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September 28 - October 1, 2024
“Nothing is more powerful, more life and realm-altering than the ability to feel. To experience emotion. Love. Hate. Desire. To care for oneself. To care for another.”
“Not everyone can always be okay,” he said quietly. “And if you happen to find that you’re not, you can talk to me. We’ll make sure you’re okay. Agreed?”
I clamped my jaw shut as I slammed my palm against the door, searching for anger. For fury. But all I found was grief. Hurt. Disappointment. In him. In me. I shouldn’t have made that deal with him. It was never pleasure for the sake of pleasure. I’d been lying to myself then. I could see that now. I wouldn’t have been so torn up over what my betrayal had done to him if it was only about that. I wouldn’t have wanted him and only him. And for him to demand that I seek pleasure from no one else? How dare he?
Rhain smirked. “Don’t worry. I’m not even remotely interested in what you just flashed me. Now, if you were Saion or Ector, I would’ve been all into the peepshow.”
“Honestly, Nyktos can come up with some impressive and creative threats, and he delivers them with a level of coldness where no one doubts his sincerity.”
“What matters is that I caused you to lose control. I hurt you.” His eyes met mine again, now full of whirling wisps of eather. “I didn’t want that. I never wanted that. And I hate that I hurt you. I am sorry, Sera.”
“I’ve wanted no one but you, Sera.”
destroyed the palace.” “Not your feelings,” he corrected quietly. “What I did to them. What happened is my fault, Sera. Not yours.” His gaze never wavered. “You do not need to change. And as…as selfish as this is, I don’t want you to.”
Nyktos drew up short as a low rumble radiated from Reaver’s chest, and smoke wafted from his nostrils. Stunned, I stared at the small draken. My gaze flew to Nyktos, then to Nektas, who had started grinning. “Ha!” I exclaimed, reaching down to pat the top of Reaver’s head. “That’s a good Reaver-Butt.” Reaver hummed as he eyed Nyktos. He made a low, chattering sound. “Man,” Theon drawled, his mouth twitching as if he fought and then lost the battle to hold back a laugh. “That’s kind of wrong.” “It’s the embers,” I guessed. “He’s probably responding to that.” “No, it’s you.” Nyktos looked at me.
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Nyktos eyed me. “You weren’t pretending at all.” The back of my neck tingled. “That wasn’t what I was saying.” “I know, but that doesn’t change the truth of it. It was never an act. None of it.” I sucked in a shrill breath. “Congratulations on realizing that when it’s too late,” I snapped.
“And what is it that I deserve?” “Someone who loves you, unconditionally and irrevocably. Someone who had the courage to allow themselves to feel that,”
Nyktos stepped toward me, his chin lowered. “He may be eons older than me, and he may have the entire Court and most—if not all—of the Primals behind him, but if he makes even one move toward you, I will leave the entire City of the Gods in ruins.”
“It is not only the fucking embers that are important, Sera. You.” He inhaled sharply as I jolted. “You are important. And what you ask of me is to walk away, leaving you to not only certain death but also with Kolis.
He was right in front of me now, his eyes full of swirling eather. “Then you have to know that what you ask of me is to do exactly what you say you cannot do—what I’ve already had to do my entire life. To live while knowing I’ve left others behind to suffer and die in unimaginable ways. To live when I’m already dead inside.” I drew back. “You’re not dead inside.” “You really think that?” He laughed, and it was icy. Smoky. “Even had I never had my kardia removed, I wouldn’t be capable of love. Not after what I’ve had to do. What I’ve allowed. That alone would have left me unworthy of
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He fears becoming Kolis.
And, gods, that expression, the gentle way he held the child’s arms, said there was a lot more of him that was still alive than he realized.
“Maybe I’m not a monster, but I, like you, am capable of monstrous acts. And when I really think about that, I’m not sure there’s really a difference between the two.”
all of us, those good and bad, are a little monstrous,”
I still wasn’t quite used to the swift change in demeanor when another Primal was present—how quickly Nyktos could go from dangerous to deadly.
“I do not wish for her to be touched.” Nyktos’s voice deepened. “She is mine.”
“Where are we?” I whispered. “In a place of bad life choices,” Nyktos muttered.
Attes stopped in front of him. “And they will not learn of what happened here. I swear.” He turned toward me. “To you.” I watched the Primal lower himself to one knee, placing one hand over his heart as he flattened his other palm against the floor. “I swear I will not betray what you’ve done today, meyaah Liessa.”
Attes faced Nyktos. “But as I said before, I remember who your father was. I remember who you were meant to be.”
“I didn’t do it because of you. Kolis gets that honor. I did it for you. There’s a world of difference.”
