A light in the flame

“We heard you the first time,” I snapped as the Primal thrust a hand through his hair.

“But you haven’t,” Holland returned. “You haven’t heard why he ca

Tension thickened the air as the Primal held the Arae’s stare. “No. She has not.”

Nothing could be gained from Nyktos’s expression. Unease took root. “What are you two even talking about?”

A muscle throbbed in Nyktos’s temple. “I ca

Something told me that this was more than just him making such a claim. “And how can you ensure that?”

“Maia,” he said, speaking of the Primal of Love, Beauty, and Fertility. “I had her remove my kardia.”

Penellaphe gasped, her eyes widening with shock. “Good Fates,” she whispered. “I have known none who’ve done that.”

I was obviously missing something and also getting tired of asking questions. “What is a kardia?”

“It’s the piece of the soul—the spark—that all living creatures are born and die with. It allows them to love another not of their blood irrevocably, selflessly.” Penellaphe swallowed. “It must have been terribly painful to have that torn from you. To truly be unable to love.”

Chapter 2

“It was barely an inconvenience,” Nyktos muttered, clearly not pleased with the topic, and I…

I was stu

I’d believed that Nyktos could never allow himself to love. Not when he saw it as a weakness and also as a weapon to be wielded against him—just as I had sought to use it. But I hadn’t known that he was truly incapable of feeling love.

I was shocked that he would do that to himself, even though I understood why he would, after everything he’d been through. But I didn’t understand because he was…

“You care about others,” I said, shaking my head in confusion. “I know you do. How—?”

“Caring and loving are two vastly different things,” Nyktos said. “I am not incapable of caring for or about another. The kardia is simply unable to sway me. Something one would think all Primals would ensure.”

“Yeah. Namely, Kolis,” I murmured, ru

“There is only so much I can do and say,” Holland said quietly. “Or could.”

I knew that. The rules. Still, it was irritating. I cleared my throat. “So, like I asked before, how long does the mortal realm have?”

“It’s hard to know,” Holland shared. “What you know as the Rot in the mortal realm has made the Shadowlands into what it is now. But it would not happen that way with the rest of Iliseeum. It has only just begun to spread beyond these lands. It would take Iliseeum longer to suffer the truly catastrophic effects, but the mortal realm would have…a year? Maybe two or three if lucky. But it would not be easy to survive such an event.”

Or be something anyone would want to survive.

The image of the Coupers filled my mind, the family lying together in that bed as they must have done a hundred times before. They had already been dying a slow death from starvation, and hundreds of thousands more would end up just like them when all the vegetation died. Then the livestock. The famine and sickness would be horrific, leading to wars and more violence.

Panic blossomed deep in my chest as I thought about the people of Lasania—my stepsister Ezra, Marisol, and the Ladies of Mercy, who did everything in their power to keep children from falling prey to the worst sort of humanity. Then I thought of the Massey family and all the other hardworking men and women beyond Lasania. So many who would have no chance. None.

“Can we not warn them?” I asked of Holland, my heart twisting. “Perhaps if we do, Ezra can work to—”

“Queen Ezmeria has already begun implementing much-needed changes in Lasania,” Holland interrupted.

I gasped. “Queen?”

A small, fond smile tugged at his lips as he nodded.

“She married?” I whispered, hopeful. “Marisol?”

“Yes. She took the throne not long after you were taken into the Shadowlands.”

I squeezed my eyes shut against the rush of relief. Ezra had done as I’d asked of her. She’d taken the throne from my mother. Gods, I would give any amount of coin to have seen the look on my mother’s face. A choked laugh left me as I opened my eyes, becoming aware of Nyktos watching me in that close, intense way of his. “How did she do it? Did my—?” I stopped. None of that mattered at the moment. “I need to warn her.”

“I would advise against that,” Nyktos said.

“I wasn’t asking you,” I snapped before I could stop myself.

He simply continued eying me, seeming utterly unperturbed by my response.

“Sometimes, it is best to not know if or when the end is coming,” Penellaphe advised.

“Didn’t you say that knowledge is power?” I pointed out.

“Sometimes, it is,” she reiterated. “But when it’s not, all it does is unleash harm and pain.”

“And fear.” Holland’s voice lowered in the way it had when he’d comforted me after I’d returned from my first session with the Mistresses of the Jade. I squirmed where I stood. “The truth will not help them. All it would do is cause panic.”

If I had learned anything, it was that the truth led to a choice. And I now knew the truth about many things, which meant I had choices to make. To hide and be protected? Ignore what would become of the mortal realm and eventually Iliseeum? Live without purpose until I died?

Or fight back.

I glanced at Holland. He watched me in a way where I almost expected him to hand me a dagger to train with.

“There is something else,” Penellaphe added. “A way I may be of assistance. At least…temporarily.” She swallowed, focusing on me. “If anyone were to learn what you carry inside you, they may attempt to take you. Not just Kolis. I can help prevent that.”

“You can?”

“A charm?” Nyktos surmised. He cocked his head. “I don’t know of anything that could be placed on a person to prevent such a thing.”

“You wouldn’t, would you? Not as a Primal of Death.” Penellaphe smiled. “But I am not just a goddess of Loyalty and Duty, I am also a goddess of Wisdom.”

“Meaning,” Nyktos said, a slow grin appearing, “you know more than I do, and I should shut the hell up?”

Penellaphe’s eyes glimmered in the starlight. “Precisely.”

Less than a handful of minutes later, I found myself seated on the dais with the male I’d seen in the hall with Penellaphe when she first arrived, drawing on my skin.

He sat beside me, his head bent as he wrote a series of unrecognizable letters in bold, black ink on my arm, his lion’s mane of hair shielding his features. He’d started on my right side, drawing the letters so they traveled around the circumference of my wrist. He’d already completed about three lines.

As I leaned back and squinted, the letters almost looked like shapes.

And the shape reminded me of shackles.

“Will this fade?” I asked.

“They will fade as soon as I’m finished,” the man said as the featherlight touch of his brush tickled. All that I knew about him was that he was a viktor—a not-so-quite-mortal being, born to protect someone of importance or a harbinger of great change. “But Primals and some powerful gods will be able to sense the charm.”

Speaking of Primals…