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“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.”
Nyktos froze as silence fell over the courtyard. His gaze dropped to the shadowstone dagger I held at his throat and then flicked to mine.
I smiled at him. “Bravo,” he murmured.
I took a couple of steps toward the doors and then stopped, turning back to Nyktos and his guards and giving them the most elaborate curtsy I was capable of. There were chuckles, even from the reluctantly amused Rhain, but it was Nyktos’s deep, rough laughter that stayed with me.
“It should’ve occurred to me that bathing in the chamber where you were attacked would be less than appealing.” “I haven’t—” Whatever lie I had been about to tell got caught on the knot forming in my throat. I stared at the wisps of steam rising from the tub, my eyes blurring. “You will be safe here,” Nyktos told me, his tone softening, and a faint shudder rolled through me. “I will make sure of it.”
This was an act of kindness. I shouldn’t be surprised, because despite whatever issues we might have had with one another, Nyktos was a kind man. He was thoughtful. I knew that, but this unexpected act frayed me at the seams and made that crack in my chest feel even more unstable.
What allowed me to relax wasn’t that the tub or room was different. I knew that. It was who waited just outside the door. I knew I was safe.
liessa
“As your Consort, I was not to be known by most.” There was a beat of silence. “What does that mean?” “It’s like with the Chosen, but even more. I…I don’t know how to explain it other than to say that I…I didn’t exist.” “You existed.” “I didn’t, though,”
“Sera.” I thought I heard Nyktos whisper my name as I began to doze off. “You were never a ghost to me.”
“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.”
“All you’ve proven is what I’ve told you before. That one decent and kind bone I have in me belongs to you.”
“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.”
Mortals were the first to feel, from the moment they took their first breath—and until their last. And that was something that just occurred in them naturally. But Primals were meant to be beyond such…mortal needs and wants.” I slowly sat back down. “Why?” “Because emotions can sway one’s decisions, no matter how unbiased anyone believes they are. If they can feel, they can be coerced by emotion.”
“Then a Primal fell in love, and it troubled the Fates. They worried that love, held within a Primal’s heart, could become a weapon. They intervened, hoping to dissuade other Primals from doing the same by making what they loved the ultimate weapon to be used against them.”
“And that essence—the Primal essence that allows us to influence mortals to flourish or decay, love or hate, create life and cause death—is never just good or bad. It’s only absolute. Unpredictable. Raw.” 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.”
“
“You are a bit…temperamental. And those around you do have a tendency to end up stabbed,” she began with a sheepish grin. “I figured you’d probably get yourself killed by growing impatient and just stabbing him.” Nyktos barked out a short laugh. “Now, that was incredibly astute.”
Part of me was also beginning to believe that was why he’d had his kardia removed. Not to protect himself but to protect others.
Ones that can shift into forms of large felines. They’re called wivern and can usually be found in Sirta.
“And then there are the ceeren,”
“They are usually found in the Triton Isles.”
You miss your lake, don’t you? That sweeping, fluttering motion returned to my chest as my gaze shifted back to the pool. “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 don’t know. The lake is different, and I…” He frowned, scratching his jaw. “I just felt drawn to it. Drawn to you.” “Because of the ember?”
“Maybe.”
“And that’s why you threw my dagger into a wall?” “I threw the dagger into the wall because I don’t want to get stabbed again, nor do I want you cutting off more of my hair.” I opened my mouth. “And don’t even tell me you wouldn’t stab me,” he said. “You would.” “You’re such a know-it-all,”
“You are always safe with me, liessa
“Either way, 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 because of that, all of that… I wanted more. I wanted to be his wife. His partner. His Queen. I wanted to be Nyktos’s Consort.
His eyes flashed a shade of blue so bright and intense that they briefly resembled polished sapphires before they returned to the deep red hue I knew.
“I’ve never seen them that color, but all of the draken used to have blue eyes.” “Really?” Surprise flickered through me. “Why are they now red?” “They turned that way after Kolis took the embers of life from my father,” he said. “It’s a sort of notam
“It could mean that you’re closer to Ascension than we realized.”
At some point yesterday, I’d decided that he didn’t need to know how I felt. That I…I cared for him. It didn’t seem fair to put that on him, even though I knew he cared for me, too—and even though I thought what I felt might be more.
“The day you asked me if I’d accepted this way of life. I haven’t. From the moment I Ascended, I’ve searched for a way to destroy Kolis. To weaken him enough that he could be entombed. As you already know, I couldn’t find anything.”
“Kolis believes all mortals should be in service to the Primals and gods. That their lives should be dedicated to appeasing the whims of those more evolved than they are,” he continued, and my stomach tightened. “That those who do not worship the Primals with dedication and respect should be punished. He has already ordered the Primals and gods to punish mortals more harshly, even for the simplest indiscretions. You may not have seen this play out in your kingdom yet, or were simply unaware, but failure to even bow before a statue of a Primal could result in death in other places.”
Once the Rot was vanquished, the sun would return to the Shadowlands, and I decided in that moment, without hesitation, that I would be here to see that.
“The poppies,” I whispered. “The poisonous, temperamental poppies that remind you of me.” “The powerful, beautiful poppies that also remind me of hope,”
“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. “The embers, you mean,” I corrected him. “He didn’t misspeak.” Nyktos’s thumb swept back and forth. “He speaks of you. Not the embers.”
“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.”
Then, slowly, he turned it over and pressed another kiss to my palm. He never took those now-heated, quicksilver eyes off me. “I’ll be waiting for you, liessa
He was grinning at me, and I didn’t think he’d stopped since we’d left Nyktos at the crossroads. When I thought that Nyktos had possibly wanted to kiss me goodbye, and somehow felt that was almost as good as him doing so. Nektas was still grinning. “Shut up,” I muttered. “I didn’t say anything.” “You didn’t need to.”
“That what he feels for you goes beyond fondness. He cares for you.” “I…I know that, too.”
That is what Ash fears most.” His gaze found mine again. “Loving someone. Losing them. Then becoming something even worse than Kolis.”
“I don’t know why death smells like that, but 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.”
meyaah Liessa,” Nektas
“I know her,” I whispered, dumbfounded as I watched her smile in response to whatever Delfai was showing her in the bowl. “That’s Kayleigh Balfour. The Princess of Irelone. Delfai is in Irelone—at Cauldra Manor.”
“Do Primals have free will?” “They didn’t in the beginning.” I remembered what Nyktos had told me. “Their ability to begin to feel emotion changed that?” He nodded. “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?”
The nymph exploded. A wave of power blew back, so intense the burst of eather knocked me on my ass when it rolled into me. “Holy shit,” I whispered, lifting the sword as a shadow fell over me. Nektas stared down at me. “I thought you said eather didn’t do anything to them?” “It shouldn’t,” he said. “Only the Primal of Life can wield the kind of eather that can kill a nymph.” Nektas jerked his hood back. “It’s the same kind of power that can kill another Primal.”
