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“A reluctant guest,” I amended, feeling my chest knot. “But you don’t have to worry about that. Kolis didn’t do anything like that.” A moment passed, then another. No longer thirsty, I placed the glass on the table. “Did he use food in that way with you?”
“He did.”
I briefly closed my eyes as fury rose, stoking the embers. I had to take a deep breath. “I hate him,” I said, folding my hand over his. “I really—wait.” I looked down at our joined hands, realizing just then that his skin didn’t feel as cold as it had the night before. Or this morning, when we woke, even. “Your skin is a little warmer.”
He reached over and picked up the glass with his other hand. “Feels the same to me,” he said, taking a sip. “It does taste good.” He tipped the glass back, eyeing the contents. “Probably could get by with one or three less strawberries.”
“I like it sweet,” I murmured, sliding my hand up the corded muscle of his forearm. Maybe it was my imagination? It must have been because Ash hadn’t fed since I’d awakened from stasis.
“While I don’t mind that you’re feeling up my arm,” he drawled, “if you continue, I’m afraid I’ll never make it to Vathi.”
I pulled my hand away and cleared my throat. “I wish I could go with you.”
“I wish you would talk to me.”
My head cut to his. “About what?”
“That’s another long list,” he stated. “But we can start with what you were dreaming about last night.”
A thin breath of air made it past my lips. “I already told you. I don’t remember. So, you can go ahead and remove that from the list.”
Tension bracketed his mouth as he looked away, and I knew that what I’d suspected last night was true.
He didn’t believe me.
“Would you like me to remind you?” he said quietly.
I stared at him, my heart thumping as it began to race.
“You were screaming.”
Shit.
A muscle flexed along his jaw. “You were screaming the word no.”
Shit.
I swallowed. “I don’t know why.”
His gaze flicked to mine. “I think I have a pretty good idea.”
Muscles all throughout my body began to tense as if I was preparing to leap from the settee and run. It was like the flight response kicking in, but I could feel the fight instinct gearing up to take over, and I didn’t want that. Ash wasn’t at fault here. He was only concerned. So, I took a moment to calm my ass down.
“I know you’re worried about me,” I started, and Ash’s gaze returned to mine, “but I’m okay.”
Several moments passed, the silence stretching between us. “It’s all right, you know?” he said. “To not be okay. To not always be strong.”
A jolt ran through my body as my hands curled around nothing but air. “Nektas said something like that.”
“I’m sure he did. He’s said it to me before.”
I dropped my hands to my lap. “Why…why was he telling you that?”
“My father. Not knowing my mother. Kolis. Veses,” he said, and my chest fisted with anger at merely the sound of her name. “I could keep going, but I think you get the point.”
I did.
And I wished I didn’t because it made my heart ache for everything he’d had to deal with.
That was why I wasn’t going to tell him about the nightmare. He didn’t need that living in the back of his head, haunting him, along with everything else.
“But you got through it because you had to, right?” I said. “And you were able to do that because you’re strong. You’re a survivor.”
“So are you.”
My brows snapped together. “I am, but that has nothing to do with survival.”
“It has everything to do with surviving, liessa.”
I shook my head, my palms begi
A frown pulled at his brow. “Sera?”
“I…I feel something. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like I can feel the air changing. As if…”
Ash’s chin dipped, and a low growl rumbled from him. “Is it fucking Kolis again?”
“No.” Ash rose as I stood. “But it feels like something is coming.” Eather throbbed in my chest. “Something powerful and…”
Old.
Something Ancient.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I spun toward the doors. No sooner had the thought finished than the air between the two shadowstone pillars warped.
Ash curled his arm around my waist and hauled me back as a sphere of eather materialized, rapidly swelling and elongating as it unfurled. But this was no random ball of eather. Instinct told me it was a tear in the very realm itself. An opening.
A portal.
The first thing I saw was skin. A whole lot of bare flesh and honed muscle in the shape of a tall, broad man with shoulder-length brown hair and skin a shade somewhere between the bronze of Ash’s and the copper of Nektas’s. The man casually walked out of the portal like he was merely taking a stroll in a park.
That was if one walked in the park only wearing loose-fitting, white linen pants and absolutely nothing else.
Well, he was wearing something else. Small gold rings in both of his brown nipples. I supposed that counted as some sort of attire.
I really needed to stop looking at his nipples.
