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“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.”
