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

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

“And the blood and ash part?” “It is something the draken like to say,” he answered. “It has different meanings. Strength of the blood and bravery of the ash is one of them. Some believe it symbolizes balance and represents life and death.” Starlight glinted off his crown as he tilted his head back. “It just all seemed fitting for you.” “It…it is a beautiful title,” I said.

She inclined her head and then looked at Ash. “Your father would be so proud of you.”

I glanced at him, and my silly heart swelled so fiercely that my breath snagged. A storm of emotions flooded me. I didn’t feel fear or disbelief as I looked at him. I felt wonder. A wild fluttering in my chest and stomach. A need for him that went beyond the physical. A powerful empathy for him—the need to protect him even though he was more than capable of doing that himself. A feeling of rightness, or as Aios had said, the feeling of being at home. Of being seen. The knowledge that I’d do anything for him. Anything. The fear that I would never be worthy of what he had sacrificed for me. And the determination that I would do everything to be that. I was drowning in all those feelings until my heart began to pound with the intensity of what I felt—with the knowledge that it was he who held my heart—only him.

“It’s all right,” I jumped in. “He’s not the bow-to-me type of Primal.” “Well, sometimes I am,” he murmured.

the Balfour family. Their name will be honored long after the great kingdoms fall.”

it will become an old, honored one, long after my bones turn to ash.” Delfai looked over his shoulder. Onyx eyes deeply set in amber skin met mine. He barely looked older than me, but those eyes…they were as black and endless as Holland’s. “It is a name, Fates willing, you may one day know.”

“Fate even fucks with the Fates.”

“Love makes anything possible. Makes anyone capable of the unexpected.”

“She is not simply a vessel,” Ash growled as eather charged the air. “Not now. Not before this moment, and not going forward.”

Death always finds you. Holland’s voice whispered through my thoughts. By the hands of a god or a misinformed mortal. By Kolis himself, and even by Death. Ash.

“Her death will not come at my hands,” Ash snarled in a guttural, barely recognizable voice.

“Perhaps there is a silver beast and a brightest moon. Two. Not one,” he rambled. “Two then one.”

“I want a future. I want to live. I want to experience a life where I have control of my future. I want us,” I whispered. “But I need a future where we defeat Kolis and the Rot goes away. Where those in Iliseeum and in the mortal realm are safe. That’s what’s important. The only thing that matters.” “No, it is not the only damn thing that matters, Sera.” His eyes flashed. “You. Not the godsdamn embers. Not the fucking realms. You matter.”

“Even if you had your kardia, Ash, there was no guarantee you’d love me—” “Yes, there is.” His eyes were wide and wild as he caught my wrists. “I would’ve loved you if I could have. There would’ve been no stopping me.”

“I wish I’d never had my kardia removed.”

His eyes glinted with a…a sheen of red. Primal tears of grief. “I never wanted to love. Not until you, liessa.”

“When it comes time,” I whispered, “can you take me to my lake? I want it to be done there.”

Pushing to the surface, I turned to the bank of my lake. To where the white wolf once sat. And Ash now stood.

I needed to see him one last time. To say goodbye. To tell him that I…that I loved him. I’d been wrong to not tell him before, out of fear it would cause him guilt.

“Attes wasn’t supposed to hit you that hard, but he’s…as some would say—and that some being me—all looks and little thought.”

Everything Ash had sacrificed had been for nothing. Kolis had known about me and the embers. He had always known. And there had been no reason to keep me undiscovered and safe. For others to have given up their lives to do so. There was no reason for Ash to have made that deal with Veses.

Upset? I shuddered, seizing the anger instead of the sorrow. One strengthened me. The other would destroy me.

“It was quite clever of Eythos, though, wasn’t it? To take the last of those embers and hide them in a simple mortal, where no one would think to look—a mortal he ensured would belong to his son. Very clever.”

From the desperation of golden crowns and 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,’” he recited. “‘When the stars fall from the night, the great mountains crumble into the seas, and old bones raise their swords beside the gods, the false one will be stripped from glory until two born of the same misdeeds, born of the same great and Primal power in the mortal realm. A first daughter, with blood full of fire, fated for the once-promised King. And the second daughter, with blood full of ash and ice, the other half of the future King. Together, they will remake the realms as they usher in the end.’” “‘And so it will begin with the last Chosen blood spilled, the great conspirator birthed from the flesh and fire of the Primals will awaken as the Harbinger and the Bringer of Death and Destruction to the lands gifted by the gods,’” Kolis continued for Callum. “‘Beware, for the end will come from the west to destroy the east and lay waste to all which lies between.’”

Ash and I had believed the middle part was some time in the future.

For the one born of the blood and the ash, the bearer of two crowns, and the bringer of life to mortal, god, and draken. A silver beast with blood seeping from its jaws of fire, bathed in the flames of the brightest moon to ever be birthed, will become one,’”

“Blood. The strength of life. Ash. The bravery of death. Life and Death, if taken literally.”

What had Kolis said when I demanded to know what taking Thad’s life would give him? He’d said it would tell him everything he needed to know. And it had. “Is there more to the prophecy?”

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.’”

“There will be no need for mortal Kings. There will be no need for any other Primal. Not when a Primal of Life and Death has risen.”

He still would’ve needed to die, but he could’ve saved the lives of so many others, including his precious Mycella—and all the lives his son had to take in place of him.”

I was dying. I wouldn’t get a chance to say goodbye to Ash, to tell him that I loved him. There was no saving him or any of the gods or realms. I wouldn’t fulfill my destiny.

that presence seized me again. That awareness. That voice. The voices. No. No. No. No. It wasn’t just my voice screaming. It was hers. Sotoria. All the lives she’d lived. And it was ours that moved my tongue. “You’re killing me,” I slurred, eyes heavy. “You’re killing me again, after all these years.” Kolis’s head jerked up. “What?” My tongue felt useless. Bulky. The ceiling flickered in and out. There was no pain. The only thing I felt now was her anger—our rage. “What did you just say?” Kolis turned me in his arms. His face blurred. Blood smeared his lips, his fangs. He shook me, rattling my head. “What the fuck did you just say?” “It’s me…” A laugh that didn’t sound like mine at all parted my lips. “Sotoria.”

“Think about it, Kolis,” Attes continued. “Your brother was very clever. He could’ve taken Sotoria’s soul and placed it with the embers to protect her and to fuck you over. You know he would.”

To a wolf. A wolf crouched at the trunks of the trees. A wolf more silver than white. A silver beast. Bathed in the brightest moonlight. Ash.