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September 28 - October 1, 2024
“Argue with me.” “What?” I whispered. “Argue with me,” he repeated, his voice full of smoke and ice. “Distract me. Something to stop me from going after Attes and taking my anger out on him.
“Kolis would know it’s not Ash,” Nektas interrupted. “He’s already tested Ash enough to know that he has no embers of life in him.”
“I doubt Attes thinks I’m anything more than a mouthy pair of breasts.” Ector snickered. Nyktos’s eyes flared with eather. “He was provoking you.”
Nektas
Nektas wisdom to Sera
“It’s the same thing that drives you to be so convincing. That it is his duty to do whatever is necessary to protect as many people as he can.”
Nektas watched me. “Why don’t you call him Ash anymore?”
“Ash is what his father called him.” I hadn’t known that, and I didn’t think I wanted to know that now. “For him to introduce himself as such to you meant something,” Nektas added. “Maybe it did before.” Sighing, I leaned against the column. “But he’s not Ash to me any longer.”
“He is how you wish him to be,” he said. “As you are what you wish to be to those of the Shadowlands and beyond. That is up to you. No one else.”
“You know,” I said, “you could’ve just waited for me to go to sleep and then snuck into my bed again.” “I could’ve,” he agreed. “But then what would I have found upon entering your chamber once you went to bed?” I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like I do that every night.” “Well, I find that news slightly disappointing.”
“We didn’t know much about him, only that he was young for a Primal—really young. But he had already become known as one of the last Primals anyone wanted to cross.
Nyktos, man, he is a tricky son of a bitch when he wants to be.
“I…I truly believed that my duty to kill Nyktos was the only way to save my kingdom.” I cleared my throat, my voice barely above a whisper. “No one—and I mean, no one—can hate me more for that than I do.” “You know,” Saion said, “I actually believe that.”
I’d prefer not to be gutted by Nyktos, which is exactly what would happen if I raised a sword against you, training or not.”
“But I’m only flesh and blood, and you are…” “What am I?” “You are flesh and fire.”
“You do realize I now need to tear my guards’ eyes out?” “Why?” “Because they too have glimpsed your unmentionables.” “Worth it,” someone called out.
“It also makes you seem quite…possessive.” I turned my head to the side, my stomach clenching as his lips grazed my cheek. I dropped my voice to a whisper as I lowered my right hand to my thigh. “Of what you refuse to claim.”
“My want of you isn’t something I can’t control. It’s a choice. I have the courage to admit that, and you don’t. Now, if you will excuse me—”
“And I sat here, looking at you and all your loveliness—wanting you so fucking badly.”
“Trying to remind myself of all the reasons—and they are vast—why I cannot acknowledge what you do to me. Why I cannot afford for you to be anything more than a distraction.”
“But instead, all I seem to be able to think about is how I actually look forward to you doing the exact opposite of what I’ve asked. Or how much I enjoy your teasing and your boldness. I think about how much that fucking mouth of yours amuses me.”
“Sera.” I thought I heard Nyktos whisper my name as I began to doze off. “You were never a ghost to me.”
“But there is no way he has truly forgiven me.” “I never said he has. I said he understands, and I’ll tell you the same thing I told him when he was much younger. Forgiveness benefits the forgiver, and it’s easy. Understanding is acceptance, and that is far harder.”
“And if Ash didn’t understand and accept your past actions, you would not be where you are right now. You would not carry his scent on your body, and I would’ve never sensed what I did when I found him with you.” “What did you sense?” I whispered, my heart stomping in my chest. “What I sensed before.” That odd little half-grin returned. “Peace.”
“I expect you to live longer than the time it takes to transfer the embers to me, by the way,” he said.
“It’s clear that you should be the true Primal of Life,” I explained. “Not because it was your destiny, but because you’re good.” A faint smile appeared, but it didn’t warm his features like the ones before had. “That’s where you’re wrong. I told you before. I have one kind, decent bone in my body, Sera. But I am not good, and you would do well to remember that.”
