AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sera barely fades, and Ash tells her they need to get the embers out of her soon—it’s clear they’re getting even stronger. As they make their way, he tells her not to let anyone lure her away and warns her not to trust anyone. He tells her that Dalos is also called the City of the Dead, which she believes when she sees the gods strung up outside the palace. Her primal essence flares.
She begs Ash to stop her from attempting to resurrect them and tells him to use compulsion. Instead, he kisses her, using his shadows to block her sight. He calls her strong and brave.
In the presence of Attes and Dyses, Sera goes to bow, and Nyktos stops her. She learns that Dyses was testing her. Ash kills him, but she swears she sees his hand twitch. And she didn’t feel her embers respond to his death.
After talking with Attes, she remarks that the Primal finds perverse pleasure in provoking Ash and that it almost seems as if Attes is looking out for her. She wonders if he might be a friend—or at least an ally.
Nyktos helps her breathe and bow, and she slips on her veil of nothingness again. Sera is relieved when Kolis doesn’t recognize her as Sotoria. The relief is short-lived, however, when Dyses—whom she witnessed Ash kill—walks into the room. She wonders then if he’s a Revenant.
When Kolis chastises them for their faux pas of not asking for permission, she blurts that their failure to seek approval was her fault and says she feared Kolis would find her unworthy. Kolis decrees what her punishment should be, and she’s sickened when she realizes he expects her to kill a draken youngling. She asks what the boy did to deserve it and what will happen if she refuses. The young draken answers her, saying that Kolis will still kill him, then her, and then end with summoning a draken from the Shadowlands to be killed.
Sera asks Kolis why he’d use this as punishment. She wants to know what he gains from it. His reply? “Everything. It will tell me everything I need to know.” Before she goes through with it, she asks the draken his name. He tells her it doesn’t matter and that he’s not worth remembering. Suddenly, she feels something shift within her. She senses the twisted and evil bits in Kolis’s essence and feels an ancient power come to life inside her. It’s rage, pure and primal. She realizes that the power in him was hers, stolen from the Primal of Life. Then she feels Sotoria and thinks that his pain, retribution, vengeance, and blood will be hers. Sotoria, through Sera, pays the price Kolis demanded.
Sera knows the draken’s death will mark her and she’ll leave some of her goodness in the atrium. Still, she feels Sotoria and knows the woman is settling in to wait for what she’s owed.
Later, after they leave, Sera asks Ash to take her to Vathi. She even goes so far as to beg him. He tells her they should survive to honor the sacrifice the draken made, but she tells him it’s not enough. He caves and takes her, and she urges Attes to bring the youngling’s body to her. She thanks Ash for doing as she asked and explains that she has to do this. She refuses his touch and instead asks why Kolis would do something like this. He says the false Primal of Life was making Kyn their enemy.
And boy did he ever. Not that the Primal needed much help…
When Attes returns, Sera wonders if they can trust him. Ash tells her it’s too late for that now. When she brings the young draken back to life, he calls her meyaah Liessa. They exchange names—his name is Thad. After, Attes bows to Sera and vows not to betray her confidence and tell anyone what she did. He also calls her meyaah Liessa. Sera tells him not to and insists she’s not anything.
Ash asks her why she spoke out and says she doesn’t deserve what she was made to do. She argues that he doesn’t either and then goes on to say that she did it for him.
Sera asks about Dyses being what Gemma mentioned—a Revenant. Perhaps a demis. She also asks why Kolis didn’t act on the fact that he knows his nephew knows who has the power to Ascend and that it’s not Kolis. Ash tells her it’s so Kolis doesn’t expose himself as a fraud.
She reminds Ash that they now have permission to go forward with the coronation, and he tells her that’s not all they have. They also discovered that Kolis didn’t recognize her. He asks her what happened back in Dalos, saying she felt different to him. She tells him that the rage wasn’t only hers, it was also Sotoria’s. Ash says he thinks Holland was wrong. It’s clear Sera has two souls: hers and Sotoria’s.
The plan is to have the coronation the following day and then leave for Irelone to talk with Delfai. Sera walks around the halls and courtyards with Reaver and cries, noticing that she’s crying blood. Later, she has supper with Aios, Bele, and Reaver in her receiving room before returning to her bedchambers.
