I shook my head.
“You wouldn’t. The history of all that was before has been destroyed. Only a handful of structures survived,” he stated, swishing the red liquid in his glass. “Unthinkable sacrifices were made to ensure that their sickness could never infect the world again, but obviously, mortals were rightfully wary of the gods. We entered into a blood treaty with them, one that ensured that only gods born within the mortal realm could retain their powers there.” Quicksilver eyes lifted to mine once more. “None of the gods can enter the mortal realm without weakening greatly…and resorting to what is forbidden to ensure their strength. That is why we have not intervened. That is why my Consort sleeps fitfully, Poppy.”
I jerked at the sound of my nickname. All of that sounded like a reasonable explanation for why they hadn’t become involved, but something stood out to me. “How…how is a god born in the mortal realm?”
“Good question.” He smiled behind his wine glass. “They should not be.”
I frowned.
His smile kicked up a notch.
And then it occurred to me—what he had said about only a few Primal gods being among those who slept now. If what Jansen had claimed was true, and Nyktos was already a god before he became this… “Are you a Primal?”
“I am.” He stared at me. “And that means you have Primal blood in you. That is what fuels that bravery of yours. That is why you are so powerful.”
I took a drink then, swallowing a mouthful of the sweet wine. “Does that mean my mother could’ve been mortal?”
“Your mother could’ve been from any blood, and you would be who you are today, regardless. Unexpected, but…welcomed nonetheless,” he said, and before I had a chance to even process what that could mean, what that could signify, he continued. “But that’s not what you came to talk to me about, is it? And I bet you have a lot of questions.” One side of his lips tipped up as a somewhat…fond look crept into his otherwise cold features. “Is your brother who you want him to be? Is the mother who you remember yours?” His eyes drilled into mine as goosebumps spread across my skin. “Are your dreams a reality or your imagination? Who truly killed the ones you called Mother and Father? But you don’t have long to ask those questions. You have time for only one. These lands are not meant for your friends, nor your lover. If they stay much longer, they will not be able to leave.”
I stiffened. “None of us has entered Dalos.”
“It doesn’t matter. You came to ask for my aid? There is nothing I can do for you.”
“I don’t need your aid,” I clarified, placing my glass on the table. Gods knew how many questions I wanted to ask about Ian, about my parents and the memories, but this trip wasn’t about me. It was about those waiting outside and all those I had yet to meet. “I need the aid of your guards.”
Nyktos’s brow rose. “You know who my guards are.”
“Now I do,” I mumbled under my breath. His head tilted, and I cleared my throat. “You’re aware of what the Ascended are doing, right? They’re using Atlantians to make more of them, and they’re feeding upon innocent mortals. We need to stop them. I’ve learned that the Ascended have created something that I was told only your guards can help us stop. Something called a Revenant.”
The change that swept over the god was instant and final. The façade of ease vanished. Streaks of white bled across his irises, luminous and crackling. Everything about him hardened, and every instinct in me went on high-alert.
“What?” I ventured. “Do you know what the Revenants are?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “An abomination of life and of death.” He stood abruptly, eyes settling to a pearly shade of steel. “What you face is a greater evil that should not be, and I…I am sorry that you will see what is to come.”
Well, that didn’t bode well at all.
“You need to leave, Queen.” The doors behind me swung open.
I stood. “But your guards—”
“You were born of flesh with the fire of the gods in your blood. You are a Bringer of Life and a Bringer of Death,” Nyktos interrupted. “You are the Queen of Flesh and Fire, due more than one Crown, one kingdom. What you seek, you already have. You always had the power in you.”
Chapter 42
You always had the power in you.
The words echoed through me as I roamed the halls of the Evaemon Palace several days later, trying to learn where all the many halls led and the purpose of all the rooms while Casteel spent time with his father and mother in the brightly lit family room.
An unrelenting malaise nipped at my heels, following my steps just as Arden, the silver-and-white wolven, and Hisa and another Crown Guard did. Except they were far quieter than my thoughts.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that my friends’ lives had been risked. And for what? To learn that whatever these Revenants were, was a greater evil than we knew? Which, by the way, meant that was all we knew. No one, not even Casteel’s parents, could hazard a guess as to what a Revenant could be and how it would warrant such a warning.
I traveled the back hall of the west wing where the staff offices were located, as were the laundry and the kitchens. Warmth crowded the area, along with the aromas of fresh linen and roasted meat as I admitted that the trip to Iliseeum hadn’t been a complete and utter waste. I had learned that Nyktos was a Primal god, something Valyn vaguely remembered hearing his grandfather mention once. And until now, he’d believed that his grandfather had been speaking of the gods we’d always known. Discovering that I had Primal blood explained why my abilities were so powerful. It also meant that the mother I remembered—the one Alastir had claimed was a Handmaiden—could very well have been my real mother. And, once again, I was back to the possibility that Ian could be my half-brother. That we shared the same mother but different fathers. Discovering that was huge and important to me, but only to me. It wasn’t what we’d gone for.
Which was to gain the aid of Nyktos’s guards—the draken.
