“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…
My gaze flicked up to where Nyktos stood close behind the man.
Too close.
He was practically breathing down the man’s neck. “How does this charm work?”
“It will prevent her from being taken against her will from wherever the charm was placed,” he explained, tilting his head as he finished another line. The weathered lines of his sunbaked face added a rugged handsomeness to his features. “If anyone attempts it, the charm will retaliate.”
I raised a brow. “With what?”
“With a jolt of energy as painful as taking a direct hit of eather to the chest,” he said. “It’d knock even a Primal on their ass and keep knocking them down if they got up and tried again.”
“Nice.”
Bright blue eyes met mine as he grinned.
“And how did you learn of this charm?” Nyktos pressed.
“I saw it done once by a god from the Thyia Plains,” he shared, referencing the Primal Keella’s Court. “But I didn’t know what they were doing for the mortal. Penellaphe knew what the letters meant and how they worked. That each letter forms a symbol of protection, one powered by essence.”
I wondered if they were like the wards Nyktos had put in place to protect my family.
Then it struck me that it could be someone like this man, another viktor, who had given my family the knowledge of how to kill a Primal—something no mere mortal should ever know. It made sense that perhaps a member of my family had been guided by one aware of their purpose.
“The charm only prevents you from being taken.” He lowered my right arm to my lap and then picked up my left one. “And the only way the charm can be nullified is if you give your permission.”
I nodded, glancing from Nyktos to where Holland stood several feet away with his back to us, almost as if he were pretending to be unaware of what was going on, even though this must have been the reason he and Penellaphe had arrived with this man.
“Thank you for doing this, Ward,” I said, remembering hearing Penellaphe call him that when they first showed up.