“You seem…nervous,” Kolis remarked, his features stoic but his fingers curled inward.
I most definitely was.
The gold flecks in his eyes had stilled. “Why is that?”
My pulse pounded, and my mouth dried. Think, Sera. Think. “I am afraid,” I admitted, my thoughts racing. I could only come up with one thing to say. “A god did this to me before, and it hurt.”
Kolis’s forehead creased as he eyed me.
“Taric,” Callum surmised, his lips pursing as he walked the length of the cage. “Well, I suppose we now know for sure what happened to him when we last learned he was somewhere near or in the Shadowlands.”
Kolis’s mouth tightened. “Taric found you?”
“It wasn’t just him. Cressa and another called Madis were with him,” I said, hoping this delay would allow me to come up with something else to say. “Why did you…？” I glanced at Ione, unsure how much she knew, and then deciding it wasn’t my problem if she wasn’t supposed to know. “Why did you have him searching for the embers if you already knew where they were?”
“Because I didn’t have him searching for them. Obviously,” Kolis said in a slow, deliberate drawl as if explaining a complex idea to a child. “He was supposed to be searching for my graeca.”
His love.
I wasn’t the only one who’d assumed Taric and the others had been searching for that. Even Veses had.
“Did the others feed from you?” Kolis asked.
I shook my head. “No, it was only him. I…I didn’t know yet about who I was, but he seemed to already know it was me when he looked at me. I didn’t think he needed to feed. He just wanted to.”
A muscle twitched in the Primal’s jaw. “So, he fed from you but did not tell either you or Nyktos what he saw?”
“He really didn’t get the chance,” I told him.
Ione raised a brow as she continued staring at the floor.
Kolis’s chin lifted. “Well, we will see if that is true, won’t we?”
My heart lurched, and I swung my head toward Ione.
“It does not need to be painful,” she said, looking up. “Though it is not entirely comfortable. You will be tired afterward and perhaps have a headache, but it should not feel like any unimaginable pain.”
Yeah, well, the problem wasn’t the pain. I could deal with that. Still, I latched on to the excuse. “I can’t go through that again. It was horrible.” A tremor coursed down my spine, and it was more genuine than forced. “I won’t—”
“Seraphena.”
I locked up at Kolis’s whisper. Or had he yelled? I couldn’t be sure. Whatever it was, his voice felt like it was everywhere.
Oh, gods.
A compulsion. He was using compulsion again.
“Look at me,” he coaxed, his tone soft and lilting yet heavy and laden with power.
His voice washed over me like a rising tide, seeping through my skin—
No.
My fingers twitched.
No. No.
The muscles in my neck spasmed as I fought, and the embers hummed wildly in my chest. If he gained control, there’d be nothing I could do. Nothing. No. No— “Seraphena.” Kolis was suddenly in front of me, his fingers on my chin.
I jerked back, starting to close my eyes. I could fight this, couldn’t I? I had Primal embers in me. I could fight this with…with— “Look at me,” Kolis demanded, and a wave of power hit me hard. “Now.”
I tried…gods, I tried to resist. My muscles spasmed painfully. Air punched out of my lungs, and my eyes lifted past his mouth. His nostrils were flared with irritation. My gaze locked on his, and I felt it then, the compulsion seeping into my muscles, relaxing them. His power wrapped around my mind. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t.
I could do nothing but obey.
Golden flecks whirled in his eyes, slipping under and over the wisps of silvery eather. “You will sit, and you will not attempt to fight Ione. Do you understand?”
My lips moved, forming one word. “Yes.”
“That’s a good girl,” he murmured, running his thumb beneath my bottom lip, avoiding the healing skin there as I…
I stood still, unable to even shudder.
“Sit,” he repeated.
Like a puppet, I sat.
Kolis turned to the goddess. “Do what needs to be done.” He was silent as Ione moved closer. “And do it as quickly as possible.” He glanced at me and then away. “I do not want her to feel any unnecessary pain.”
He said as much now, but that would soon change.
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Ione knelt before me. Dark eyes lit with eather met mine. “You seem to be aware of this, but to be clear, I will need to take your blood.”
I did know that. I fucking remembered that part clearly.
Ione blinked, seeming to remember only then that I could not respond. She picked up my right hand, her touch cool. She halted, her brows lifting as her gaze flew to mine.
“Is there a problem?” Kolis demanded from where he lingered a foot—if that—behind the goddess.
Ione cleared her throat. “No.”
“Then get on with it.”
She hunched her shoulders and carefully lowered my right hand to my lap and lifted my left. I thought that was strange, but I couldn’t really focus on that. My mind filled with what was to come. Would I have to react? To summon the embers and at least attempt to get free? I didn’t know.
Ione’s warm breath against the inside of my wrist was my only warning. A second later, the sharp tips of her fangs pierced my skin. I jerked, not even the compulsion able to prevent that.
The burning sting traveled up my arm, causing every muscle in my body to clench. Ione drew deeply on the wound, and that sting hit my neck. I wanted to tear my arm free from her light grasp, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t—
Then I felt it.
A scratching like fingers against my mind, slowly sinking in instead of digging in with claws like Taric had done. The tendons in my neck cramped, and I felt my mind open.
Ione was inside me, in my mind, slipping in easily. It wasn’t painless as she delved into my thoughts and memories. The supper I’d eaten was peeled back, revealing the dreamless sleep, the conversation with Kolis, and my lies—all my lies. She kept searching. Images of a sky full of stars but no moon flashed, then small waves crashing beneath the House of Haides. Those quickly blended into others. I saw the woods and heard myself telling Ash that I loved him. The flashes came in rapid succession as Ione saw what I’d seen. Heard what I’d said. She saw the truths. All of them. She saw the lies, too. Sweat broke out on my brow. A tremor rolled through me as sharp, stabbing pain shot through my head and ran down my spine.
I felt myself shaking on the inside, tears filling my eyes as the ebbing agony became a fire. My skin felt like it stretched, thinned. My vision blurred.
Not as painful? Ione had lied. I felt like I was burning from the inside, and there was no retreat. Nowhere to hide. Pressure built in my skull, sparking a fiery pain that settled there and took root. I shook, and a metallic taste gathered in my mouth.
Oh, gods, could Ash feel this, even in stasis? I didn’t want him to be aware and unable to do anything.