At least, I’d gotten to see one, so there was that. Sighing, I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. I’d left the crown in the bedchamber, and I wished I’d left my brain there, as well, where Casteel had managed to pull my thoughts from the trip to Iliseeum multiple times in the ensuing days.
Since we’d returned, Casteel and I had barely had any time alone. There were meetings with the Council. Time spent with Eloana and Valyn, where I was taught the different laws of the kingdom at a head-spinning speed. Sessions held where the people of Atlantia could approach us to ask for aid or offer their services for various needs throughout the kingdom. Dinners had been late, and we mostly spent them with Kieran, strategizing the best way to enter Oak Ambler without being seen. Entering Castle Redrock wouldn’t be a problem. Slipping into the city’s Rise unseen would be, and it hadn’t been until the prior night that Kieran had come up with a plan.
I had yet to venture off the palace grounds, but it was just Casteel and me at night. We spent the time talking. I learned more about his brother and what it had been like growing up in Atlantia as the second son his father once expected to lead the Atlantian armies.
“That is how you became so skilled at fighting,” I’d said as we lay together in bed, facing one another.
He’d nodded. “Malik trained alongside me for years, but when it came time for him to learn to rule, it became time for me to learn how to lead an army and kill.”
“And to defend,” I’d amended softly, tracing small circles on his chest. “You learned how to defend your people and those you care about.”
“True.”
“Did you want to be that?” I’d asked. “A commander?”
“The commander,” he’d corrected with a teasing kiss. “It was the only skill I really knew, and I wanted to be able to serve my brother when he took the throne someday. I didn’t really question it.”
“At all?”
He’d fallen quiet for few minutes and then laughed. “Actually, that is not entirely true. I was fasci
nated with the science behind farming as a child—how the farmers grew to learn what time of year was best to plant certain crops, how they set up their irrigation systems. And there was something about seeing all that hard work come to fruition when it came time to harvest.”
A farmer.
Part of me hadn’t expected that, but then I thought of what he’d claimed his father did when I spoke with him in the Red Pearl. I’d grinned as I kissed him, and he then proved that fighting hadn’t been the only skill he’d learned.
Another night, when his body was curled around mine and after a long day of meetings, he’d asked, “There’s something I’ve been wondering and keep forgetting to ask. When we entered Iliseeum, and you saw the skeleton soldiers, you said they were hers. What did you mean?”
I’d realized then that I hadn’t shared that image with him. I’d told him what I saw when I was in the Chambers of Nyktos. “I saw her again when I was sleeping after the attack—after you saved me. It felt like a dream…but not. Anyway, I saw her touch the ground, and I saw bone hands digging their way out.” I’d looked over my shoulder at him. “Who do you think she could be? If she is or was real?”
“I don’t know. You said she had silver hair?”
“Her hair was a silvery blonde.”
“I can’t think of any of the gods that resembles her, but maybe she was one of the Primals Nyktos spoke of.”
“Maybe,” I murmured.
We’d also spent the time using our mouths and tongues to speak words of the flesh. I enjoyed each thoroughly and equally.
But Casteel didn’t feel as if the trip was a waste. While I found Nyktos’s parting words to be generally unhelpful at the end of the day, Casteel took them to mean that I would one day rule both Solis and Atlantia. But those words made me think of what the Duchess had claimed.
That Queen Ileana was my grandmother. That was highly impossible, but it was the only way I would have a true claim to the throne—succession instead of conquering. Or maybe Nyktos meant that we would take the Blood Crown that way? I didn’t know, and the pressure to convince the Blood Crown in our upcoming meeting was even greater. We couldn’t let this become a war including these Revenants. I had a horrible feeling there would only be one way to stop this. Maybe that was what Nyktos had meant. That I had the power in me to stop this.
Icy fingers drifted across the nape of my neck. I’d heard those words before, spoken by the little girl who’d been so grievously wounded, but when she’d spoken them, they had struck a chord of familiarity in me. Over the last several days, I’d tried to remember, but they were like a dream you tried to retain hours after waking.
Passing the entrances to the busy kitchens, I rounded the bend in the hall and nearly walked right into Lord Gregori. I took a startled step back. The dark-haired Atlantian wasn’t alone.
“My apologies.” A slight frown appeared as he noted the absence of my crown.
It did not go unnoticed that he didn’t acknowledge my title. Neither had Lord Ambrose when I passed him the other day in the halls as I’d left to explore the grounds with Vonetta. “It is I who should apologize. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking.” My gaze darted to the young woman behind him. She appeared to be around my age, but I knew immediately she was a wolven, so she could be dozens or even hundreds of years older than me.
The pale, wintery eyes were a striking contrast to the golden hue of her skin, and the warm blonde hair that fell over her shoulders in loose waves. Her features were a mix of traits you would’ve found on different people. Her eyes were wideset and yet hooded, softening the sharp angles of her cheeks and the blade of her nose. Her brows were thick and several shades darker than her hair. Her mouth was small, but her lips were full. She was short, several inches shorter than me, but the cut of her tunic showed off the curves of her breasts and the lushness of her hips that would’ve seemed at odds with someone of her stature. Nothing about her made sense, and yet everything about her lined up so imperfectly that any artist would likely be driven to commit her image to canvas with charcoal or oil. She was perhaps the most uniquely beautiful person I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t stop staring at her.