Not much later, she feels something similar to what she feels with Ash just before Ector comes flying into the room, followed by Veses. Sera realizes that the Primal likely unleashed the Shades as a distraction like Taric did. When Veses tells Rhain she hasn’t come for Nyktos, Sera sees fear in the god’s eyes.
The Primal insults Sera and wants to know how she became the Consort, stating she knows it’s in title only. Sera tells Veses that Ash called her the worst sort and continues to taunt the Primal, telling Veses that her future with Nyktos has nothing to do with her. To top it off, she calls her pathetic.
Reaver moves to protect Sera, and she tries to hold him back. Unfortunately, she isn’t able to stop Veses from hurting Reaver. In her rage, Sera plunges her dagger into Veses’ eye and gets hit by eather. She learns that Veses sent the draken into the Shadowlands, thinking she was helping Nyktos.
Veses insinuates that either Sera has a lot of Nyktos’s blood in her, or he found a Primal in their Culling. Sera tells her she’s had all of Nyktos, not just his blood, and punches Veses in the throat. She then scrambles toward Reaver but is thrown across the room and into the couch.
When Bele arrives, the goddess tells Sera the draken is hurt badly. Sera senses that death is imminent. Luckily, she is able to save him, and it somehow feels like a homecoming this time. She throws a dagger at Veses, but the Primal stops it in mid-air.
Sera freaks out about Veses knowing her secret, but Ash tells her she won’t get a chance to tell Kolis about it because she’ll never get out of the cell they’re about to put her in. Sera tells him that Veses didn’t want to tell Kolis about her, she wanted to kill her. But the Primal was afraid to go through with it once she saw what Sera could do.
Sera apologizes to Ash for him having to kill the Shades—she knows he doesn’t like doing it, thus giving them their ultimate end—and tells him that Veses sent the enemy draken that attacked them and released the entombed gods.
She thanks Bele for her aid with Veses and learns from Saion that Ector will be okay despite what the Primal did to him. She knows she’ll need Ash’s blood to recover from the skirmish—she can’t risk another stasis—then takes what she needs from Ash and feels peace, seeing a memory of her fighting him in the courtyard during her training request.
Sera asks him about it and learns why she saw that. She then tells Ash that she doesn’t hate him at all. He orders her to fuck him, and she gladly accepts. Once again, it feels like more to her. After, she tells him that he can feed from her if he needs to. He declines, saying he doesn’t deserve to.
Later, Sera feels the embers vibrating in her chest but not with the kind of energy that restores life. It’s the kind that ends it. Ash explains why Veses could feel Sera but Kolis couldn’t, and she learns that Veses never let on that she felt her.
Resting with Reaver, Sera doesn’t want to leave the youngling or risk waking him by moving but asks why Ash told Veses she was his Consort in name only. He tells her that Veses is different, and it’s complicated. Sera asks him point-blank if he cares for Veses, and Ash says he pities and loathes the other Primal. She then asks him what he feels for her, and he tells her he feels curiosity, excitement, amusement, yearning, need, want, anger, always awe, and…peace.
Erlina arrives, and Sera discusses the coronation with her and Bele. The seamstress addresses Sera formally, and she goes to tell the woman not to. Bele merely glares at her. Sera’s thoughts then turn to Veses, and she worries that the Primal goddess will be missed. She learns that she won’t—most will be happy she’s gone.
Sera asks to see Rhain to learn what’s going on with Veses and Nyktos and discovers the price Nyktos had to pay for Veses’ silence, which was done solely to protect Sera from Kolis. She then realizes that Ash wasn’t protecting the embers at all, he was protecting her.
When she discovers that Ash is always cold because of how Veses feeds, it makes her furious. Her emotions explode, and she starts shaking the palace again. Rhain does his best to calm her. She’s able to quiet herself, but vows to Rhain that she’ll kill Veses, making a move to do just that.
The god blocks her and promises Veses will be dealt with. Sera suddenly realizes that once Nyktos Ascends, he will be able to Ascend a god to replace Veses in the Callasta Isles. Rhain calls her Your Highness, stupefying her. He goes on to say that she will be and has been his Queen.
