Текст книги "A fire in the flash"

Автор книги: Jennifer L. Armentrout

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 37 страниц)

“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.

“For most in your…state, this would provide a cure. But for you? You are no godling, Consort. I felt them the moment our skin touched.” Phanos’s head lowered, and he whispered, “The embers of Primal power. Strong ones. Too strong for a mortal, and that’s what you are.” The bridge of his nose brushed mine. “Or were.”

The suffocating feeling of helplessness rose, making me jerk. I had no idea what he would do. Any Primal could attempt to take the embers, just as Kolis had from Eythos, and what could I do to stop it? Nothing. My fingers, all that I could move, curled into my palms. I wasn’t used to being unable to defend myself. The feeling made me want to scratch my skin off. Fury whipped through me, crashing into my panic until desperation choked me.

“You have embers of life in you. Which means Eythos dealt the final—perhaps winning—blow to his brother, did he not?” Phanos glanced at the shore, the tendrils of eather in his eyes burning as brightly as the moon. A low chuckle came from him. “Ah, you have always been his weakness, haven’t you? I could take those embers myself.”

I stared up at him, wondering if it would be better if Phanos did just that. Although considering how he’d flooded a kingdom in the mortal realm over the cancellation of a tradition meant to honor him, probably not.

“But then I’d be fighting Kolis and Nyktos, the latter likely to be as displeased as the former, at least based on what I saw at your coronation. I am no fool.” He turned us in the water so his back was to the shore. His damp forehead brushed mine. “What truly ails you goes deeper than blood loss and cannot be circumvented, Consort. It can only be delayed, no matter how steep the price or how often it is paid.”

A steep price? What—?

“When this is all done, and you still breathe?” The bridge of his nose brushed mine again. “Remember the gifts given to you tonight.”

Before I could even process what he’d said, churning water rose over our heads, and we dipped below the surface. Phanos’s mouth closed over mine, causing my entire body to go rigid at the contact. He didn’t kiss me. He breathed into my mouth, the panels of my gown floating around me and my arms following as we sank. Phanos’s breath was cool, fresh, and powerful, like swallowing the wind.

His arms relaxed around me, and I slipped free of his grasp. My wide gaze darted through the cloudy water, and I continued sinking until—

Hands folded around my ankles, dragging me down. My mouth opened in a scream that sent bubbles roaring upward in the water. Fingers pressed into my waist, turning me around. A woman was suddenly before me, her long, dark hair tangling with my much lighter strands. She leaned in, the scales of her tail rough against the skin of my legs. Her eyes were the color of the Stroud Sea during the summer at noon, a stunning shade like sea glass. Her bare chest pressed against mine as she grasped my cheeks. Like Phanos, she placed her mouth over mine and exhaled. The breath was fresh and sweet, pouring down my throat.

The ceeren let go and floated away from me, her eyes closing, and our hair separating. She didn’t fall. She rose.

A hand on my shoulder turned me again. A man with the same blue-green eyes and pink skin took hold of my cheeks, bringing his mouth to mine as beams of brilliant moonlight washed over us. He, too, breathed that fresh, sweet, cool air into me, filling my lungs. His hands slipped away from me like the first, and then another caught me, this one with hair nearly as pale as mine. Her lips met mine, and her breath filled me, the two of us drifting from the light of the moon into the shadows. She floated up as another and another came. There were so many, and less and less moonlight reached us. I could no longer keep track of how many touched their lips to mine and exhaled, but with each breath, I felt different. The coldness inside me faded, and the tightness in my chest and throat eased. My heart skipped beats, then began pumping steadily. The erratic racing of my pulse slowed, and sound finally reached me. I looked around and saw the ceeren in the shadows of the dark water. It was them. They were singing like the ones on land had. I couldn’t understand the words, but it was a hauntingly beautiful melody. The backs of my eyes burned.

