Total pages in book: 362
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 347293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1736(@200wpm)___ 1389(@250wpm)___ 1158(@300wpm)
Nektas turned his attention back to the crest.
“None of this means Eythos gave Roderick the design, but…” A strangled laugh left me. “He must have.”
Nektas exhaled slowly. “This is not the symbol that represents the inevitability of life and death and the importance of both.”
“The crescent moon,” I murmured, my skin pimpling. “‘A Maiden as the Fates promised.’”
Nektas’s head cut toward me.
“‘And you shall leave this realm touched by life and death.’” My voice was hoarse when I spoke. “That was something my old nursemaid Odetta said to me.” I reached back and touched the back of my left shoulder. “I have a birthmark that’s kind of shaped like a crescent moon.”
“Fate marked you at birth,” he said, mirroring Odetta’s claim. “With the symbol of the equal power of life and death.”
Unsettled, I slid my hand away.
“But if Eythos left some sort of hint behind, it would be the symbol of life. This insignia could represent something other than you and Ash. It could be—”
“Life and Death not joined,” I cut in. “But one and the same.”
A silver beast with blood seeping from its jaws of fire, bathed in the flames of the brightest moon to ever be birthed, will become one.
A chill went through me as I stared at the crest. If this symbol, representing life and death as one, never existed before, how could Eythos have had anything to do with it? And why? The vadentia was eerily quiet. Which meant…
It either involved the Fates or something close to me—to my present or future.
For finally, the Primal rises, the giver of blood and the bringer of bone, the Primal of Blood and Ash.
Another chill went through me. “None of this makes sense or even matters right now,” I said. Nektas nodded, but there was a strange edginess to him. I turned and started walking toward the dining hall. “And you know why it doesn’t matter?”
“Why?” Nektas followed me this time.
“Because trying to figure all of that out,” I said, gesturing at the banners as I took the hall to my right, “makes my head feel like it’s going to explode. Like, go splat all over those banners.”
“We don’t want that to happen.”
I stalked forward, passing the curved archways of numerous unnecessary chambers.
“The idea of all this being connected angers you,” Nektas commented.
“It annoys me.” I entered a narrow hall where the walls had been painted white and were lit by gas lamps. “Because it makes it feel like things are predestined. I guess that’s sometimes not bad, right? If you like the outcome. But other times, it is bad. Either way, it makes you wonder what the point is if what’s to come will happen one way or another.”
“Nothing is written in stone.”
“Yeah, everyone keeps saying that.” The corridor curved, and at the end of the absurdly long hall, the doors bearing the crest came into view. “But it sure as fuck doesn’t feel…”
A prickly sensation erupted all over me. The cause wasn’t because nobody was guarding the door. That wasn’t all that surprising. Ezra wouldn’t demand guards stand outside each and every chamber she occupied, and I got that. I was of like mind. But she was mortal, and Lasania was not without enemies, especially the Vodina Isles Lords—thanks to me following through on my mother’s orders. But it wasn’t that.
“Ash put wards up when he first brought me into the Shadowlands,” I said. “Ones meant to keep my family safe.” Foresight told me I knew the answer, but I needed to hear it. “They would still be working, right?”
“They may have weakened a little while Ash was in stasis, but they will remain as long as he lives.”
I nodded but picked up my pace because those wards protected my family against gods who sought to harm them.
Not anything that wasn’t a god.
Not Primals.
Essence throbbed hotly in my chest as I breathed deeply. There was a smell in the air—one that shouldn’t be here. Not anymore.
Stale lilacs.
I broke into a run, my hair streaming out behind me. I didn’t slow down as the stench of death increased. I willed the doors open. They swung apart, slamming into the stone walls on either side, causing those in the long, rectangular chamber situated in the center of the sunken space to gasp.
A chair fell over as my gaze swept past the familiar faces—
All I saw was gold.
Gold hair.
Gold tunic.
Gold-painted wings.
Eyes a shade of blue so pale they would’ve bordered on lifeless if not for the spark of eather behind the pupils as they locked with mine.
Callum sat at the dinner table with my family and smiled.
“Seraphena,” he drawled, plucking the napkin from his lap and dropping the mauve cloth onto the table. “What a lovely surprise to see you here.”
Eather swelled with my rage, rushing to the surface of my skin. As silvery-gold light filled the corners of my vision, I saw Ezra skirt the table’s edge and stand behind my stunned mother. Marisol started to move toward the male I recognized as her father, her dark gaze darting nervously between Callum and…not me. She was looking behind me.