I lifted my gaze. Scrolling vines similar to what adorned the throne room doors were tattooed up the sides of his throat, stopping at the curve of a jaw that could’ve been carved from granite. Except I didn’t think that design was made of ink. It was a shade or two darker than his flesh and appeared to churn from within his skin, like the shadows often did in Ash’s. I looked past sculpted lips, a chiseled nose, and arched cheekbones, momentarily distracted by the asymmetric features. And then I saw his eyes.
My lips parted. They were a kaleidoscope of colors: a warm shade of brown, the dewy green of the newly grown patches of grass outside, and the blue of the Stroud Sea. Bursts of silver were sprinkled throughout the colors like stars.
I’d seen those eyes before.
During my Ascension, when I’d seen how the realms were created.
“What the fuck?” Ash snarled, his flesh thi
The being’s strange eyes flicked to Ash, his head moving in a way that sent a chill of unease down my spine. There was something utterly inhuman in that simple movement. Almost as if the entire realm shifted around him to accommodate the gesture. One side of his lips curled up, and instinct warned me that smile was not a good thing.
“It’s okay.” I stepped around Ash—or tried to. He sidestepped me. “He’s an…” I trailed off as the being’s gaze shifted to me. He waited to hear what I said. What I would reveal. My throat dried. “He’s a Fate—an Arae.”
The other side of the Ancient’s lips rose then in a close-lipped smile. It reminded me of Kolis’s smiles—the ones that were practiced and shallow as if he didn’t understand the emotions behind smiling and was simply copying others’ expressions.
How could Holland be an Ancient? He was nothing like this being standing in front of us.
“I don’t give a fuck what he is,” Ash fumed, the shadows deepening as they spread up his throat in nearly the same pattern as the one on the Ancient’s skin. “I only know he had better have one good fucking reason for arriving una
Our home.
It was just two words, but they suddenly made me feel all warm inside—
The Ancient laughed.
Okay. Now was not the time to focus on how those words made me feel all ooey-gooey. Like, at all. Because the Ancient’s laugh was even more creepy than his smile.
Dark tendrils of eather gathered on the floor, wrapping themselves around our legs. “I’m not sure what you find fu
“Many things,” the Ancient replied, his voice carrying a lilt I’d never heard before, one with a melodic quality.
The power growing around Ash caused the air to crackle and stirred the eather inside me. “You want to key us in on those things?” Ash said.
“You want to tell me why you speak for the true Primal of Life?” the Ancient countered.
I stiffened. “He doesn’t speak for me.”
The Ancient’s head moved again, tilting to the side as he focused on me. “I suppose I should be relieved to hear that.” He paused, his gaze moving over me in a way that said he was sizing up my worth and wasn’t exactly impressed with the end result. My eyes narrowed. “But that is yet to be seen.”
Between the tone that dripped disapproval and that look, it was like the Ancient had reached inside me and shattered any self-restraint I’d developed after my Ascension.
Eather rushed to the surface of my skin and seeped through. “I was wrong,” I said as, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw wisps of silver-laced golden eather streaking through the dark shadows whirling on the floor. “He did just speak for me when he said you’d better have a good fucking reason for appearing in our home as if you belong here.”
The churning colors stilled, and the bursts of eather brightened in the Ancient’s eyes.
“Careful,” he replied softly. “You may harness the eather of the realms, but you are only a…” The stars in his eyes pulsed, and while his lips didn’t move when he spoke, I heard him clear as day anyway. Two words.
Baby Primal.
I sucked in a sharp breath and jerked. The shock collapsed my hold on the essence.
“You’re the one who needs to be careful.” Ash’s chin dipped. “You may be a Fate, but that won’t stop me from flaying the flesh from your body if I even perceive your words to be a threat to my wife.”
Yet again, I felt myself melting inside, and really, not the appropriate response for several reasons. But most importantly?
Ash was a badass. But he could not defeat an Ancient.
Likely, none of us could.
That tight-lipped smile returned, almost as if the Ancient had heard my thoughts. “I do have a reason for being here,” he a
“I suppose I’m relieved to hear that,” Ash mimicked with a smile just as unfriendly. “But that is yet to be seen.”
“Charming,” the Ancient murmured, and a not-too-distant rumble echoed from outside. He glanced at the ceiling, and I could’ve sworn I saw a flicker of something skittering across his features. Not an emotion per se, but something like…wariness.
I thought about the dragon I’d seen taking out an Ancient during my Ascension. “Whatever your reason is, you’d best get to it.” My lips curled into a smirk. “Because I think we’re about to have company.”
The eather dimmed in his eyes. “I’ve come to retrieve the Primal of Life.”
My heart lurched. “What for?”