A ceeren’s smooth hands cupped my cheeks, turning my head away from those singing and toward her. She didn’t appear much older than me. Her blue-tinged lips spread in a smile as her tail moved up and down, propelling us upward toward the now-dappled moonlight. Tears. I could see them, even in the water. They streamed down her ivory cheeks, and I closed my eyes against what I felt at seeing them. The urge to tell her I was sorry hit me hard, even though I didn’t know what I was apologizing for. But her tears, her smile, and the song the ceeren sang…

Her mouth closed over mine, and she exhaled, her breath filling my chest. The embers of life thrummed strongly, vibrantly, as if reawakening. It struck me then that it wasn’t their breath they breathed into me.

It was their eather.

We broke the water’s surface, and my eyes shot open.

Different hands took me by the shoulders, ones I knew belonged to Kolis. He lifted me from the sea. Sparkling water streamed from my limbs and dripped from the hem of the gown and my hair, running into my eyes as he pulled me onto the beach.

I pitched forward, blinking water from my eyes and planting my hands in the warm, rough, white sand. My head no longer felt as if it were full of cobwebs. My thoughts were clear and already racing, preparing my muscles to fight or run. I started pulling myself free of Kolis’s hold when the blurriness left my vision.

I froze.

Every part of my being seized as I stared at the surface of the water. I didn’t see Phanos anywhere, but what I saw made my tingling lips part in horror.

Bodies floated, some face-up, others on their bellies. Dozens of them just…bobbed in the now-still waters. My gaze skipped over scales, no longer vibrant and vivid but dull and faded.

Suddenly, I understood the mournful song that no longer filled the air. The last ceeren’s smile. Her tears. The sadness I’d seen in Phanos’s eyes. This was the price he’d spoken of.

The ceeren had given me life.

At the cost of theirs.

CHAPTER FOUR

I stared at the bodies gently bobbing in the moonlight-drenched water, so utterly shocked by what the ceeren had sacrificed that I was numb, deadened to the point where I felt incredibly empty.

Why had they done this?

But they hadn’t been given a choice, had they? Kolis had demanded that Phanos assist, and this was how the Primal of the Sky, Sea, Earth, and Wind helped.

You know what you ask of me.

Kolis had.

But I hadn’t.

If I’d known, I would’ve done everything in my power to prevent the unnecessary loss of life. Because it was unnecessary. Phanos had said it himself. What the ceeren had given their lives for was only temporary. I would still die. But even if I wouldn’t? I wasn’t okay with this.

“Why?” I whispered into the wind, my voice hoarse.

“Because I will not allow you to die,” Kolis answered, speaking nearly the same words Ash had but…

When spoken by Ash, they had always sounded like a tragic oath birthed of desperation, stubbornness, and want—so much want. A tremor started in my hands and swept through my body. Kolis’s words sounded like a threat and reeked of obsession.

My gaze skipped over the lifeless ceeren. I had never wanted anyone to lose their life because of me. Like those who’d perished during the Shadowlands siege.

Like Ector had.

The image of the god flashed in my mind, momentarily obscuring the horror in front of me. It wasn’t how I’d seen him on the pike when Ash and I returned from the mortal realm. While that had been bad, I preferred it to how I’d last seen him; when he’d been nothing more than red, slick pieces. Ector hadn’t deserved that. Neither had Aios, who I’d at least been able to bring back. But had she wanted that? I had no idea how long she’d been dead. Could I have ripped her away from peace? And that act had a ripple effect—ending how many other lives? The eather I’d used to restore Aios’s life drew the dakkais and caused them to swarm those fighting in the courtyard.

Now, dozens of ceeren had died—were murdered—for me. And for what? This wouldn’t stave off the Ascension. It was only a reprieve.

Instead of being rushed toward the end, I was now inching toward it. But it was still coming. There was no stopping that. Just like there’d been no changing what had been done to Ector. Or to the ceeren and countless others.

“I don’t want anyone dying for me,” I choked out.

