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One made of eather.
Phanos, the Primal God of the Skies and Seas, erupted from the sea in a spray of water, the trident spitting sparks of amber against the warm, dark brown skin of his shoulders and broad chest. Beneath him, his undulating tail keeping him in place, the ceeren calmed enough for me to see there were smaller ones farther down. Children who still darted back and forth, appearing briefly before scurrying behind the older ceeren’s tails.
Phanos’s stare drifted over Kolis and then me. In the bright moonlight, the handsome lines of his face tensed. He bowed his head. “Your Majesty.”
Kolis knelt. My calves slid over warm, rough sand. He didn’t let go, he just held the top half of my body upright and against his chest. “I am in need of your assistance. She has lost too much blood.”
Phanos glanced at me, his stare lingering on my throat. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but is that not Nyktos’s Consort?”
“Yes,” I gasped. Or I thought I did. I couldn’t be sure. My tongue felt leaden and useless.
“That is irrelevant,” Kolis responded.
“Perhaps to you. But I felt the loss of one of our brethren, and the rise of a new…sistren. All of us did.” Phanos’s gaze slipped past us, and I heard retreating footsteps. His gaze shifted back to me. “Is it because of her?”
“You ask too many questions,” Kolis growled, his smooth voice roughening. “And I have very little patience for answering them.”
“I apologize, my King.” Phanos bowed his head slightly. “But I want no problems with Nyktos.”
“My nephew is currently no threat to anyone,” Kolis said, and my heart felt like it twisted until nothing was left of it. “However, even you should be more worried about inciting my wrath than Nyktos’s,” Kolis warned, cold bitterness filling his tone as gold-laced eather poured out of him. I winced when the essence glided harmlessly against my skin before spilling over to the sand. “Or do I need to remind you?”
Phanos eyed the tendrils of eather as they stopped short of reaching the water, where they lifted and coiled like vipers preparing to strike. I shuddered at the sight of them, having no idea what would happen if the eather reached the water. Whatever it was, I had a feeling it would be something terrible.
Phanos’s nostrils flared, and then the trident collapsed and vanished from his hand. “No, you do not.”
“Good.” Kolis’s voice was warm once more—gentle, even. The way he switched back and forth so quickly was u
Confusion arose. Between the blood loss and my worry for Ash, my addled brain was having a hard time processing everything, and many things were a blur. But even in this state, I had no idea how Phanos could assist.
“If you do not wish for her to die, can you not do what you’ve done to the others?” Phanos questioned. “Make her one of your Revenants. She is a godling, is she not? That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”
But I wasn’t a godling—the offspring of a mortal and a god. However, it was how I felt to the gods and Primals because of the embers. Either way, Phanos clearly knew about the Revenants. Maybe all the Primals but Ash did. But Phanos didn’t know about the embers.
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was there anything to gain? But I hadn’t even thought of Kolis turning me into whatever the Revenants were. Could he even do that? What would that—?
“That is only death reborn,” Kolis answered, the warmth straining. “And I ca
Two things happened at once. One, I realized that a Revenant had to die to become one. And the second thing? Phanos realized exactly why Kolis was here.
“Is that her?” he whispered. “Your graeca?”
A burst of anger lit my insides, temporarily replacing the coldness that seemed to have penetrated every part of me. Words scorched my tongue, and I wanted nothing more than for them to make it past my lips. I wasn’t his graeca. Neither was Sotoria. We didn’t belong to him. I willed my mouth to move, just as I had earlier when I yelled at Ash and Kolis, but the embers only sputtered weakly, and all I managed was a whimpering sound.
“She… I believe so.” Kolis’s fingers pressed into the flesh of my arm and hip. “I’m holding her soul in her body. I’m not sure…” He faltered, the weight of his words a whispered admission. “I’m not sure how much longer I will be able to do so.”
I thought of the pins-and-needles sensation I’d felt when he placed his hand on my chest. Was that it? When he grabbed hold of my soul—our souls?
Shock rippled through me. The god Saion hadn’t believed that Kolis retained enough power to summon a soul like Ash could. Did this mean there were still some embers of life in him? Or was this a byproduct of the true embers of death? I wasn’t sure, but it explained why I was still alive—well, barely.
“You know what you ask of me,” Phanos voiced quietly, wind whipping across the water and tossing the edges of my hair over the sand.
“I am not asking.”
Small bumps of unease prickled my skin as Phanos tipped his head to the side. A muscle in his jaw throbbed. Then he slipped below the water. A moment or so later, the ceeren went still. The smaller ones, the children, swam deeper and deeper, disappearing from sight.
Phanos resurfaced less than a foot from the sand. Water coursed over the smooth skin of his head and streamed down his chest. Wordlessly, he extended his arms to us.
Kolis hesitated, not moving at first, and then he lifted me once more. “If she dies, I will destroy your entire Court,” he swore, handing me to the Primal who hadn’t approached neither Ash nor me during my coronation.
Once more, panic seized me as Phanos took me into his arms, and the embers in me briefly flared. My heart rammed against my ribs, but I thought I felt Phanos’s chest rise sharply against mine. Warm, fizzing water lapped against my legs, and then everything below my chest was underwater. What thin breaths I managed seized. I loved being in my lake back in the mortal realm and enjoyed splashing around in Ash’s pool, but I couldn’t swim. And this…this was the sea a Primal was carrying me into.
“Nyktos once took what belonged to me.”
My wide eyes and frightened gaze darted from the star-strewn sky to Phanos. He was speaking about Saion and Rhahar.
“I should be amused to see something of his taken from him.” With his featherlight voice, it was hard to hear him over the seething water. “But I find no joy in this.” Wisps of silvery eather surged in his eyes. “I can sense your panic. There is no need. What would be the point in harming you when you’re already dying?”
How in this realm and beyond was that supposed to be even remotely reassuring?
One side of Phanos’s lips kicked up.
On second thought, I didn’t think he’d meant what he said to be reassuring at all.
“You’re in the water off the Triton Isles, near the coast of Hygeia,” Phanos continued. “Do you know what that means? Of course, you don’t. Most of the other Primals are not even aware, including Nyktos.” Phanos drifted out even farther. “I wonder if he’d have already brought you here if he’d known.”
I truly wasn’t following most of what he was saying. All I could think about was how deep the water must be.
“Water is the source of all life and healing. Without it, even the Primal of Life wouldn’t hold power…if that power was to be held.” A wry, humorless smile appeared. “Those born here, the ceeren, carry that source within them. It’s a gift that heals, just as the water does.”
His eyes met mine, and I heard…singing—soft strains in an unfamiliar language. The eather had stopped whirling in Phanos’s eyes, and I thought maybe I saw a shadow of sadness there. But I had to be imagining it. This was the same Primal who’d flooded the Kingdom of Phythe because he’d been insulted.