“There is no such thing as a good Primal.” “What?” “The essence that courses through our veins is what made the realms, creating the air that is breathed, the land that is sowed, and the rain that falls from the skies to fill the oceans. It’s powerful and ancient. Unbiased. It’s absolute. And in the beginning, when there were just the Ancient Primals, the Fates, and the dragons, Primals were neither good nor bad. They just were. Purely impartial. A perfect balance because they felt nothing, neither love nor hate.” Nyktos stared up at me. “Eons passed that way, seeing the birth of many new
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Primal essence
“But falling in love meant the Primals also began to experience other emotions. Pleasure. Displeasure. Want. Jealousy. Envy. Hatred. And what the Arae feared became a reality because they knew that what had once only belonged to the mortals couldn’t exist within the kind of power a Primal held. Emotions began to guide the Primals’ actions, and that once-unbiased balance of power became as unpredictable as it was absolute and bled into the mortal realm. The very natures of the Primals changed. Now, goodness does not exist in Primals—not the kind weighed upon a mortal’s death.” He set his glass
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His eyes lifted from his glass to me. “You’ve carried those embers from birth, Sera, and they are a part of you. Because of them, you are neither good nor bad, not by the mortal standards you understand.”
It’s the closest thing I could get to a lake.”
“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.”
The lake is different, and I…” He frowned, scratching his jaw. “I just felt drawn to it. Drawn to you.”
“There are very few things I would be interested in hearing you beg for, and your life is not one of them,” he said.
“You are always safe with me, liessa.”
you’re not weak, Sera. Not physically, but more importantly, not mentally. You are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met, mortal or not.” The tips of his fingers grazed the curve of my arm. “With or without the embers.”
And I couldn’t help but think this felt like…more. That we felt like more.
I didn’t want to do what I’d have to do to weaken Kolis. Instead, I wanted a future of my own, one where I could try to keep that part of me good—just like Nyktos did. A future that had more moments like the ones I’d spent with him earlier. Moments of peace. I wanted years like his friend Lathan had, where he didn’t struggle to find his breath when things became overwhelming. Maybe even moments like this, where I held a sleeping child in my arms, one that was mine. I wanted a future where I was— I tried to stop the thought from finishing, but it was too late. The why behind what I wanted was
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I wanted more. I wanted to be his wife. His partner. His Queen. I wanted to be Nyktos’s Consort.
“The poppies,” I whispered. “The poisonous, temperamental poppies that remind you of me.” “The powerful, beautiful poppies that also remind me of hope,” Nyktos replied, his thumb smoothing under my lower lip before returning to my hip. “Those poppies are the hope of life. The power of those embers. Proof that life cannot be defeated, not even in death.”
“You’re stronger than you realize, meyaah Liessa.” Nektas smirked as I shot him a glare.
“She’s very important to me, Nektas.” “I know,” the draken responded.
I thought that was a strange thing for Nyktos to say, but he’d said that I was very important. To him. Not the embers. Me. And maybe that was why I blurted out what I did. “I want to be your Consort, Nyktos.”
“I’ll be waiting for you, liessa.”
“You care for him.” It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact. Truth. I opened my mouth as I glanced over at him, my stomach tumbling as if I’d slipped from Gala—from the horse Nyktos had gifted me. “I do,” I whispered. That grin remained as he arched a brow. “I know.” “Well, glad that’s established.” I cleared my throat, facing the road. “I knew that before you were ready to admit it to yourself.” “Congratulations,” I muttered. “Why do you think I told you to go to him when he needed to feed?” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I knew you needed to help him. Not wanted. Not because you
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“You know,” he began after a couple of moments of silence, “I also took you to him that night because I knew he wouldn’t hurt you.”
“That was different. When the Primal takes their true form in anger, they are not themselves. They become anger and power and can lash out. And while I knew he wouldn’t harm you in anger as he is usually, I didn’t know what he’d do in that form.” His gaze touched mine. “But now I do. He stopped himself. Not because I was there. He could’ve fucked me up. He stopped himself. Now, I know.”
“That what he feels for you goes beyond fondness. He cares for you.”
Ash doesn’t fear becoming his father. He fears becoming his uncle.”
Love can breathe life and inspiration into one, and the loss of it can rot and taint the mind of another. That is what Ash fears most.” His gaze found mine again. “Loving someone. Losing them. Then becoming something even worse than Kolis.”
Because you fear that you love him, and he can’t feel the same?” “No. It’s not even that. I don’t want to think about it because it terrifies me,” I admitted without shame. “As it should.”
lilacs are special. They represent renewal, and both life and death are that—a renewal.” Nektas roamed forward. “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.”
