A light in the flame

Fates were as terrifying as any Primal, and I couldn’t even begin to count how many times I’d kicked him.

“He is showing you the respect you are owed, Sera,” Holland added as I continued staring at Nyktos.

“But I’m not the Primal of Life.” I stated the obvious.

“You carry the only true embers of life inside you,” Nyktos said, and that deep, softly spoken voice sent a myriad of shivers over my skin. “For all intents and purposes, you are the Primal of Life.”

“He speaks the truth.” The goddess Penellaphe drew closer, coming to stand beneath the open ceiling. The star-strewn sky cast a soft glow over her warm, light brown skin. “Denying it isn’t a luxury which can be afforded.”

“But I’m just a mortal—” My lungs felt as if they’d been filled with tiny holes, and Nyktos was still bowing to me. “Can you please stand or sit? Anything other than kneel? It’s really weirding me out.”

Nyktos’s head tilted, sending several strands of hair against his cheek. “You are the true Primal of Life, just as my father was. As Holland said, it’s a show of respect.”

“But I don’t des—” I cut myself off, my heart thumping and chest squeezing. The eather in his eyes stilled. “Can you just not do that? Please.”

The Primal rose quickly, the wisps of essence in his eyes brightening so vividly they were almost painful to look upon. He towered over me, his stare seeming to peel away the layers of my very being, seeing…sensing what I felt.

I stiffened, my skin becoming hot and prickly. “You’d better not be reading my emotions.”

Nyktos arched a dark brow. “Your accusatory tone is u

“And your response wasn’t a declaration of i

“No.” His voice had dropped, but it still somehow thundered through me. “It was not.”

“Then don’t do it,” I snapped. “It’s rude.”

Nyktos’s mouth opened, likely to point out that I was the last person who should speak on rude behavior.

“You have never been just a mortal, Seraphena.” Holland stepped in smoothly, just as he’d done dozens of times in the past whenever I’d descended into a rant spiral. “You are the possibility of a future for all.”

He’d said a version of that before during training, but it took on a whole different meaning now. “But I haven’t completed any Culling, and you just said that I would…” Closing my eyes, I didn’t finish the sentence.

Everyone here knew what had been said.

Breathe in. My mortal body and mind wouldn’t be able to handle the power of the embers once I began the Ascension. The only chance I had of surviving wasn’t even a hope. Hold. Because it required the blood of the Primal that one of the embers of life belonged to—that and sheer will powered by love.

The love of the Primal I’d spent the entirety of my life pla

The irony of it all made me want to laugh, except I was going to die. Likely in less than five months and before I turned twenty-one, taking the last true embers of life with me. The mortal realm would be hit first and the hardest. Eventually, the Rot would spread beyond the Shadowlands to all of Iliseeum.

I exhaled long and slow, just like Holland had taught me many years ago, when everything became too heavy, too much, and the weight of it all choked the air from me. My impending death wasn’t something new. I’d always known. Whether I failed or succeeded when it came to fulfilling my destiny, I knew I would die in the process.

But it felt different now.

I’d finally had a taste of being something other than a means to an end, a weapon to be used and then discarded. I’d had a taste of realness. I’d finally felt like a fully formed person, not a specter soaked in blood. Not a liar and a monster who could kill without all that much remorse.

But that was who I was underneath it all, and Nyktos now knew that, too. There was no more hiding that truth—or any truths.

My lungs started to burn as tiny bursts of light danced across my vision. The breathing exercises weren’t working. A tremor hit my hands, and panic unfurled in my chest. There was no air—

Fingertips touched my cheek. Warm fingertips. My eyes flew open, locking on features so finely pieced together I should’ve known the first time I saw him that he was more than a god. His touch startled me, not only because it was warm instead of shockingly cold as it had been before he took my blood into him, but because I still wasn’t used to touching. I wasn’t sure I ever would be when it had always been so rare that anyone allowed their skin to contact mine.

But he touched me. After everything, Nyktos touched me.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice low.

My tongue was heavy and useless, having nothing to do with my too-tight chest and everything to do with his concern. I didn’t want it. Not now. It was wrong on so many different levels.

Nyktos stepped in close, lowering his head until his lips were mere inches from mine. A shiver followed his hand as he curled his fingers around the nape of my neck. His thumb gently pressed against my wildly thrumming pulse. He tilted my head as if lining up our mouths for a kiss as he’d done in his office before meeting with Holland and Penellaphe. But that would never happen again. He’d told me that himself.

“Breathe,” Nyktos whispered.

It was as if he’d compelled the very air itself to enter my body, and it tasted of his scent—citrus and fresh air. The darts of lights cleared, and my lungs expanded with breath. The shaking continued in my hands as his thumb swept across my pulse, now racing for entirely different reasons. He stood so close to me that there was no stopping the flood of memories—the feel of his mouth against my throat, and his hands on my bare skin. The pain-tinged pleasure of his bite as he fed from me. Him moving inside me, creating the kind of pleasure that wouldn’t be forgotten and warmed my blood even now.

I’d been Nyktos’s first.

And he…he would be my last, no matter what happened from this point forward.

Sorrow crept in, cooling my heated blood and settling in my chest with a different, thicker kind of pressure. At least I no longer felt as if I couldn’t catch my breath.

“She has trouble slowing her heart and breathing sometimes,” Holland shared quietly—and u

“I’ve noticed.” Nyktos’s thumb continued those featherlight sweeps while I inwardly cringed. He probably thought…only the gods knew what he thought.

I didn’t want to know.

Face heating, I backed away from Nyktos’s touch, hitting the edge of the dais. His hand hovered in midair for a few seconds, and then his fingers curled inward. He dropped his arm as I turned to the raised platform. I focused on the hauntingly beautiful thrones sculpted from massive chunks of shadowstone. Their backs had been carved into large and widespread wings that touched at the tips, co

“You are both positive that no one else knows what she is?” Nyktos asked.

“Besides your father? Embris knows the prophecy,” Penellaphe answered, referencing the Primal God of Wisdom, Loyalty, and Duty as I pulled myself together. I faced them. This was too important for me to miss while having a mini breakdown. “And so does Kolis. Neither knows more than that.”

The eather stirred once more in Nyktos’s eyes at the mention of the Primal Kolis, who every mortal—including myself until recently—believed to be the Primal of Life and the King of Gods. But Kolis was the true Primal of Death. The one who’d impaled gods on the Rise surrounding the House of Haides just to remind Nyktos that all life was easily extinguished—or so I assumed. And it was a logical assumption. Nyktos’s father had been the true Primal of Life, and Kolis had stolen Eythos’s embers.