A Light in the Flame (Flesh and Fire, #2)

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

“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.

“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.”

“Because you just tore apart a god with your hands, and I found that…kind of hot.”

A messy knot of emotion seeped out, full of fear, need, shame, loneliness, sorrow, and a thousand other things I’d never been allowed to feel. Slices carved from me by all the times I’d been excluded by my family, treated like an unwanted guest, and seen as nothing more than a curse.

“Heartmates usually only occur between two people whose unions are linked to some great purpose.”

“Sera.” I thought I heard Nyktos whisper my name as I began to doze off. “You were never a ghost to me.”

“I think all of us have parts of us that are like our parents, but that doesn’t mean we are them.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I want to tell you that you look beautiful,” he said, his voice as soft as the shadows moving around us, warm against my cheek. “But beautiful doesn’t adequately capture what I see. I don’t know if there is a word that does. You have taken my breath with yours.”

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.’”