More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
September 23 - October 3, 2025
“Sotoria didn’t belong to him then, and Seraphena doesn’t belong to him now.” Seraphena. I could count on one hand how many people called me by my full name, and none of them spoke it like he did. As if it were a prayer and a reckoning.
The act rots them, in body and in mind, turning them into amoral creatures driven by an insatiable need for blood. Craven.”
“What he means to say is that such a thing, a Primal of both Life and Death, is not meant to exist,” Nyktos said. “It would be unthinkable for the embers of both to thrive in one being. But if they could?” He gave a short laugh with a raise of his dark brows. “The kind of power they’d wield? It would be truly absolute. They could unravel realms in the same breath they created new ones.”
“Maia,” he said, speaking of the Primal of Love, Beauty, and Fertility. “I had her remove my kardia.” Penellaphe gasped, her eyes widening with shock. “Good Fates,” she whispered. “I have known none who’ve done that.” I was obviously missing something and also getting tired of asking questions. “What is a kardia?” “It’s the piece of the soul—the spark—that all living creatures are born and die with. It allows them to love another not of their blood irrevocably, selflessly.” Penellaphe swallowed. “It must have been terribly painful to have that torn from you. To truly be unable to love.”
“Because you just tore apart a god with your hands, and I found that…kind of hot.”
“I can sense your need. Feel it. Taste it. You’re drowning in it.” His eyes slammed shut. “I’m fucking drowning in it.” A sharp dart of desire sliced through me. “Then drown with me.”
“Do not order me about as if I’m a child.” “I wouldn’t if you didn’t behave like one.” I saw red. “You sure as hell didn’t think I was behaving like one when you had me in your bed and your fangs in my throat!”
“Heartmates usually only occur between two people whose unions are linked to some great purpose.”
They only opened when someone approached them. Poisonous, beautiful flowers that were unpredictable and temperamental and reminded him of me.
“You never know how much you can take until you can’t take more,”
We all need someone to watch over us.” Heat crawled up my throat. “Do you?” “Desperately,” he whispered.
“I use eather to will myself where I want to go,” he said, gently pressing the cloth to the skin around the wound. “It’s called shadowstepping.”
“Sera.” I thought I heard Nyktos whisper my name as I began to doze off. “You were never a ghost to me.”
“Why did you visit my lake if you had this?” Nyktos was quiet for so long that I looked at him. He was still staring at the pool. “Because it was your lake.”
I wanted more. I wanted to be his wife. His partner. His Queen. I wanted to be Nyktos’s Consort.
“All aspects of a soul’s needs and wants are met in the Vale, even what they see. Arcadia is much the same.”
“The mist?” “It’s called the Shroud,” he said. “It’s made of Primal mist and hides the Vale from those who do not enter through more traditional means.”
“If you ever see lilacs like this near water in the mortal realm, you can be assured that you’re near a gateway to Iliseeum—to Dalos, in particular.”
Fate is not absolute. Fate is only a series of possibilities.”
“You let go of that arrow, and all you’ll do is piss me off,” Veses warned. “And I mean, really piss me off.” “Oops.” Bele released the arrow.
“Rise for the One who is born of Blood and Ash, the Light and the Fire, and the Brightest Moon,”
And the great powers will stumble and fall, some all at once, and they will fall through the fires into a void of nothing. Those left standing will tremble as they kneel, will weaken as they become small, as they become forgotten. For finally, the Primal rises, the giver of blood and the bringer of bone, the Primal of Blood and Ash.’”
