Then he slipped into his true form and hovered above where the throne had been, his flesh becoming a continuous swirl of midnight and thin, throbbing streaks of eather. The fresh, citrusy scent that was all his reached me, comforted me.
Ash was terrifying, his beauty vicious and breathtaking in both forms. And he was mine.
“Kolis!” Ash roared, his voice a thunderstorm reverberating through the air.
Without warning, a burst of light cut through the night sky, slamming into the floor before Ash as heat flared in my chest. The funnel of light burned brightly, momentarily blinding me. When my vision returned, I saw…
A crown of ruby antlers gleaming in the moonlight.
Another Primal had arrived.
Hanan, the dark-haired, pale, and angular-featured Primal God of the Hunt and Divine Justice, stood before Ash. He held a spear made of some sort of dull white material that reminded me of bone in his right hand.
“Walk away, Nyktos.” Hanan’s spear began glowing from within. “Before it’s too late,” he warned. But I heard the tremor in the Primal’s voice, he who’d sent the Cimmerian to retrieve Bele instead of coming to the Shadowlands himself. I heard the fear.
Hanan may be a Primal, but he was also a coward.
“Before it’s too late?” Ash’s voice boomed, the power of it leveling what remained of the chamber walls. “It’s already too late.”
White light poured from Hanan as he rose into the air, drawing his arm back. Eather crackled from his spear right before he threw it. My breath caught—
Ash laughed. He laughed as his wings swept out and stretched wide, a violent mass of shadows and moonlight. Power sparked from the splayed fingers of the hand he lifted, and a bolt of stunning light erupted from his palm, hitting the spear in midair. A clap of thunder sounded just as light erupted in every direction.
Then Ash was in front of the Primal, grabbing him by the back of the head. He’d moved so quickly I didn’t see his other hand until Hanan screamed, and I saw Ash jerk his arm back. A bloody, pulsing mass smacked the floor.
Ash lifted Hanan into the air, and someone shouted. I thought it might have been Attes.
Seemingly oblivious to it all, Kolis finally stopped rocking and lifted his head.
Ash gripped the Primal under the jaw, tearing— My lips parted when Ash tore Hanan’s head from his shoulders.
Something fell, and eather pulsed from Ash’s hand.
The Primal embers of life hummed even more intensely in my chest, sending warmth to my hands. I knew what that meant, even before the crown clanged off the golden tile.
Ash had killed another Primal.
Was that how it was done? Ripping out the heart and destroying the head? It was a grotesque and barbaric method.
And disturbingly hot.
The crown of ruby antlers began vibrating as I heard a distant rumble. Beneath it, the tile split open, and the ground started to shake. White light appeared from within the ruby crown, bleeding out until the antlers could no longer be seen. The noise continued, coming from the sky and below, shaking even Kolis. Stone cracked in every direction. The ground outside the ruins of the chamber groaned and then split open. Palm trees shuddered and slid sideways, falling into the gaping fissure.
Hanan’s crown pulsed and then vanished.
A deafening boom hit the air, and I knew…oh, gods, I knew the sound traveled beyond Dalos. It likely hit every land in Iliseeum and beyond, extending into the mortal realm.
But I also knew that somewhere in the Shadowlands, a new ruler of Sirta had risen as the Goddess of the Hunt. Not because Bele was the only god of Hanan’s Court to have Ascended—and at my hands—but because I felt it in the embers of life.
And I knew Kolis had felt it, too.
The chain connected to the band around my neck clinked off the floor when Kolis lowered me. He braced my head with his hand, an act so unnerving in its tenderness that it seized my attention. My heart stuttered, and my gaze locked with his. Icy air whipped through the cage, sending the golden strands of Kolis’s hair across his face as he laid my cheek against the gold tile. I flinched at the unsettling gentleness of his palm sliding over my skin.
A guttural, inhuman growl shook the cage. “Get your fucking hands off my wife.”
Kolis smirked, and my skin iced over. He rose. “Oh, Nyktos, my boy,” he said in his summer voice, glancing to where Hanan’s crown had last been seen, past where Callum lay in a pool of blood, his fingers twitching. “I see you’ve been hiding how powerful you’ve become.” Kolis looked up at Ash. “I’m impressed.”
“Like I give a fuck,” Ash growled.
“Rude,” Kolis murmured.
I needed to get up. Had to help Ash and fight beside him. Kolis wasn’t Hanan. False Primal of Life or not, he was still the oldest Primal alive. He was incredibly powerful.
I needed to help Ash.
My limbs felt weighed down, almost like they were attached to the tile. I struggled to roll onto my side, the simple act leaving me short of breath.
Kolis sighed loudly as if he were dealing with a petulant child. “Because we’re family, I’m going to give you the grace your father never extended to me. A chance to walk away from this.”
I frowned, and several strands of pale hair fell across my face. Kolis was just going to let Ash leave after killing another Primal? That made no sense.
Until it did.
Kolis couldn’t kill Ash. If he did, the Primal embers of death would transfer back to him. Kolis would no longer be the Primal of Life or the King.
There’d be no King.
It would throw the realm of the gods into chaos.
“You will return to your Court, and if Bele is still there,” Kolis continued, “you will advise her to appear before me and swear fealty.”
In the distance, silver briefly lit the night sky—rolling flames of eather. Then, in the brief light extending along the horizon, I saw two massive, winged beings crash into each other.
Draken.
Oh, gods, was that Nektas? Another? I didn’t even know if Orphine had survived the dakkais attack. I’d seen her fall. I’d witnessed so many fall.
I needed to get up.
“And you will order whatever forces followed you to stand down and leave Dalos’s borders immediately.” In the silence that followed, a muscle in Kolis’s jaw spasmed. “Take this offer, Nyktos.”
Arms trembling from the effort, I managed to lift myself halfway up, but that normally effortless task came at a price. My head swam, and I drew Ash’s attention.
The eather in his eyes crackled as he looked at me, at the surely mangled skin of my throat and the band below Kolis’s bite. He saw the golden gossamer gown I’d been dressed in, and I felt his rage. It fell like icy rain against my skin. I wanted to tell him that I was all right, but my tongue felt too heavy to speak the lie. I wasn’t sure I would be okay.
And I think Ash sensed that.
His chest rose sharply, and his head swung back to Kolis. “I’m going to kill you.”
The false King of Gods tipped his head back and laughed. “Now you’re just being silly.”
Ash moved as fast as an unleashed arrow, streaking forward. He came through the opening in the bars, the swirling shadows around him retracting. The air went utterly stagnant and turned thin just before Ash landed on the cage floor a few feet from Kolis. Tendrils of shadows whipped out from leather-clad legs. His eyes became pools of eather.