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“Whatever you think you need to do,” he said, his voice soft as a breath—it tripped up my heart even more—“whatever you believe you can accomplish, you are wrong.”
“How can you say that? I can stop him.” I trembled, the words spilling out of me. “You have to know that.”
“Turning yourself over to Kolis is not the answer.”
“You know it is!” I shouted. “Why else would your father put her soul in me? Why else would I have been trained to kill a Primal?”
His head was mere inches from mine, and the brightness of his eyes caused mine to water.
Instinct screamed at me to go quiet. That he was on the edge of losing whatever restraint he had. But I couldn’t. He had to understand that this was our only chance to stop Kolis. “I know what I’m facing.” I forced my voice to go steady and level like when I spoke to the wild kiyou wolf I had brought back to life in the Dark Elms. “But whatever happens to me will be worth it if I—”
Those twin arcs swept down, slamming into the ground and shaking the entire woods. Eather sparked from the tips of his wings, hitting the patches of dead, gray grass and turning it to ash.
“You h-have to understand.” I shuddered as frigid air blasted off him. “I’m his weakness. What I’ve been preparing for my whole life? It was for him. Not you.” My breath formed a misty, puffy cloud. “I can still try. Just help me get there, or…or let me go. Either one. I will fulfill my real destiny.”
Nyktos had gone silent.
I swallowed, hoping I was getting somewhere with him, praying to whatever Fates might be listening that he would understand. “You shouldn’t have to worry about hiding who I am. You’ll be free of me, and so will all those who seek shelter under your care. Everyone in the Shadowlands will be safer this way. You will be safer. No one else has to get hurt or die.”
“But you would be dead.” Nyktos spoke in a voice I barely recognized, his tone thicker and more guttural. “Kolis will destroy you.”
“That doesn’t matter—” I sucked in a breath when his wings lifted, whipping the strands of our hair across our faces as they spread out behind him.
“And you argue that you value your life.” A deep growl rumbled from his chest. “What little regard you have for it has never been more apparent than right now.”
“I’m going to die no matter what. The mortal realm will be lost. You can’t stop that. No one can. But I can at least do something about Kolis. Then, he won’t be able to hurt anyone again. He won’t be able to hurt you.”
He lowered his head even more, his mouth barely a breath away from mine. “I will gladly suffer anything Kolis dishes out as long as my blood is spilled instead of yours.”
I pressed into the ground, stu
“The embers of life and you—”
“Fuck the embers of life!” I pushed against his hold, getting nowhere, but something deep in me, something that had been there, tightening and building for fucking years, began to crack.
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. Wounds made by my mother’s disappointment left to fester each time she looked at me as if she wished she never had to do so again. I was just a vessel full of deep scars left behind from the first life I’d taken and all the times after that, leaving the wrong kind of mark behind. I was nothing more than bruises on a blank canvas because I didn’t feel it. I didn’t mourn those losses. I didn’t care because no one else cared beyond what I could do for them.
My skin felt too tight and prickly. My chest throbbed, and that messy knot unraveled into rage, turning into something else that couldn’t be hidden or contained. I threw my head back, a scream of frustration and fury burning my throat. From inside the vast cavern that had shattered open, heat rose from within the emptiness. Power. It felt like it had always been there, bright and hot, ancient and unending. Power flowed through my veins. Silvery-white light crowded my vision—
I slammed my hands into his shoulders as that energy, that pure Primal essence erupted from my palms and flowed into—
Nyktos.
Chapter 7
Pure silvery-white eather slammed into Nyktos, spreading over him as he rose and something threw him backward. His wings spread, stopping him in midair.
“Nyktos,” I screamed. Real fear exploded in my gut as I jackknifed up, scrambling onto my knees. Eather crackled, racing through his wings and body, filling the network of veins.
My gods, what had I done?
Darkness spilled out around Nyktos, thick and churning. His mouth opened, and the sound he made…it was power. A roar hit the dried-out branches behind him, shattering them. The temperature dropped so severely that it momentarily seemed to freeze what air I could get into my lungs. I was chilled down to my bones as he drifted forward—
A great shadow fell over me, blocking out the trees and the faint glimmer of the stars. I tensed. Air whipped through the clearing as Nektas came from above, a wing sweeping over my head as his front talons slammed into the earth before me. The ground and the still-standing trees shook as if they were nothing more than matchsticks.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I didn’t dare move. I knew death was coming—a painful, fiery death. There was no way it wasn’t. I’d attacked Nyktos. I’d hurt him. I knew this because what had come out of me had been pure, unfettered power. It hadn’t been intentional, but that didn’t matter. Nektas was not only bonded to Nyktos, he also saw the Primal as a member of his family.
Nektas would kill me.
Except the flash of intense silvery fire I knew I would see, even with my eyes closed, didn’t come. Neither did the pain.
Trembling, I opened my eyes. I was inches from the thick, grayish-black scales of Nektas’s side. I knew he was big, but even on the road into the Shadowlands when I first saw him, I hadn’t been this close to him in this form. His body alone had to be at least twenty feet. He had one of his leathery wings above me and was…crouched. Around me.
Nektas’s head swooped down, the row of spiked horns vibrating as his lips peeled back from massive, bone-crushing teeth. The low growl of warning sent chills down my spine.
“It’s okay,” Nyktos rasped.
My gaze flew to him. Dizzy with relief to hear him speak, I swayed unsteadily on my knees, slowly becoming aware that the air no longer felt as if it were freezing.
“Nektas isn’t…a threat to you,” Nyktos forced out between gritted teeth. Snapping, silvery light continued rippling through his body. “He’s…protecting you.”
“From what?”
“Me.”
That didn’t make sense, but the large draken was eyeing the Primal. Not me. “I-I hurt you.”
“He’s worried…that I will…retaliate out of reflex.” Nyktos twisted his head side to side. “That I…will do more than…just hurt you.”
“You wouldn’t.” I twisted toward Nektas. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I almost did.”
Not a single part of me believed that. Maybe that made me a fool, but if he’d wanted to harm me, he could’ve done so a thousand times over by now.
Nektas didn’t budge, though. He had his attention fixed on the Primal, his rumble of warning lower.
Nyktos suddenly lowered, going down on one knee. The shadows around him receded as he pitched forward, planting a hand on the ground. He bowed his head, his broad shoulders shuddering as the waves of eather eased and faded. His wings turned to smoke and scattered. The midnight-stone skin receded. Strands of hair fell against his golden-bronze jaw. He didn’t speak. Minutes ticked by, and only his shoulders moved, up and down with his short, rapid breaths.