“You do not have a choice,” Kolis stated. “And if you are who you say you are, you should know that.”

I flinched at the sickening truth of his words. Sotoria had never had a choice from the moment Kolis saw her collecting flowers along the Cliffs of Sorrow. And I’d never had a choice from the very second Roderick Mierel made his desperate bargain with the true Primal of Life to save his dying kingdom.

It wasn’t fair.

It never had been.

Rage and panic swiftly swelled inside me, but I wasn’t sure it was entirely mine. My fingers curled into the sand as my heart rate sped up. Raw, jagged emotions lodged in my chest and throat. I pushed to my feet, my breath coming in short, too-quick pants. And turned to Kolis.

The false King of Gods looked down at me, a curious pinch to his features. The wind lifted the flaxen strands of his hair, sending them against high, arched cheekbones. Golden smudges of eather snaked through the bronze flesh of his bare chest. There was no evidence of his battle with Ash. He was completely healed.

I spared a glance around us. We weren’t alone. Others stood several feet back in the shadows of leafy palms. I only saw them because their shadowstone blades glinted in the moonlight. I didn’t know if they were Kolis’s guards or Phanos’s, but they had weapons, and that was all that mattered.

“She had fewer freckles than you, and her face was shaped more like a heart. The hair isn’t right. Hers was like…like a polished garnet in the sun.” Kolis’s voice was soft, almost childlike in its awe, but his words slithered along the sand and brushed against my skin. “But if I look hard enough…if I let myself see, I do see her in you.”

I reacted.

There was no hesitation. No thought. I took off, darting past him and running hard and fast, my feet kicking up sand as the material of the soaked gown clung to my skin. I ran straight for the guards.

Surprise flashed across the face of a pale-skinned guard, his blue-green eyes luminous with eather widening a second before I slammed my palm into his chest. The god grunted, stumbling back as I reached for the hilt of his short sword.

“Fuck,” he gasped, reaching for me when I yanked the blade from its sheath.

I’d caught him off guard. I was simply quicker than he was. I jabbed the elbow of my other arm out, catching him under the jaw and snapping his head back.

“Do not touch her,” Kolis ordered as another grabbed for me. “Ever.”

The other guard froze.

Spinning toward the false King, I firmed my grip on the cool iron hilt the shadowstone blade had been forged to.

“Leave us,” he instructed. “Now.”

I didn’t dare look away from Kolis to see if the guards listened to him. I could only imagine that they had, which suited me just fine.

Kolis and I stared at each other in silence while I willed my racing heart to slow. I needed to be calm, careful, and purposeful. Because even though Kolis questioned what I claimed about Sotoria, he believed deep down. That was why he’d shaken so hard when he held me, and it created the awe in his voice that I’d heard only moments earlier.

That all meant he was vulnerable to me—only me—and this was my chance. Possibly the only one I’d get to end this.

“I expected you to run from me,” Kolis remarked. “That’s what she would’ve done. She always ran.”

“Not always,” I said, remembering what I’d learned about Sotoria. She may have run in the beginning, but that changed.

Laces of golden eather swirled faster across his chest. “You’re right.” His chin lifted. A heartbeat passed. “Put the sword down.”

That would not happen. “Make me.”

“Come now,” he said with a low chuckle, his wide mouth curling into a mockery of a smile that bordered on patronizing. He started toward me, the wind off the sea tugging at his linen pants. “What do you think you’re going to do with that?”

Waiting until he was within reach of the blade, I showed him exactly what I could do. I thrust out with the shadowstone sword, aiming straight for the bastard’s heart.

Kolis’s eyes widened, and his brows lifted, creasing the skin of his forehead. The stunned look on his face was comical. It was as if he couldn’t believe that I dared to do such a thing. I would’ve laughed, but he was a Primal.

And he was fast, his reflexes as insane as Ash’s. But like with the guard, I had the element of surprise. Kolis didn’t really believe I would attack, which cost him a fraction of a second.