And I was sure I was probably creeping her out a little based on her growing unease.
“I was actually looking for the King,” Lord Gregori announced. “But I see that he is not with you.”
Pulling my gaze from the unfamiliar wolven, I focused on the Atlantian. The thread of distrust was apparent, even if I wasn’t able to read his emotions. Either the Atlantian kept forgetting that I could do that, or he simply didn’t care. “He is with his parents. Is there something I can help you with?”
Amusement flickered through him, the mean kind. “No,” he said, his smile simpering, his tone overly conciliatory. “That will not be necessary. If you’ll excuse me.”
He hadn’t been excused, but he still brushed past me. I turned as Arden flattened his ears, watching the Lord as he nodded at Hisa and the other guard. The striking image of Arden rushing off and biting the Lord’s leg filled my mind, and I smothered a giggle at the ridiculousness. Arden’s head swung to me, and then he looked at the one who remained.
Remembering the female wolven, I turned back to her. “I’m sorry. I thought you were with him.”
“Oh, gods, no, meyaah Liessa. We just happened to enter the hall at the same time,” she said, and I grinned at the shamelessness of her response. “I was actually looking for someone I hadn’t seen in a while.”
“Who? Perhaps I could help you locate them?”
Her smile faded a bit, and unease returned. “You probably can. I was looking for Kieran.”
Surprised, my brows lifted. “He is with his sister. I think they were in…” I frowned, going through the many different doors and rooms in my head. “One of the five hundred thousand rooms here. Sorry.”
The wolven laughed. “It’s okay.” She looked up and around, taking in the vaulted ceilings and skylights. “This place is a lot to get used to.”
“That it is.” My curiosity took over. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“We haven’t. I was in Aegea with my family when you and Cas—you and the King—were crowned,” she said, and I zeroed in on her words. She’d either almost called him by his first name or his nickname, which wasn’t all that surprising since she was looking for Kieran. If she was friends with one, I was sure she was friends with the other. “And if we’d met, I’m sure you would remember.”
Her nervousness itched at the back of my throat, stroking my wariness. “What do you mean by that?”
The wolven’s shoulder’s leveled. “My name is Gianna Davenwell.”
I inhaled sharply. Her unease made sense now on several levels. I swallowed as my gaze swept over her features again. Of course, the one Casteel’s father had wanted him to marry would have to be so fascinatingly beautiful and not resemble a Craven.
And, of course, I wouldn’t be dressed in any of the pretty gowns that had arrived from Spessa’s End. My hair was braided, and I wore leggings and a tunic—a pretty one the shade of amethyst that I had thought flattered my figure before I saw Gianna and realized she was the woman Casteel could’ve married.
Now I wished I’d worn the crown.
“I am so sorry for what my great-uncle took part in and orchestrated,” she added quickly, her anxiety now edged with the bitterness of fear. “We had no idea. My family was shocked and horrified to learn—”
“It’s okay,” I said, and surprise rolled through her—through me as I yanked my head out of a very unmentionable place. “If you and your family didn’t know what Alastir planned, then you have nothing to apologize for.” And that was true. One was not guilty because of who they were related to. “I am sorry for what happened to your cousin. I met Beckett. He was kind and entirely too young to have died.”
Grief darted through Gianna as she drew in a shaky breath. “Yes, he was far too young.” She swallowed. “I planned on coming to you and the
King, but I…I thought it was better if I spoke with Kieran first. To see if he thought…”
If it would be wise for her to approach me went unsaid. I could understand that concern. “Neither of us hold Alastir’s family responsible. We hold him and the others who conspired with him responsible.”
Gianna nodded, her gaze skittering to where Arden sat, and the guards waited. What went unspoken between us strained the silence to an almost painful level of awkwardness.
I decided to address that head-on like I imagined Casteel’s mother would have done. Like I knew even Queen Ileana would do. “I know that Alastir and Casteel’s father had hopes that you would marry Casteel.”
Gianna’s already large eyes widened as Arden softly grumbled. I realized then that she reminded me of one of those porcelain dolls Ileana had given me as a child. Pink infused her cheeks. “I… Okay, to be honest, I was hoping you didn’t know that.”
“Me, too,” I admitted wryly, and her lips formed a perfect oval shape. “Only because you are very beautiful and don’t resemble a barrat,” I continued, and her mouth closed. “And because I like you after just speaking with you for a few moments. I would prefer not to like the person my father-in-law wished his son had married. But here we are.”
Gianna blinked.
The sugary amusement I felt now definitely came from Hisa, and I thought that maybe I shouldn’t have been so honest. But Arden and the guards were about to be entertained by even more blunt honesty. “Casteel told me that you two are friends, but that you had never shown any inclination towards being interested in marrying him. Is that true?”
The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood And Ash Series Book 3) Page 55
