Thump. Thump. Thump.
“If you let that happen, you will lose her. Do you hear me?” Attes squeezed his eyes shut, and I thought I saw panic flash across his features. But I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. My eyes couldn’t focus. “You will lose your graeca.”
The horrific thumping ceased.
“No,” Kolis croaked. “No.”
The faint scent of vanilla and lilacs—stale lilacs—enveloped me, and then Attes was no longer holding me.
Kolis had me in his arms. He lifted me as he rose, my head lolling. “Put him in the cells,” he said. “I will deal with him when I return.”
If more was said, I didn’t know. A rush of wind whirled around us, and I was vaguely aware of warm night air touching my skin.
I struggled to open my eyes, but they no longer responded to my commands. The darkness smothered me, suffocated. My breaths came in shallow gasps, and my heart raced before it stuttered. Time. It sped up and slowed down, leaving me to exist in those too-long gaps between the beats of my heart and the ceaseless roar of the wind.
I didn’t want to die.
Not like this.
Not alone in the darkness with this monster.
I wanted to be with Ash, in his arms at my lake, as he’d promised we would be when my time came.
This wasn’t right.
It’s not fair, I swore I heard Sotoria whisper, her thoughts briefly mingling with mine.
The embers of life vibrated wildly. Panic surged like a wild animal trapped in a cage, desperate to break free, but there was no escape.
Death had always been inevitable.
I sensed that we’d stopped moving, stopped shadowstepping. A palm pressed down on the center of my chest, and my breath, my heart, snagged as a strange pins-and-needles sensation swept over me.
Then, there was nothing.
Ash.
That was the first thing I thought as I came to. The battle between him and Kolis, the blade striking him, moving up and down, up and down, stabbing into Ash’s body.
My eyes peeled open, going wide. The sky above was drenched in starlight, and I gulped salty, damp air that turned into thin breaths that barely did anything to ease the constriction in my chest. The buzzing in my ears retreated, and I heard voices coming from every direction. Whispers followed us as I caught the vague impression of people lowering themselves to their knees, and glimpsed twinkling lights inside sandstone buildings and larger structures in the distance. I couldn’t be sure, though. All I knew was that I was still being carried as I struggled to breathe.
Ash.
I didn’t know where I was or where he’d been taken. I had a vague memory of hearing a cell referenced. And before that, a wet, fleshy, thumping sound and the flash of a blood-slick dagger.
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.”