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Sera tells Ash there’s something she wants to talk about, and he won’t look at her. He tells her that even if he’s not looking at her, she is all he sees. She tells him she loves him and says it’s not his fault, making him understand. He lists all the things he’d rather be doing, and she almost gets sidetracked because several of them are super sexy. She continues, telling him she wants him to live. Be King. He argues that it’s her place, and she tells him she doesn’t want him to be alone. She wants him to love.
He gets angry, and she makes him promise. He does. Then, they have beautiful, heartbreaking sex.
He tells her all the things he adores about her and says he never wanted until her. Thunder booms, and Ash says Kolis has been found. She laments being out of time but tells him everything she wanted and says that he gave her all of it. She tells him that she loves him again and then says it’s time.
He takes her into the water and feeds as she reminisces, swearing she’ll remember. She begins to fade, and Ash says fuck the embers and tells her to take his blood. He says he won’t let her go. He’ll Ascend her.
She asks what she’ll become, and he says he isn’t sure. She begs him to take the embers but he tells her to shut the fuck up and says if he loses her, the realms and everything in them are gone—he’ll destroy it all. He tells her not to die. Tells her to say fuck the greater good. She says he’s good, but he insists he isn’t.
Finally, she drinks. She sees memories of her and her mother. Holland. Ezra. Jadis. The gods. More. Ash begs her not to leave and says he loves her, even if he can’t. He says he’s in love with her.
Sera sees Odetta. The woman tells her to open her eyes. She does, and Sera sees creation. All of it. She sees the explosion, the Primal of Life, the creation of the draken, the mortals. She sees it all and understands. The Ancients must never rise. They are the end that will shake all realms. They’d be blood and bone and ruin and wrath of the once-great beginning. Sera realizes she’s the beginning, middle, and the last breath before the end. She’s life. Death’s steadfast companion.
Pure power fills her, and she wakes in Ash’s arms. A shockwave bursts free and knocks him back. She becomes the essence.
While in stasis, Sera can hear talking. She hears the stories Ash relays. Listens to him tell her how unprepared he was for how alive he felt with her. He admits he could still feel after his kardia was removed, but not strongly. Not until her. He says he should have known from their first kiss what they were to each other.
He reminisces about their first few meetings, her bravery in going to Kolis alone, her misplaced loyalties. Ash talks about his father. Sera sees it all and feels Jadis on her feet.
When Ash says he wanted to be strong like Eythos, Nektas says it had nothing to do with strength. He talks about how Eythos was after Mycella’s death, and Ash says he would have destroyed the realms and everything in them if he’d lost Sera.
Nektas reminds Ash that he saved her, and Ash tells Sera he’ll be waiting for her.
Sera finds herself on the bank of her lake, but this time she sees a silvery-white cave cat with two gray younglings. When they lock eyes, she sees herself.
She starts to wake, and Ash tells her not to rush it. She’s hungry and thirsty and restless. Suddenly, she gets all sorts of information downloaded. She becomes power, and Ash reminds her of how they are together. How they like to be. He tells her she needs him. His blood. Says he’s hers.
She says the Primal of Life has never fed from the Primal of Death before. They’re meant to be two halves of a cycle but separate. He says that all of him is hers, and she feeds.
After, he asks if she knows him, and she says she always will.
Ash tells her he was terrified he’d lose her. She says he didn’t; he saved her. He then says he was afraid she wouldn’t remember and that he’d still lose her. She insists he won’t. Ever. He tenses and tells her that when he releases her, she needs to run. She’s confused. He then tells her that he needs her too much and won’t be able to control himself. He’ll shift. She says she trusts him. Tells him she’s his. Tells him to take her. However.
He does, using his shadow tendrils to heighten her pleasure. He tells her that he loves her and says he’s not sure when it started. She shakes and says she thought she’d die without ever knowing what his love felt like. He says he couldn’t and wouldn’t allow that. He tells her he’ll spend eternity making sure she knows how he feels.
Nektas asks if they’re okay, and Ash threatens him. Sera realizes that she somehow Ascended without dying. The embers are her. She’s the Primal of Life. The Queen of the Gods.
She says as much, and Ash says he’s her Consort. She says he’s the King.
The King fucks his Queen.
And it was glorious.
She asks if she’ll ever get used to her fangs, and he assures her that she will. She wonders if any Primals Ascended without getting their memories back and he tells her about those who had trouble and mentions that Kyn never did.
As they begin to have sex again, Sera finds herself tensing when he goes to feed. He tells her it’s okay, and says he sensed her unease, even though it’s harder to read her now. Plus, he says they need to behave because they have to talk. She says they should discuss Kolis, and Ash agrees but says not now. He tells her that every Primal felt her Ascension and says they’ll deal with whatever comes. Together.
He comes clean about why he didn’t take her as his Consort initially. Part of it was to keep her unknown to Kolis, but also he had a dream the night she was born. It was her at her lake, smiling at him. Then, he saw her dying, and him… He chalked it up to imagination until he saw the lake for real. He kept track of her. The vision terrified him so much he had his kardia removed right before he brought her to the Shadowlands.
He laments what her life was like because of him. Insists he was a coward. She denies it, but he tells her what the vision showed him of after she died. He destroyed everything. It showed he’d fallen in love. So, he tried to stop it. He tells her he fell in love anyway, and she tells him she felt more than love when he held her in the lake. Ash says there’s only one reason for that. They’re heartmates.
He talks about how when the Arae see threads of fate joining, they cannot intervene. He says their joined souls created the first-ever Queen of the Gods. Sera remembers Holland telling her that love is more powerful than the Fates. They talk about the Arae toeing the line of what’s allowed and what’s considered interference, and she goes out onto the balcony, seeing life returning to the realm. She stopped the Rot.
As she rests, she sees a box by Ash’s bed and opens it, finding all the hair ties he took from her when he undid her braids. It makes her heart swell.
When Ash returns, they share sweet nothings of love, and he tells her that he wants them to trust each other, telling her he’ll always see her as strong no matter what. He hints that he thinks he knows what happened to her in Dalos, and they talk more about Rhain. She urges Ash not to do or say anything about what happened when her plans were first revealed.
She assumes that Holland knew everything and tells Ash what the Arae really said to her. That love is more powerful than the Fates. They think and talk about how powerful life is, and Sera figures she should be concerned about things and be thinking about the future, but only one thing is on her mind.