The shadowstone blade pierced his skin, and my lips split in a savage grin.

The second the sword sank into his chest, he knocked the hilt from my grasp with such jarring force that I lost my balance in the unforgiving sand and fell to one knee.

The sword vibrated where it was partially lodged in his chest, a half an inch—if that—to the right of his heart.

Son of a bitch.

Shimmery blood trickled down Kolis’s chest as he gripped the sword’s hilt, tearing it free. The very moment the blade was out of his body, the damn wound immediately stopped bleeding.

Thick, dark clouds raced over the once-calm sky, blotting out the stars and moon. A stuttered heartbeat passed.

Lightning suddenly streaked above and energy swamped the air, slithering over my skin and causing the embers in my chest to flare. The weight of the soaking power was oppressive, threatening to push me into the ground.

Heart thundering, my head jerked up. Fury was etched into every line of Kolis’s face and set the hard jut of his jaw. The veins in his cheeks lit up with golden-tinged eather. The embers in my chest responded, beginning to thrum wildly as the Primal essence turned his eyes into silver pools with flecks of gold.

“That is the second time tonight I’ve had a sword pierce my flesh.” Light pulsed from his hand, and the shadowstone sword he held evaporated into nothing, not even dust. “I did not appreciate it before, and that has not changed.”

My stomach hollowed as I shot to my feet. I’d stabbed Ash more than once and threatened to do so again too many times to count, but I’d never been afraid of him. Not even when he went full Primal on me in the Dying Woods after I accidentally hit him with a bolt of eather.

But I was afraid of Kolis.

I tried to swallow, but my throat seized. I took a step back.

Kolis swiped a hand over his chest and looked down at his blood-smeared palm. He tilted his head and lowered his hand. “That was very unwise.”

“It was,” I rasped. “I probably should’ve aimed for the head.”

His gold-flecked silver eyes went flat. Absolutely dead.

I did the only sensible thing. Pivoting, I ran. This time, no guards stood in the shadows of the sweeping palms. My arms and legs pumped—

Kolis caught my hair in a fist, jerking my entire body back. Fiery pain erupted in my scalp as my feet slipped. I landed on my knees again. Knowing this put me at a dangerous disadvantage, I attempted to regain my footing while he dragged me through the sand.

Kolis hauled me up and whipped me around. “Now that, I am more accustomed to.” He yanked my head back.

I gasped as pain traveled from my scalp down my spine. Grabbing hold of his arm, I tried to loosen the tension.

“The running-away part, in case you’re wondering what I meant.”

A tiny part buried deep inside me knew this was one of the moments I needed to keep my mouth shut and think before I did anything. Not only for my life but also the entirety of the mortal realm.

But I refused to cower before him. She refused to do it, no matter the cost. No matter how foolish it was. I was not weak, and I’d been wrong when I first heard the legend of Sotoria. She was not weak either.

“That sounds like something to be proud of,” I spat, bringing my knee up fast and hard.

I’d missed his heart before, but I did not miss now.

My knee slammed into his groin. A roar of pain erupted from Kolis, and his arm cut through the air—

Agony exploded in my jaw and cheek. A metallic taste immediately filled my mouth. I went down, catching myself a second before I face-planted in the sand. I didn’t even know what part of him had hit me. His arm? A fist? Whatever it was had my ears ringing. For a moment, the pain stunned me enough that I feared it was something Ash could feel if he was conscious.

Rocking back onto my knees, I breathed through the pain until the initial brutal shock of it lessened. I spat a mouthful of blood onto the sand, shocked that a tooth hadn’t come flying out with it.

 “Godsdamn it,” Kolis snarled. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.” The white linen of his pants edged into my vision. “Are you all right?”

A spasm ran through me. He sounded…gods, he sounded genuinely concerned, and that sent a chill down my spine. “What do you think?”

