it. Changed the centuries-old crest. Showing the kingdom and the realm that there was a balance of power between the King and Queen, no matter the fact that she was so much more powerful than I. Seeing it was a punch of unexpected
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Awww ugh im in tears.
I nibbled on my lower lip as a flare of dull pain shot through my jaw.
I want to knkow why her jaw hurts
My eyes narrowed on him. “It irritates me when you’re right.” “Then you must be irritated often,” Casteel replied.
HAahha
“My mother loved Malec. I think a part of her always will. Naming Malik was a way to…”
I think hes Malecs son...
“Thinking about something, and then doing it, and then feeling it afterward are three very different things.”
“and your essence spilled out from you, surrounding us? Entering us? Entering me? I felt worthy of such a beautiful gift as you.”
Awww oh myy godd he actuaally felt worthy
His eyes caught mine, the gold glimmering in the starlight. “You have faced Craven and vamprys, men wearing masks of mortal flesh. Stared down Atlantians who’ve wanted to harm you, seized cities, and freed me,” he said, touching my cheek. “You’re more than a Queen. More than a goddess on the verge of becoming a Primal. You’re Penellaphe Da’Neer, and you’re fearless.”
“Please. Please don’t do this. Get up, Delano. Please. Please.” There was nothing.
NOOOOOOO
Emil stumbled back, his swords slipping from his hands as he went down on one knee in front of the Revenant who had speared him through the chest.
AHH NOOOOO
Then, a speck of silver throbbed and expanded, growing brighter, and in that light was her. Hair, the color of moonlight, fell over shoulders in a cascading mass of tangled curls and waves. A luminous sheen nearly masked the freckles across the nose and cheek and gave the skin a silvery, pearlescent glow. But I recognized her from the dreams that weren’t dreams.
This is eather poppy. Lile herself. The consort. Or the goddess pennelophe
My entire body spasmed as I remembered what Reaver had said—what Vikter had told Tawny. The beginning verse of the prophecy. Born of mortal flesh, a great primal power rises as the heir to the lands and seas, to the skies and all the realms. A shadow in the ember, a light in the flame, to become a fire in the flesh… To speak her name is to bring the stars from the skies and topple the mountains into the sea… Her name was power, but only when spoken by the one born as she, and of a great primal power. “He told me you already knew her name,” Tawny had said.
Its penelophe. It has to be
They closed in on them as I planted my palms against the stone, and my hands sank into the rock as I threw my head back and screamed the name. Not that of the King of Gods, but the Queen of Gods. The true Primal of Life.
Pennelophe??? Right???
a bolt of lightning struck the Temple—struck me. Casteel’s pain and Kieran’s fear slammed into me as my armor and boots exploded from me. My clothing ripped as every cell in my body lit up, and the pain—it was all-consuming. It would kill me. It would kill them. My lungs seized. My heart stuttered. Blood pooled in my mouth. Teeth loosened, and two fell from my open mouth.
The culling but times 1000
lifted my eyes, seeing a strange shadow before me—the outline of my head and my shoulders and two…wings.
I FUCKING NEW IT. I CALLEED THIS AGES AGO. I KNEW SHE WWOULD BE AE TO FLY AT SOMW POINT. AND THEY KEPT HINTING AT IT TOO SAYING HOW BUMMED SHE WAS THAAT SSHE WASNT COOLER AND COULDNT SHIFT ANYTHING. I bet the good hearing and eyesight comes with thiss culling too
And the wind, it smelled of fresh lilacs.
Mmmhhmm cuz shes thee priimal of life. Not death
“Nektas,” Casteel rasped. My entire being focused on Isbeth. She stood behind the altar, almost transfixed. And the endless fury I felt from her joined mine. Her. Seraphena. The true Primal of Life. The one I’d gotten the gift of life and healing from. Not Nyktos. His gift was the shadows in my skin, the death in my touch, and the coldness in my chest.
Who? Clealrry i was wrong lol. But whos this bitch
The battered bodies of soldiers, wolven, and draken—of my friends and those I cared for—rose along with me. Delano. Naill. Emil. Hisa—
NIALL DIED???? NOOOOOO
Naill sat with his back against one, his head tipped up, his eyes closed, but his chest was moving up and down—a chest that had been ripped open. His deep brown skin had lost the ghastly gray pallor of death. I stared at him, knowing that I’d seen him fall. I’d watched him die. “I…I don’t—”
ALIVE?!
A cool nose brushed my arm, and my head whipped to the side. Vibrant blue eyes set in white fur streaked with red met mine. A shudder shook my entire body. “Delano…?” His springy imprint brushed against my thoughts. Poppy. Crying out, I threw my arms around the wolven. Casteel let out a rough laugh as I buried my face in Delano’s neck.
AHHH THANK GOD
“You passed out,” Casteel said, his forehead pressed to my temple. “And that’s when they came back. All of them. Even the damn guards.” “It was both the craziest and,”—Kieran’s voice caught—“and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” “All these little…I don’t know what,” Casteel said, his laugh thick with emotion. “Orbs? Thousands—hundreds of thousands—of them came from the sky. It looked like the stars were falling.” To speak her name is to bring the stars from the skies…
Shes the primal of LFE
A shiver rolled through me. “Seraphena—the Consort. She’s the true Primal of Life.” “She is the heir to the lands and seas, skies and realms,” Nektas said, speaking softly. But the words…they were full of respect, and they reverberated like thunder in my chest. “The fire in the flesh, the Primal of Life, and the Queen of Gods. The most powerful Primal.” He paused. “For now.” For now?
Fore now????
“It is a complicated journey to how the Consort became the Primal,” Nektas said, looking at me. “But it started with your great-grandfather, Eythos, when he was the Primal of Life. And his brother, Kolis, the true Primal of Death.” “Kolis is my great-uncle?”
“So that’s why her name cannot be spoken? Because she’s the Primal of Life? That’s…bullshit.” Several pairs of eyes landed on me. “It is! Everyone is like oh, Nyktos this and Nyktos that, and the whole time, it should have been Seraphena this and Seraphena that. Did Nyktos even make the wolven? Was it even him who met with Elian to calm things after the deities were killed?” “Nyktos did meet with the Atlantian and the kiyou wolves,” Nektas shared. “But it was the Consort’s essence that gave the wolven life.” I stared at him for what felt like an eternity. “That’s some sexist, patriarchal
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“So if Kolis hadn’t taken Eythos’s essence, and Nyktos had eventually become the Primal of Life as he should have, then Malec and Ires would’ve been Primals?” Casteel reasoned. “But they weren’t because it took a female descendant to be born first?”
I need a famIly tree. Im so confused
“Good.” Nektas’s gaze settled back on me. “You are not just a loophole. You’re many things. The Primal of Blood and Bone—the true Primal of Life and Death.” He spoke in the way he had when he’d spoken of the Consort, and the essence hummed through me. “Those two essences have never existed in one. Not in the Consort. Not in Nyktos.”
Kolis is not the only one who has awakened. The Consort and Nyktos no longer sleep. That means the gods will be awakening all across the many Courts of Iliseeum and in the mortal realm, and many of their loyalties do not lie with the Primal of Life. The war you fought hasn’t ended. It has only just begun.”
Holy shit
