“This time?” Ash’s voice dropped to a whisper of such cold death that even I shivered. “That is what you meant to say.”
“No.”
“Do not lie to me.”
“I’m not lying,” I lied.
Shadows spread up his throat, cresting his jaw. “Do you think I don’t know what has been done to you?” The air turned freezing. “What he’s done?”
I locked up as I felt the blood racing from my face. Every muscle had gone rigid, and it had nothing to do with the iciness of the chamber. “No,” I said, and I wasn’t exactly sure who I was saying that to. Him? Me? Both of us? Either way, he couldn’t know. I needed to believe that. Ash only suspected things based on his knowledge of Kolis.
Ash shuddered as he stared down at me. “I’m going to eviscerate him,” he swore in that icy, shadowy whisper that I bet whipped through the Abyss. “I will tear his head from his shoulders and rip him limb from limb, scattering what remains across the realms.”
My brows knitted as something occurred to me. “Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad plan.”
“Then do not argue with me, liessa.” His arms loosened around me, and my rear was once more touching the floor.
I gripped his shoulders. “That’s not what I meant.”
Those smoky wings swept up again. “Do you think I cannot see?”
“I’m thinking that’s a rhetorical question since you obviously can.”
“I can,” he confirmed, rolling his eyes. “I see how he has you dressed.”
I rolled my eyes right back at him.
“I see what state you’re in.”
What state…？ Looking down, I saw that the fragile material of the gown had torn at the neck. By some miracle, my chest wasn’t exposed—well, more exposed than it already had been.
“Do you think I don’t know what it must’ve taken for you to tap into the essence like that?”
“If you ask me one more question that you clearly think you know the answer to…” I muttered.
“To wield it to such an extent, do this to him, and free me?” he continued, ignoring me. “And did you forget that I could feel you? Sense what you were feeling?”
Oh.
Oh, no.
My lips parted as he confirmed my worst fears.
“Every time I was conscious, I felt you. Your pain. Your fear. The panic. The fucking desperation.” The walls rattled as that frosted whisper circled the chamber, falling against the floor like hail and sleet. I knew it wasn’t Nektas or any other draken doing that. “Your anger? I felt it all. Tasted everything you were feeling until I was drowning in it. Until I tore at my flesh to get to you.” His voice cracked then, and so did the wall behind him. “And I could do nothing—fucking nothing—to protect you. To take away any of the horror you were experiencing.”
Pressure clamped down on my chest. Oh, gods, I hadn’t wanted him to feel that—any of it. It was the one thing I’d believed the stasis had prevented. My skin suddenly felt too tight, and I wanted to close my eyes and crawl inside myself. But I couldn’t look away from Ash.
I stared at him, realizing I’d been wrong when I believed I’d seen those Primal embers of death come out in him before. I really hadn’t. Not until now. I’d seen glimpses of them when he killed Tavius’s guards and the gods who came into the Shadowlands for me. I’d seen hints of it when he battled the entombed gods in the Red Woods. And later as he struck the draken, Davon, from the sky and laughed. I’d seen some of it when he killed Hanan and fought Kolis, but I truly saw it now.
Ash didn’t do that freaky turn-to-a-skeleton thing that Kolis did. He didn’t need the dramatics because each word he spoke carried the weight of a thousand cold, empty graves and the promise of endless death in the Abyss.
Once more, I realized there was a good chance Sotoria wasn’t needed. Ash could take out Kolis, but without there being a true Primal of Death? Whether or not Ash took the embers, the balance Kolis had harped about would be upset in ways that would result in unfathomable destruction.
So even though I wanted nothing more than to cave to the pressure and desire to get up and run, putting as much distance between what Ash possibly knew and me, I couldn’t.
This was bigger than me. More important. I had to pull it together because we didn’t have much time. I could feel that, despite doing my level best to ignore it. I counted as I’d done before.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
I lifted a trembling hand from Ash’s shoulder and touched his cheek. Nothing of the golden-bronze flesh was visible now, and his jaw was hard as granite beneath my palm. “I want nothing more than his death,” I said. “But he can’t die. You have to know that, right? This whole time, you had to know he couldn’t be killed. Not by anyone. Not even Sotoria.”
Ash said nothing as the wings behind him thickened, but I knew I was right. He had to know the Primal of Death must always be. Just as the Primal of Life must.
“I know you care about the realms,” I told him. “Even if you didn’t, I do. I care about my sister and Marisol. The people of Lasania, and the rest of the mortal realm. Even my mother.”
His head straightened. “Your mother?” he snarled. “Fuck her.”
My lips twitched, but I stopped myself from smiling. I didn’t think that would help things at the moment. “We need to get out of here, Ash.” I swallowed again, but it did little to end the soreness in my throat. I glanced at Kolis’s still body.
There were many reasons we needed to leave, starting with Ash’s wrath toward his uncle. It was so intense it would lead to nothing but ruin, and if he let himself cave to it, he would regret it. He didn’t think that now, but I knew he would, and I couldn’t let that happen. I refused to allow another regret to stain his soul.
But that wasn’t the only reason.
“We need to get somewhere safe,” I continued. “And you need to take the embers before it’s too late.”
The muscle along his jaw throbbed under my palm. A long, tense moment passed, and then the shadows began to break apart, scattering to disappear beneath his flesh. Something I’d said must have gotten through to him.
“Okay?” I said.
Ash nodded as the shadow wings faded away, but his gaze left mine and returned to Kolis. I thought I heard something then. Footsteps? Before I could look, Ash’s arms clamped down on me. One second, I was sitting on the floor, loosely held in his embrace. The next, I was on my feet, his arms holding me up and close to him. The movement had my stomach turning as his head cut toward the door. A low growl rumbled from his chest.
“Your Majesty?” came a voice it took me a moment to recognize. Elias.
Willing my stomach to stop rolling, I twisted toward the doors as they swung open, one side falling half off damaged hinges.
Elias drew up short, his golden eyes flipping from Kolis to Ash, then to me. “Is she okay?”
All that rage directed toward Kolis shifted to the god in the entranceway. A low rumble of warning came from him. “What did you ask?”
“I mean her no harm,” Elias insisted, stepping back. But based on what I’d seen Ash do in the halls of the sanctuary, I knew that would do the god no good.