“And your response wasn’t a declaration of innocence,” I retorted. Penellaphe’s eyes flared wide.
“No.” His voice had dropped, but it still somehow thundered through me. “It was not.”
“Then don’t do it,” I snapped. “It’s rude.”
Nyktos’s mouth opened, likely to point out that I was the last person who should speak on rude behavior.
“You have never been just a mortal, Seraphena.” Holland stepped in smoothly, just as he’d done dozens of times in the past whenever I’d descended into a rant spiral. “You are the possibility of a future for all.”
He’d said a version of that before during training, but it took on a whole different meaning now. “But I haven’t completed any Culling, and you just said that I would…” Closing my eyes, I didn’t finish the sentence.
Everyone here knew what had been said.
Breathe in. My mortal body and mind wouldn’t be able to handle the power of the embers once I began the Ascension. The only chance I had of surviving wasn’t even a hope. Hold. Because it required the blood of the Primal that one of the embers of life belonged to—that and sheer will powered by love.
The love of the Primal I’d spent the entirety of my life planning to kill. It didn’t matter that I’d believed it was the only way to save my kingdom.
The irony of it all made me want to laugh, except I was going to die. Likely in less than five months and before I turned twenty-one, taking the last true embers of life with me. The mortal realm would be hit first and the hardest. Eventually, the Rot would spread beyond the Shadowlands to all of Iliseeum.
I exhaled long and slow, just like Holland had taught me many years ago, when everything became too heavy, too much, and the weight of it all choked the air from me. My impending death wasn’t something new. I’d always known. Whether I failed or succeeded when it came to fulfilling my destiny, I knew I would die in the process.
But it felt different now.
I’d finally had a taste of being something other than a means to an end, a weapon to be used and then discarded. I’d had a taste of realness. I’d finally felt like a fully formed person, not a specter soaked in blood. Not a liar and a monster who could kill without all that much remorse.
But that was who I was underneath it all, and Nyktos now knew that, too. There was no more hiding that truth—or any truths.
My lungs started to burn as tiny bursts of light danced across my vision. The breathing exercises weren’t working. A tremor hit my hands, and panic unfurled in my chest. There was no air—
Fingertips touched my cheek. Warm fingertips. My eyes flew open, locking on features so finely pieced together I should’ve known the first time I saw him that he was more than a god. His touch startled me, not only because it was warm instead of shockingly cold as it had been before he took my blood into him, but because I still wasn’t used to touching. I wasn’t sure I ever would be when it had always been so rare that anyone allowed their skin to contact mine.
But he touched me. After everything, Nyktos touched me.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice low.
My tongue was heavy and useless, having nothing to do with my too-tight chest and everything to do with his concern. I didn’t want it. Not now. It was wrong on so many different levels.
Nyktos stepped in close, lowering his head until his lips were mere inches from mine. A shiver followed his hand as he curled his fingers around the nape of my neck. His thumb gently pressed against my wildly thrumming pulse. He tilted my head as if lining up our mouths for a kiss as he’d done in his office before meeting with Holland and Penellaphe. But that would never happen again. He’d told me that himself.
“Breathe,” Nyktos whispered.
It was as if he’d compelled the very air itself to enter my body, and it tasted of his scent—citrus and fresh air. The darts of lights cleared, and my lungs expanded with breath. The shaking continued in my hands as his thumb swept across my pulse, now racing for entirely different reasons. He stood so close to me that there was no stopping the flood of memories—the feel of his mouth against my throat, and his hands on my bare skin. The pain-tinged pleasure of his bite as he fed from me. Him moving inside me, creating the kind of pleasure that wouldn’t be forgotten and warmed my blood even now.
I’d been Nyktos’s first.
And he…he would be my last, no matter what happened from this point forward.
Sorrow crept in, cooling my heated blood and settling in my chest with a different, thicker kind of pressure. At least I no longer felt as if I couldn’t catch my breath.