“Gods,” she grunted, spitting out a mouthful of blood and teeth. “That was uncalled for.”
The energy ramped up, and I shattered the crown, bits of rubies and diamonds falling to the floor. I knelt, grasping the back of her hair. Shadow and light swirled under my skin as she met my stare. “Your reign has come to an end.”
“I chose Malec,” Isbeth said, gripping my arm, her touch burning. “It had to be him because I couldn’t kill you. I wouldn’t because I love you,” she whispered, slamming her hand into my chest.
The eather burned straight through me, overwhelming my control as it lifted me from my feet and sent me flying backward. Every single nerve ending screamed out in pain as the eather shot through me. It was like being struck by lightning, robbing my breath and stealing muscle control. I knew I was falling, but I could do nothing to soften the impact.
“Poppy!” Casteel shouted.
Every bone in my body shook as I hit the floor. Bright lights flashed behind my eyes as I rolled to my side. The breath I took scorched my lungs. My ribs protested the movement as I tried to sit up. The ache in my back spread into my shoulders, and all the while, those lights kept flashing, allowing me only glimpses of the chaos around me. Reaver was down, shimmery lights sparking from him as he attempted to shake off the dakkais. Malik lay with one arm over Millicent as if he sought to shield her with his last breath. Not a single inch of their bodies wasn’t scorched or torn up. No more draken flew, and Kieran, he yelled my name, too as the lights flashed—
Suddenly, there was no light. No color or sound.
Then, a speck of silver throbbed and expanded, growing brighter, and in that light was her. Hair, the color of moonlight, fell over shoulders in a cascading mass of tangled curls and waves. A luminous sheen nearly masked the freckles across the nose and cheek and gave the skin a silvery, pearlescent glow. But I recognized her from the dreams that weren’t dreams. Her eyes opened, and I saw they were the color of spring grass—green laced with bright, luminous eather.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” she whispered, but there were no blood tears now. Acidic, icy-hot anger fell upon me. An endless fury I had never felt before, could never experience because it had grown for decades. Centuries.
My entire body spasmed as I remembered what Reaver had said—what Vikter had told Tawny. The beginning verse of the prophecy. Born of mortal flesh, a great primal power rises as the heir to the lands and seas, to the skies and all the realms. A shadow in the ember, a light in the flame, to become a fire in the flesh…
To speak her name is to bring the stars from the skies and topple the mountains into the sea…
Her name was power, but only when spoken by the one born as she, and of a great primal power.
“He told me you already knew her name,” Tawny had said.
She stared back at me, and I saw us when I’d been floating in that nothingness, drifting until she had appeared to me. Until she’d said, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” When she told me that I’d always had the power in me.
But those weren’t the only words she’d spoken to me. I now remembered. She had told me her name. She had begged me to wake her.
How could the Consort be so powerful?
Because she was no Consort.
She held my stare and smiled, and I…I understood. She, too, had been waiting.
I opened my eyes, and through the smoke and mist, I saw Casteel and Kieran surrounded by dakkais. By Revenants. They closed in on them as I planted my palms against the stone, and my hands sank into the rock as I threw my head back and screamed the name. Not that of the King of Gods, but the Queen of Gods.
The true Primal of Life.
Chapter 49
Isbeth’s dark eyes went wide as they locked onto mine. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what she said. Casteel whipped around, blood spraying into the air as a bolt of lightning struck the Temple—struck me.
Casteel’s pain and Kieran’s fear slammed into me as my armor and boots exploded from me. My clothing ripped as every cell in my body lit up, and the pain—it was all-consuming. It would kill me. It would kill them.
My lungs seized.
My heart stuttered.
Blood pooled in my mouth. Teeth loosened, and two fell from my open mouth. The Temple didn’t tremble. It was the realm that shook violently. Weight settled in my shoulder blades, entrenching itself deeply, burrowing all the way to where the eather throbbed and swirled. My blood cooled and then heated. A hum hit my bones and spread to my muscles. My skin vibrated. A crack of deafening thunder rolled overhead. The air charged, and my body…changed. It started with a rumble inside me and then became a roar, like the sound of thousands of horses racing toward me, but no horse or soldier stood. It grew and grew as I pushed myself onto my now-bare feet. All over my hands and arms, splotches of shadow and light churned inside my skin. I lifted my eyes, seeing a strange shadow before me—the outline of my head and my shoulders and two…wings. Just like the statues guarding the city of Dalos that had once protected the Primals within. Except these were made of eather, a swirling mass of light and darkness. My entire form was suddenly nothing more than crackling, flaming silver light and endless shadows.