“I don’t think that piece of knowledge will help change Sera’s opinion of them,” Holland said wryly.
Nyktos huffed out a dry laugh.
“No, I imagine not.” Penellaphe smiled, but it faded quickly. “Many gods and mortals have been born without hearing or seeing even one prophecy or vision, but they were far more common at one time.”
“The vision you had?” I asked. “Do you know which Ancient dreamt it?”
She shook her head. “That is not known to those who receive them.”
Well, of course not. But it didn’t matter since the Ancients had entered Arcadia ages ago. “Prophecies aside, I Ascended Bele when I brought her back to life.” Bele wasn’t a Primal—at least not technically. Her brown eyes had turned the silver of a Primal, and the gods here in the Shadowlands believed that she would now be more powerful, but none knew exactly what it all meant. “That was felt, right?”
“It was,” Penellaphe confirmed. “It wasn’t as strong as when a Primal enters Arcadia, and the Fates raise another to take their place, but every god and Primal would’ve felt the shift of energy that occurred. Especially Hanan.” Worry pinched her brow. As the Primal of the Hunt and Divine Justice, Hanan oversaw the Court that Bele had been born into. “He will know that another has risen to a power that could challenge his.”
“But there is nothing that can be done about that.” Nyktos crossed his arms over his chest.
“No,” Penellaphe agreed softly. “There is not.”
“Only those present when you brought her back know you Ascended Bele.” Nyktos looked at me. “Neither Hanan nor any other Primal knows the full extent of what my father did when he placed the embers of life in the Mierel bloodline.”
A whoosh went through my stomach at the reminder of the even bigger shock and blow that had been dealt. I didn’t know how to come to terms with learning that I’d lived countless lives that I couldn’t remember. That I had been Sotoria, the object of Kolis’s love—his obsession—and the very thing that had started all of this.
I’d thought the stories of the mortal girl who’d been so frightened upon seeing a being from Iliseeum that she had fallen from the Cliffs of Sorrow were just some bizarre legend. But she’d been real. And Kolis had been the one who’d scared her so badly.
How could I be her? I ran from no one and nothing—well, except serpents. But I was a fighter. A—
“You are a warrior, Seraphena,” Holland had said. “You always have been. Just like she learned to become.”
Gods.
I pressed my fingers into my temple. I knew Eythos and Keella, the Primal of Rebirth, had done what they believed best. They’d captured Sotoria’s soul before it passed to the Vale, preventing Kolis from bringing her back to life. Their actions had thus started a cycle of rebirth that had ended with my birth. But it felt like another violation. Another choice stripped away from her. Not me. We might have the same soul, but I wasn’t her. I was…
You are just a vessel that would be empty if not for the ember of life you carry within you.
Nyktos’s words had been harsh when he’d spoken them, but they were the truth. From birth, I had been nothing more than a blank canvas primed to become whatever the Primal of Death desired, or to be used in whatever manner my mother saw fit.
I sat on the edge of the dais, fighting the pressure as it threatened to return to my chest. “I saw Kolis not that long ago.”
Nyktos’s head jerked toward me.
I cleared my throat, unable to remember if I had told him this or not. “I was in the audience when Kolis arrived at the Sun Temple for the Rite. I was in the back and had my face covered, but I swear he looked directly at me.” I forced a swallow. “Do I look like her? Like Sotoria?”
Penellaphe’s hand went to the collar of her taupe gown. “If Kolis had seen you and you’d looked like Sotoria, he would’ve taken you right then.”
The ragged breath I exhaled left a misty cloud behind as a sudden bone-deep chill entered the chamber. My gaze shot to Nyktos.
His skin had thinned, and deep, dark shadows blossomed beneath his flesh, reminding me of how he’d appeared in his true form. His skin had been a kaleidoscope of midnight and moonlight, his wings much like a draken’s but made of a solid mass of eather—power.
He looked like he was about to go full Primal again. “Sotoria didn’t belong to him then, and Seraphena doesn’t belong to him now.”