“I told you not to push me,” he reasoned, the sound of his breaths sharp and short. “But you’re determined to make me into the villain.”

“Make you a villain?” A wet laugh left me as I pushed to my feet. I lifted my throbbing head. “You’re already that.”

“I never…” Kolis’s eyes tracked the blood running down my chin, and he flinched. The fucker actually flinched at the sight of the blood he’d drawn. “I never wanted to be that.”

“My gods,” I whispered. “You’re unhinged.”

In the moonlight, his cheeks deepened in color. “If so, then I am only what my brother made me,” he snarled.

“Is there anything you don’t blame your brother for?” I snapped.

Kolis shot forward so fast I sucked in a stuttered breath and jerked back a step. And I hated that I’d retreated, that I’d given him even an inch.

He halted, his chest rising and falling rapidly. A moment passed, then another. It was clear to me that he was keeping himself in check. Barely. “This is not what I want—us fighting.”

“I don’t care what you want!” I shot back, my stomach twisting. I wasn’t exactly sure that had only been me who’d yelled the words.

His hands fisted at his sides. “Do not push me, so’lis.”

So’lis? I had no idea what that meant, but I thought Sotoria might because her rage was palpable, and it was most definitely her that screamed what came out of my mouth next. “Fuck you!”

 I didn’t see him move before I felt his grip at my throat. My hands flew to his. I pried at his fingers, but it was no use. His fingertips pressed in, making it difficult to breathe.

“I warned you not to push me,” Kolis accused, his nostrils flaring. “Yet you do exactly that and more.”

Ignoring the fluttering panic in my chest, I met and held his stare.

“I think you’ve spent too much time with my nephew.” Kolis smirked. “And I saw him give me that very same look tonight. I’m sure I will see it again soon enough.”

“You touch him, and I—” I forced out the words amid gasps for air.

“You will do what?” Kolis cut in, faint wisps of eather beginning to stir in his eyes as his grip got even tighter. “What will you do for him? Because I saw what he’d do for you. He’d kill his brethren. Attack me. Start a war.”

Some level of common sense returned, warning me that I needed to be smart when it came to Ash. It took no leap of logic to know that if Kolis suspected I was in love with his nephew, he would approach it as Sotoria being in love with him, and that wouldn’t end well.

The image of the dagger rising and plunging flashed before me. I could still hear the wet, fleshy sounds.

My heart raced with fear—potent, numbing terror. Ash wasn’t safe right now. He’d been weakened, and because of me, gravely injured.

“What?” Kolis demanded, his fingers digging into the bite he’d left behind as he lifted me onto my tiptoes. “What will you do for him that you will not do for me?”

“Just about anything you can think of, but that has nothing to do with him. At the end of the day, I couldn’t care less about him.” I forced out words that couldn’t be more untrue. My chest felt as if it were shrinking with each passing second. Kolis’s grip tightened, likely bruising, and I choked. “I would do anything for literally anyone else—a random guard, another Primal, a corpse, a piece of grass…” I wheezed.

“I think I get the picture.” His lip curled. One fang appeared. “And I also think you’re lying.”

Alarm quickened my pulse. I realized I needed to distract him from thoughts of Ash, and the only way I knew how to do that was to direct his attention to me completely. “And I think you…I think you hit like a wanna-be Primal of Life.”

Kolis’s laughter filled the air like a hiss as he hauled me against his chest. The contact of his flesh against the too-thin gown sent a shudder of revulsion through me. “You are so incredibly foolish and reckless. Too bold and entirely too mouthy.”

“You…”—I struggled for breath—“forgot one…thing.”

“And what is that?” he asked. “Disrespectful?”

“Sure, but…I’m also soon…to be dead,” I wheezed.

He raised a golden brow. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” I croaked. “Since you’re killing me…again.”

