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Once the compulsion lifts, Sera finds herself wet and in another grander gilded cage. She thinks about Aios and her captivity and falls into despair. Eather cracks the cell. She tries to calm herself and looks the space over, seeing what appears to be a cluster of diamonds at the top of the cage, the throne, and the layout of the sitting areas. Her rage flares again, and it cracks the shadowstone.
She knows she needs to calm and taps into a memory of Ash’s voice telling her to breathe. As she does, she weeps, noticing she’s crying the blood tears of a Primal.
Sera thinks about how Eythos’s plan was not well thought out at all. Sotoria has woken up, and Sera doesn’t like the idea of her being trapped. She laments everything that’s happened so far.
Knowing she needs a weapon, she begins looking around. She searches through some chests in the cage and finds one full of glass cocks. Taking one, she breaks it, turning it into a fairly decent—albeit unusual—weapon.
When she touches the bars of the cage, she feels pain and realizes it won’t be easy to get out of her predicament.
Needing to shed her wet clothes, she searches for something else to wear and finds herself disgusted by the choices. Without options, she picks a gown and changes, then feigns sleep when Callum enters the room.
As he nears her, she repeatedly stabs him with the makeshift dagger, then takes his key. She’s about to take off with it, then decides it’d be smarter to leave it in case she’s captured and returned. She tosses it far under the bed and runs. On her way out, she encounters a guard and stabs him, then sees some Chosen. She tells them she won’t hurt them, but one calls the guards.
Making her way farther, she encounters an orgy in progress, then smells blood. When she comes upon a woman feeding from a man, it doesn’t look like the feedings she’s seen. With pitch-black eyes, the woman says that Sera smells of Revenant and god. Like life. She comes at Sera, and Sera stabs her, watching her crumble into nothing and shocking her. She checks on the male and finds him dead.
The guards enter, and Sera grabs one, only to find out it’s a draken. He’s amused, and that just pisses Sera off, so she nails him with eather.
The previously dead male rushes out and attacks, having turned Craven.
Sera falls unconscious and dreams of her lake. When she wakes, she’s back in the cage, and Kolis is with her. She mentions being kept as a prisoner, and he tells her she’s a guest. Sera asks him how long he’s been watching her, and he wonders if it bothers her. She swears, and he tells her that her language is far more uncivilized than he remembers.
He smells her, mentions what he scents, and she realizes that he’s picking up on her lake. Somehow. He tells her he’s irked and reminds her what happens when she displeases him.
Sera brings up his favorites, and he tells her they were all ungrateful, then says he can sense the embers in her. When he calls her so’lis again, she asks him what it means. He explains how the old Primal words break down and says that Kolis means “our soul;” therefore, so’lis is “my soul.” It disgusts Sera.
She remembers some things Holland told her and considers what she needs to do, weighing her options. She brings to mind all those she knows and thinks about how they matter. All of them. With those thoughts, she realizes she needs to become the blank canvas and do what’s required.
She takes the key from under the bed and hides it with the menstruation rags—somewhere a male would never look.
Callum enters the room and asks how he should refer to her, clarifying that he doesn’t believe she’s Sotoria. She asks him about Ash, and he ignores her questions, continuing with giving her instructions.
He mentions being familiar with her mother, Calliphe, and brings up the wards Nyktos put on her family. When he says something about being invited inside, Sera realizes that Revenants must need to be invited into places.
Callum tells her that he’s been watching her for years. She taunts him and threatens to tell Kolis that Callum was the one who shared how a Primal could be killed.
He brings the Chosen in and tells her that if she doesn’t follow his directions, he’ll kill them. She’s stubborn, and he doesn’t hesitate to break a Chosen’s neck. Before he can kill another, she behaves. He tells her to bathe, and she threatens to kill him. However, she begrudgingly does as he says, stuffing down her post-traumatic stress at having to use the tub.
When she looks in the mirror, she sees eather in her eyes. Hearing a sound, she looks up at the window near the ceiling and sees a shadow blocking out the light. An enormous silver hawk flies in a second later, locking its blue eyes with hers. Sera swears she feels a Primal. As she thinks that, the bird shifts and becomes Attes.
Sera lashes out, and Attes says he deserved the blow, though he reminds her that he saved her, calling her a hellion. When she scoffs, he explains that he stopped what could have happened by taking her.
Attes conjures some clothes, making Sera jealous of his ability. Once dressed, Attes tells her this wasn’t the first time he saved her. She’s skeptical, but he reminds her about when the hawk saved her in the woods. It was him. When she asks about Primals shifting and then brings up Eythos, he tells her that he shifted into a wolf, not a hawk, but that Kolis does take his hawk nota form.
She wonders why she didn’t feel him, and he explains that they’re not detectable in their nota forms. It’s them, yet…not. He tells her that the other silver hawks she saw were Attes’s chora—an extension of him and very much alive.
Attes explains that he’s known about her longer than even Kolis or Nyktos. When she asks why he was surprised about Thad if he knew she had the embers, he says it had been a long time since he’d seen real life restored, then says he assumes she can do what she can because the embers are bonding with her.
As they talk about the events that led to the present, he tells her that the Fates prohibited Eythos from telling Nyktos what his father did. It was their way of trying to reestablish balance.
Sera tells him to get Ash out of Dalos. He says he would if he could, then tells her about the bones of the Ancients and what they can do. When she mentions that the bones can be destroyed, given what Ash did to Hanan’s spear, he tells her that only the Primal of Life and the Primal of Death can destroy them.
She asks him how Ash is, and he tells her he’s not conscious, then explains how he’s being kept in the Carcers, saying the prison is terrible. He establishes that he can’t help. When she tells him he’s only saying that because he’s worried about himself, he corrects her and says he’s more concerned about what Kolis will do to her or Nyktos. He adds that he’s loyal only to the true Primal of Life, and that’s her now.
He points out the scar on his face and tells her that Kolis gave it to him. He also reveals that Kolis took and killed Attes’s children, saying he’s never really stood with the false Primal of Life.
He explains how things are different now because of her but not because of the embers. It’s because of the one who can kill Kolis. Sotoria. He outright asks her if she’s Sotoria but then says himself that she’s not, adding that if she were, she’d look just like her, and she wouldn’t have spoken through Sera earlier.
Sera asks about the differences between rebirth and being reborn, and Attes explains. Then he wonders why the Arae told Kolis how to take the embers.
