“He withdrew a small knife from his belt and slit his throat,” Kolis said quietly.
“Gods,” I whispered, rubbing the center of my chest.
“I held you as you died.” Kolis’s voice thickened, filling with the heaviness of anguish carrying the sharp, bitter edge of regret. “And then, days later, I held your brother as he, too, took his last breath.”
I sealed my lips together with a firm press, not wanting to be affected by the emotion in Kolis’s voice—by the tragedy. It was hard not to be, though. Back then, it was quite possible that Kolis wasn’t yet such a monster. He had merely been Death…
Well, Death with obsessive tendencies and poor interpersonal relationship skills. Like really, really poor interpersonal relationship skills.
But he wasn’t what he was now.
“I couldn’t allow him to die, and knowing Eythos would not intervene on my behalf, I did what was forbidden of Death.” A wry, humorless smile appeared on Kolis’s features. “I gave life.”
“You…you Ascended Callum?” When Kolis nodded, I frowned. “But he’s not like the one I saw, the one you called an Ascended. She had pitch-black eyes. And he wasn’t a third son—”
“Because they are not the same,” Kolis answered.
My thoughts raced as I eyed Callum. If he wasn’t… “Revenants are demis then?”
Based on how dramatically Callum rolled his eyes, I was going with no.
“No, my dear, they are not.” Kolis smiled, and my skin felt like it was coated in slime. “We will discuss this more later when we don’t have other pressing needs to take care of.”
Needs.
Everything revolving around Callum fell to the wayside. My body locked up with both dread and anticipation, the latter hoping these needs dealt with Ash, and the former… The bite mark on my throat just above Aios’s necklace burned.
I didn’t want to think about the former.
“Please, go ahead, Callum,” Kolis instructed.
Stomach twisting, I almost did the unthinkable and shouted for Callum to stay as I watched him bow and then stalk from the chamber.
“So’lis?”
Lowering my hands to my sides, I searched for the veil of nothingness. It took too long for me to find it, but I did. When I felt nothing of myself, I shifted my gaze to him.
“I wanted to speak with you about the deal we made.” He was watching me. “He has not been released.”
My stomach hollowed.
“I am not reneging on our deal,” he added quickly. “My nephew was still in stasis. That is currently being resolved.”
This was what Attes had been talking about. “What does that mean?”
“My nephew is young for a Primal, but he is quite powerful.”
Pride surged through me. Damn straight, Ash was powerful.
“He awakened briefly from stasis right before Ione came,” he explained as he turned to the table. Something about that tugged at me. It was the same sensation I’d had when I dreamt Ash returned. “I had to ensure that he behaved himself while I decided what to do with him. That was before we struck our deal.”
The odd feeling vanished as I gripped the tassel on the belt. “How did you ensure that?”
Please don’t let it be what Attes suspected. Please. Please.
He poured himself a drink. “If I tell you, I believe it may upset you.”
“Not telling me will make me…worry more,” I said, choosing my words carefully.
He drank from his glass. By the time he faced me, my anxiety had my nerves strained and stretched taut. “To ensure that he caused few issues, I had him incapacitated. He will need to recover from that.”
I stared past Kolis, my breath snagging. Attes had been right. My hand flattened against my stomach as it twisted. Gods, I felt sick.
“It is not easy.”
My eyes snapped to him.
“Seeing you so affected by another,” he said. “The worry practically seeps from your pores.”
Warning bells rang in the back of my mind. “I told you that I care—”
“I remember. It’s all I think about when I look upon him.” Silver eather tinged in gold pulsed through his rapidly thinning flesh. The bones of his jaw and cheeks became visible, sending a chill down my spine. “I spent the last two days looking upon him while he returned to stasis,” he said, his voice dropping and losing its warmth. “Knowing that you care about him.”
My body went cold. So that was what Kolis had been doing since I’d last seen him? Staring at Ash? Every time I spoke to Kolis, I believed it would be impossible for him to disturb me more, and each time he proved me wrong.
“I wonder what it is about him that inspires such emotion in you.” His lips had begun to draw back, losing color and then the flesh itself, exposing his teeth and fangs as the tissue around his eyes, his eyelids, and the skin below began to sink in, leaving nothing but the bone behind. “And what it is about me that incites fear from you.”
A sour taste gathered as a near-hysterical laugh choked me. Was he seriously asking that? While he was turning into a godsdamn skeleton right in front of me?
“It makes me want to hurt him,” Kolis snarled. “Destroy him.”
Everything in me froze.
“But I won’t. I won’t. There must be balance, one way or another,” he said as if reminding himself. And holy fuck, that wasn’t reassuring. A shudder went through him, and the shape of his lips filled out. His eyelids returned, shielding the unholy burn of eather. “Without it, there is nothing.”
I stared at him, wide-eyed.
“There are no realms. No me,” he said. “No you.”
“Uh-huh,” I murmured.
Those eyes opened. Several moments passed as Kolis became more…fleshed out. “You were afraid of me before, when I first lost you and brought you back. It wasn’t until the end of our time together that it changed.” He exhaled long and slow. “But this time, you’ve shown very little fear of me, even if you’ve felt it. That’s changed.”
Looking upon Kolis now, after watching him lose his hold on his temper and let go of the fa?ade that hid what he was, all I could think about was how Tavius had physically changed when he grew angry or was about to do something particularly heinous. He hadn’t flushed or become erratic. When that darkness in him took hold, he’d grown very still, almost lifeless, except for the gleam in his eyes. That fevered, crazed look I’d seen once before in a dog that had become sick, causing it to foam at the mouth and bite at the air.
Kolis had the same gleam. “You showed it when I last left you,” he said, the eather receding from his skin. “And you show it now. I don’t need my nephew’s talent for reading emotion to know that, nor my brother’s foresight.”
“Foresight?” I asked, unable to stop myself. “Eythos could see the future?”
“Not in the way you would think,” he said. “Eythos was given…heightened intuition. Knowledge of what should not be known to him.” A smirk twisted his lips. “He didn’t always utilize the ability or listen.”
Clearly.
“But I understand why I would frighten you now. I spoke of wanting to harm someone you care about. You saw me as I truly look—as I really am beneath the beauty and gold of the very last of the embers of life. You saw me as I was before and will always be. Death. That would terrify most,” he said. “But you were afraid before all of that. Uneasy from the moment I entered, in a way you weren’t before the last time we were alone. That, I don’t understand.”