Red. Faint traces of watery red. My tears. Just like the legends said happened to Primals when struck by deep sorrow. I’d cried tears of blood.
She shrugged. “Well, since your future with Nyktos includes me, I figured we could get to know each other better.” Acid pooled in the back of my throat. “My future with Nyktos has nothing to do with you.” “Is that what you think?” Veses’ laugh was as brittle as dry bones this time. “That’s what I know.” “Then what you think you know is a joke.” “The only joke I know is the one standing before me,” I spat, my restraint snapping. “And it’s a pathetic one.”
Closing the distance between us, I stretched up and plunged the dagger deep into her eye, straight through it and into her brain. And I didn’t feel even an ounce of guilt.
“I knew there was more to all of this, no matter what Nyktos claimed. There had to be a reason he’d be willing to do anything for you.”
“Oh, I’ve had his blood.” I smiled at her. “I’ve had all of him.”
“Bitch, I hope you try.”
Nyktos was a storm of whirling fury. Shadows laced with thin strips of silver lashed out from him and blossomed beneath his skin. He’d never looked colder, harsher, or more like a Primal of Death than in that moment.
“Ector tried to stop Veses from coming in here,” I shared, vaguely aware of the others leaving. “Why would he do that? He knew better.” “So did Bele.” Nyktos brushed my hair over my shoulder. “They were willing to take that risk to protect you.” I opened my eyes. “They could’ve died.” “They know that.” “They could still be punished if Kolis or anyone else finds out they went up against a Primal.” “They know that, too.”
Then I found it. Felt it. Peace. It was like slipping beneath still waters, surrounded by silence and peace. But in that cool darkness were colors. They came alive with a spark of silver and black, and like the images that had formed in the Pools of Divanash, one rose in my mind. It was me. I was standing in the courtyard of the House of Haides in a black gown with the gray, star-swept sky behind me. Cheeks flushed and eyes a feverish wild green, I held a short sword, the shadowstone blade glittering as a pale, silver curl danced across my cheek, touching the corner of my lip as I grinned up
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All of this felt like more.
Nyktos shuddered and then eased back. “I can’t. I won’t,” he panted, dropping his forehead to my shoulder. “I do not deserve this. And I sure as hell don’t deserve that from you.”
He’d be willing to do anything for you. What Veses had said lingered in the back of my mind like a bad dream, making me think of something else I’d heard. What Rhain had claimed after the Cimmerian came to the Rise.
Veses was likely capable of anything. And if Nyktos were truly willing to do anything for me? Pressure settled on my chest as my thoughts traveled to terrible places. The kind that made the embers vibrate, but not with the urge to heal and restore life. To end it.
“I feel too many things. Curiosity and excitement that remind me of what I think yearning must feel like. Need. Want,” he said roughly, his voice low. “Amusement at times. Sometimes, even anger. But always awe. I am always in awe of you. I could keep going, but most of all, what I feel is the closest thing to peace I’ve ever experienced.”
And the gown… It wasn’t white or transparent but a warm, silver shade close to the rare color of Nyktos’s eyes when he was amused or relaxed.
He’d sacrificed the right to deny someone. I suddenly thought about how shocked they had all been after learning that Nyktos didn’t react when I touched him. How they’d said he didn’t like to be touched— And when he’d said he wanted no one but me. Wanted.
Because the embers didn’t matter. Nyktos hadn’t been protecting them. Not a week ago. Not months ago. Or even years ago. He had been protecting me.
My heart. I…I loved him. I loved Nyktos?
“I want to be Nyktos’s Consort,” I blurted out. “I want it more than I think I’ve ever wanted anything…”
I…I’d loved him long before today. Before I learned about the deal he’d made with Veses. Before I acknowledged that I wanted to be his Consort.
As the guards stepped aside, clearing a path to him as he slowly turned, my gaze locked onto…Ash’s.
Nektas’s words suddenly came back to me then. He is how you wish him to be. And I knew right then, as I stood there trembling, who he was to me. He wasn’t Nyktos. He never had been. He was Ash, and I… I was in love with him.
“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.”
Ash swept his thumb once more and then let go to take the crown, but his gaze never left mine as he… Ash lowered himself to one knee, bowing to me.
I also didn’t understand why he, a Primal, was the one bowing. “Now that’s a man who knows his place.” A smooth voice I recognized cracked the stunned silence.
“Rise,” Ash’s voice was deeper, louder. A powerful thunder. “Rise for the One who is born of Blood and Ash, the Light and the Fire, and the Brightest Moon,” he said, and my eyes cut to him as my breath caught. My title.
