Oh, gods.
The edges of my vision turned white. I felt like I couldn’t breathe—
“Calm yourself,” a voice full of bitter warmth and cold sunshine ordered from above me.
Startled, my gaze swung to silver eyes laced with golden flecks. Kolis’s attention shifted, and shimmering sweeps and swirls churned beneath the flesh of his cheeks. A shudder rolled through me.
“You will live,” Kolis stated, glancing down at me. “As long as you are who you claim to be.”
Nothing about his words made it easier to breathe. With each passing second, it felt like my lungs shrank. My heart no longer pulsed listlessly. It raced, skipping beats. White static crowded the edges of my vision when I fought to remember what Holland had taught me, what Ash had shown me. Breathe in. Hold—
The ground moved under us, the soil turning to sand. Kolis’s steps slowed, his hold shifting. A rhythmic sound reached me, the gentle rise and fall of waves lapping against a shore. My head slid, my cheek catching on the golden band around his biceps. For a moment, I forgot about suffocating as I stared at the rippling moonlight reflecting off the vast, midnight-hued sea.
Kolis had stopped at the edge of pearly white sand, but there was no gradual incline to the water like there was on the beaches of the Stroud Sea. This was a steep drop with no bottom in sight, but something in the water moved.
They swam in circles, over and under one another. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of them. Their powerful arms and sleek, bare bodies were half flesh and half scales, creating fierce currents beneath the surface. The tails of those closest to me were radiant in the moonlight—vivid, glittering blues, intense pinks, deep greens, and streaks of bright yellow.
My gods, they had to be the ceeren.
“Phanos!” Kolis roared.
I flinched as the shockwave of his shout hit the water, sending the ceeren scattering into the deeper parts of the sea. Their frantic flight stirred the tranquil waters. Small, white-tipped waves rippled across the surface and a form appeared amid the ceeren.
His entire body moved in a wave-like motion, propelled by the rapid swishing of the large fin at the end of his tail. Faster than the others, he swam toward the surface.
As he neared, a bolt of silver erupted from his hand, forming a long spear that came to three points at one end. A trident.
One made of eather.
Phanos, the Primal God of the Skies and Seas, erupted from the sea in a spray of water, the trident spitting sparks of amber against the warm, dark brown skin of his shoulders and broad chest. Beneath him, his undulating tail keeping him in place, the ceeren calmed enough for me to see there were smaller ones farther down. Children who still darted back and forth, appearing briefly before scurrying behind the older ceeren’s tails.
Phanos’s stare drifted over Kolis and then me. In the bright moonlight, the handsome lines of his face tensed. He bowed his head. “Your Majesty.”
Kolis knelt. My calves slid over warm, rough sand. He didn’t let go, he just held the top half of my body upright and against his chest. “I am in need of your assistance. She has lost too much blood.”
Phanos glanced at me, his stare lingering on my throat. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but is that not Nyktos’s Consort?”
“Yes,” I gasped. Or I thought I did. I couldn’t be sure. My tongue felt leaden and useless.
“That is irrelevant,” Kolis responded.
“Perhaps to you. But I felt the loss of one of our brethren, and the rise of a new…sistren. All of us did.” Phanos’s gaze slipped past us, and I heard retreating footsteps. His gaze shifted back to me. “Is it because of her?”
“You ask too many questions,” Kolis growled, his smooth voice roughening. “And I have very little patience for answering them.”
“I apologize, my King.” Phanos bowed his head slightly. “But I want no problems with Nyktos.”
“My nephew is currently no threat to anyone,” Kolis said, and my heart felt like it twisted until nothing was left of it. “However, even you should be more worried about inciting my wrath than Nyktos’s,” Kolis warned, cold bitterness filling his tone as gold-laced eather poured out of him. I winced when the essence glided harmlessly against my skin before spilling over to the sand. “Or do I need to remind you?”
Phanos eyed the tendrils of eather as they stopped short of reaching the water, where they lifted and coiled like vipers preparing to strike. I shuddered at the sight of them, having no idea what would happen if the eather reached the water. Whatever it was, I had a feeling it would be something terrible.
Phanos’s nostrils flared, and then the trident collapsed and vanished from his hand. “No, you do not.”
“Good.” Kolis’s voice was warm once more—gentle, even. The way he switched back and forth so quickly was unnerving. “She cannot die. I need you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Confusion arose. Between the blood loss and my worry for Ash, my addled brain was having a hard time processing everything, and many things were a blur. But even in this state, I had no idea how Phanos could assist.
“If you do not wish for her to die, can you not do what you’ve done to the others?” Phanos questioned. “Make her one of your Revenants. She is a godling, is she not? That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”
But I wasn’t a godling—the offspring of a mortal and a god. However, it was how I felt to the gods and Primals because of the embers. Either way, Phanos clearly knew about the Revenants. Maybe all the Primals but Ash did. But Phanos didn’t know about the embers.
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was there anything to gain? But I hadn’t even thought of Kolis turning me into whatever the Revenants were. Could he even do that? What would that—？
“That is only death reborn,” Kolis answered, the warmth straining. “And I cannot risk her soul being stolen away in the process of the rebirth.”
Two things happened at once. One, I realized that a Revenant had to die to become one. And the second thing? Phanos realized exactly why Kolis was here.
“Is that her?” he whispered. “Your graeca?”
A burst of anger lit my insides, temporarily replacing the coldness that seemed to have penetrated every part of me. Words scorched my tongue, and I wanted nothing more than for them to make it past my lips. I wasn’t his graeca. Neither was Sotoria. We didn’t belong to him. I willed my mouth to move, just as I had earlier when I yelled at Ash and Kolis, but the embers only sputtered weakly, and all I managed was a whimpering sound.
“She… I believe so.” Kolis’s fingers pressed into the flesh of my arm and hip. “I’m holding her soul in her body. I’m not sure…” He faltered, the weight of his words a whispered admission. “I’m not sure how much longer I will be able to do so.”
I thought of the pins-and-needles sensation I’d felt when he placed his hand on my chest. Was that it? When he grabbed hold of my soul—our souls?
Shock rippled through me. The god Saion hadn’t believed that Kolis retained enough power to summon a soul like Ash could. Did this mean there were still some embers of life in him? Or was this a byproduct of the true embers of death? I wasn’t sure, but it explained why I was still alive—well, barely.