Cheeks warming, I realized he was looking at the bruises. I stiffened. “As if you care.”
“You have no idea what I care about or don’t.” His jaw tightened as he looked at the closed doors.
“You’re right. And, frankly, I don’t care.”
“You need to.” A moment later, he waved his hand, and a pair of black leather pants appeared out of thin air, encasing his legs.
Reluctant jealousy rose. If I had that talent, I’d conjure something that constituted clothing. I started to ask him to do that for me but realized wearing something that didn’t run the risk of flashing a nipple would raise questions.
“We likely do not have long for this conversation,” he continued. “So, I need you to understand that I’m not here to betray Nyktos or you—especially you. After all, I have saved your life before. More than once.”
“What?” I scoffed. “You’re going to have to refresh my memory—” I cut myself off. Attes had stopped Kolis when he was draining my blood to get at the embers. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten that. My anger at Attes’s betrayal had sort of blocked out that little fact. “You intervened when Kolis was feeding on me. I wouldn’t go as far as to say you saved my life.”
A quick grin returned to Attes’s lips. “But that wasn’t the first time.”
A frown tugged at my brows, then they lifted as I finally saw—or acknowledged—what had been right in front of me, having flown in through the window. “That was you? The hawk in the Dying Woods?”
A slight grin appeared. “It was.”
As Attes’s confirmation landed like a fist to the chest, my mind suddenly blanked for several seconds. And then I remembered what Ash had said about hawks—that they were a symbol that belonged to his father, along with the wolf. Kolis used the same representations, except his were golden, while… “Eythos’s hawks were silver,” I murmured.
Attes frowned. “They were.”
I blinked. “Did Eythos shift forms?”
“He did. All Primals can.”
“And was his a hawk?” I surmised. “Or a wolf?”
“A wolf,” he confirmed. “Though, he always wished to fly with the hawks.”
I started to ask why he hadn’t chosen to take the form of the bird of prey, then, but did that matter? No. “And Kolis? What does he shift into?”
“A hawk,” he said with a wry twist of his lips.
I blinked. Why in the realm would Eythos and Kolis—nope. Not important. “If that was you in the woods that night, why didn’t—？” I almost said “Ash” again but using the name only a few called him by in front of Attes didn’t feel right. “Why didn’t Nyktos know you were there?”
“Primals cannot sense one another when we’re in our nota forms—when we take the shape of the animal we find ourselves most connected to,” he explained. “Just as Kolis didn’t sense him in his wolf form.”
And I hadn’t felt Attes until he shifted. “Why?”
His bare grin returned. “Because when we’re in our nota forms, it is us but…not.”
Well, that just explained everything, didn’t it?
“Seeing you in the Dying Woods that night was luck. I was snooping when I came across you there.” The light glinted off the silver cuff encircling his biceps as he rubbed a hand over his chin. “I’m half-afraid to ask what you were doing.”
I wasn’t going to get into that. “What about in the Red Woods? Before then?”
“That wasn’t me, but it was one of my many unique hawks. I felt its death and then sensed it come back to life. That was how I knew Nyktos had brought you to the Shadowlands.”
My thoughts raced as I ended up asking probably the least important question. “What do you mean by unique hawks?”
“They’re what we call a chora. They’re basically an extension of the Primal that takes the nota shape. They are created from our blood and are very much alive,” he said, his words becoming draped in a shroud of sorrow. “Iliseeum used to be full of chora. It was once a tradition, a way to honor our nota, as was the Primal notam—a bond formed with those we take the shape of. It was common when Eythos reigned, but impossible under Kolis. Most of the Primals have lost all of theirs, but the chora that still exist can do so for centuries and longer, even if the Primal they are bonded to enters Arcadia.”
Well, that was all kinds of weird. “So, this is yet another thing that has died out with Kolis?” My head jerked to the side. “How you’ve all gone along with what Kolis has done is beyond me.”
Attes’s body locked into place, tensing like a coiled spring. “With Eythos’s death, and Nyktos having no Primal embers of life, we had no choice.”
No choice? I almost laughed. If my often-irrational ass could realize there was always a choice, there was no excuse for the Primals not to have come to that conclusion after living for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Something Attes had said moments before came back to me as I smoothed my hands over my hips. “Wait a minute. This chora of yours I saw in the Red Woods, it was doing the snooping for you?”
“It’s not an it, Seraphena. It’s a hawk, flesh and blood, which you should know.”
“Whatever.” My patience was thinning. “Exactly why were you snooping before you even met me?”
“Because I already knew of your existence.” Attes’s gaze locked with mine. “I’ve known longer than either Nyktos or Kolis.”
I…I was at a loss for what to say.
“I knew what Eythos did before Kolis or Nyktos figured it out. Eythos and I were brothers in a way that he and Kolis never were. Friends,” he shared, his voice changing. It now carried the bittersweetness of the pain and joy of knowing and then losing someone. “And I was one of the few entrusted with the knowledge of what Eythos did.”
Backing up, I sat on the edge of the divan. Ash believed that Attes had been testing me that day in the study at the House of Haides, trying to feed into my emotions. And Ash became concerned, because when it didn’t work, he knew the Primal of War and Accord would realize something was up. But if Attes spoke the truth now, he’d actually been testing how strong the embers had become.
If he was speaking the truth.
His knowledge of what Eythos did explained why he’d been so quick to believe my claim regarding Sotoria. He must have known.
I looked up at him, finding the Primal watching me closely. He made sense, but I only trusted a small handful of people, and he wasn’t anywhere near that list.
“If you knew about the embers, why were you so surprised when I brought Thad back?” I asked.
“Honestly?”
“No, tell me a lie,” I retorted.
Attes grinned. “Because I have not seen life restored—real life, with my own eyes—since Eythos. But more than that? I never thought his plan would work.” A bit of wonder seeped into his tone. “Restoring life to a hawk is one thing, but a draken?” His eyes wandered upward as he shook his head. After a moment, he exhaled softly, and his gaze returned to mine. There was a sense of wonder in his expression. “Eythos was under the impression that the embers would protect you and maybe give you some ability to restore life, but not to that extent. Even before the embers he stole from Eythos died out, Kolis couldn’t bring a draken back.”