For a moment, Kolis didn’t move. He’d gone completely still. Then his gaze dropped to where he had me by the throat. His eyes widened in surprise. It was almost as if he’d had no idea he was choking me. He shoved me away from him.

Stumbling back, I barely managed to keep my balance. I bent at the waist, hands on my knees while I dragged in deep mouthfuls of salty air. A tremor coursed through me, and I swallowed, wincing at the soreness in my throat.

I could practically feel the bruises forming on the skin of my neck, but I learned something then. I laughed, the sound like nails against stone. It hurt, but as sick and twisted as it was, his love of Sotoria was a weakness in more ways than one.

“This conversation is over,” Kolis said. Another laugh almost snuck free. He thought this was a conversation? “We are going home, and once you’ve calmed down, we will talk then.”

“Home?” Slowly, I straightened, my disbelief, anger, and maybe a little of Sotoria’s, getting the better of me. “Go fuck yourself, you nightmarish piece of—” I tensed, seeing his hand move this time, knowing it would hurt.

The blow never landed.

Kolis gripped my chin, and my heart stuttered. It wasn’t his hold. The press of his fingers was firm but nowhere near as bruising as it had been on my throat. Still, what I saw caused my heart to continue skipping beats.

Primal essence sparked and ignited, spilling into the air around him. A bright, golden glow rose, arcing from his back like wings. The swirls of eather spread so rapidly over his flesh that, for a moment, he became as he had been when battling Ash: blinding, golden light and spitting eather that stung my skin.

But the light faded quickly, showing that his skin had thinned to the point where the bones of his arm were visible. A knot of dread twisted in my stomach as I lifted my gaze. I didn’t want to see, but I couldn’t stop from looking.

I saw the dull sheen of his cheekbones. His jawbone. The bones of his arm. And his eyes… They were just sockets filled with pools of black, swirling nothingness.

Kolis hadn’t looked like this when he battled Ash, but I knew instantly that this was what the true Primal embers of death looked like.

And it was terrifying.

The wings of eather lifted and stretched behind him, then disappeared into golden smoke. The aura in his veins faded as his skin thickened, hiding what he truly looked like. “I do hope you are far more aware and grateful of the grace I’ve shown you than Nyktos was.”

“Grace?” I exclaimed. “You—”

 The whirling abyss of nothingness that had been his eyes flashed to silver and gold. “You will not speak.”

My body went rigid, the four words thundering through me. An aching pulse shot through my jaw, and my mouth clamped shut.

“You will not talk back,” Kolis said, and his voice was everywhere, both outside and inside of me. “Nor will you fight me.”

My muscles obeyed him instantly. I lowered my hands to my sides. What I’d feared in the ruined chamber as I held the dagger to my throat had come to fruition. He was using compulsion.

“That is much better.” Kolis smiled and drew me toward him with just the curl of his arm. He lowered his head, and his mouth was just an inch from mine when he spoke next. “Much, much better.”

I felt his hand on my lower back and then his chest against mine. My heart lurched. I willed my mouth to open. Wished for my arms and legs to move, but nothing happened. All I could do was stand there. He could do anything to me. Fear blossomed at the loss of control.

“There is something you need to understand, whether you’ve spoken the truth of who you are or not.” One by one, he lifted all his fingers but his thumb. “If anyone dared to speak to me as you have, I would have their flesh flayed from their bodies and fed to them.”

Kolis wiped at the blood under my lower lip and then lifted his hand to his mouth.

I was going to be sick.

Hopefully, if I did vomit, I would do it in his fucking face.

He sucked on his thumb, drawing the blood into his mouth. The eather brightened in his eyes. “You saw what happened to Nyktos for daring to strike me.” His head tilted, sending a lock of gold hair against a cheek. “So, if it turns out you are not my graeca, and this is some sort of elaborate ploy? There will be no limit to the atrocities visited upon you and everyone you’ve ever cared about before I take the embers of life.” His lips grazed mine as they curved into a smile. “That, I promise you.”