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)
Terrifying.
Beautiful.
And furious.
A saner person would’ve probably tucked their tail and run. I was not a saner person. I stood there, vaguely aware of Rhain and Bele backing off.
Tendrils of shadows swirled around Ash’s legs as he stalked toward me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” My gaze swept over him, and I watched the shadows in his flesh start to recede. “I’m fine.”
“There is blood on you.”
“It’s not mine.” I watched a muscle in his jaw flex. “Are you okay?”
He gave me a curt nod, his attention shifting to the gore scattered about the courtyard. Static crackled, and I wasn’t so sure he was all right, even though I saw no signs of injury on him.
To our right, Bele rose from where she had crouched by a fallen guard. I looked away quickly. I had to. I wasn’t sure I could walk away without intervening if I saw their face.
“What in the world just happened with the sekya?” Bele asked. “They’ve always served you.”
“They have,” Ash answered as my intuition sparked, whispering what he spoke. “But I am not the true Primal of Death. Kolis is.”
And while these creatures had been content to continue as is all these years, something had changed. My eyes flew to Ash.
“Kolis summoned them.” He lifted his gaze from the fallen guard and met mine. Only a hint of his irises appeared. “He’s strengthening his defenses.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“The sekya…” Rhain said, shattering the tense silence. “Did all of them leave the Abyss?”
“They did.” Ash looked up as two draken flew overhead, their shadows deepening the night as they landed on the Rise.
My heart lurched. “How many were there?”
His attention returned to the guard’s remains. “About a thousand, give or take a couple hundred.”
Good gods. “Do I want to know how many made it out of the Shadowlands?”
“I would say about seventy-five percent,” he answered.
“I almost regret asking,” I murmured. “I couldn’t kill them with eather.”
“No, you could not. Only a Primal of Death can kill them with eather,” Ash explained. “And I have just enough of those embers to get the job done.”
I glanced at the draken. It was Ehthawn and Crolee. “Not even the draken?”
“Not even them,” he confirmed. “The sekya would’ve swarmed any draken who came to our aid, and they’re capable of severely injuring even one as old as Nektas.”
“Gods,” I muttered.
Ash’s eather-drenched gaze locked on mine. “And they can do a lot of damage to a Primal, especially a newly Ascended one,” he said, his gaze sweeping over me. “Without a weapon.”
I tensed as my thoughts went immediately to the dagger he’d gifted me.
“She held her own and then some,” Bele spoke up. “With or without a weapon.”
Ash’s gaze slid to the Primal while I shifted from one foot to the other. I appreciated Bele coming to my defense, but the thing was, I had come out to fight without a weapon, and that was idiotic.
The essence in me swirled, responding to Ash’s. Outwardly, he appeared to be calming—the shadows weren’t as thick. But the inside was a different story, and his barely leashed anger had much more to do with what had happened here than it did with me.
These were our people strewn across the courtyard, and even if Kolis had only summoned the sekya to him without giving them orders to attack, he knew that many of them would. Because intuition told me the creatures’ bloodline was old. They had been created by the Ancients themselves. Just as the dakkais were. And their nature reflected that of their creators.
Hunger and cruelty.
This was Kolis’s fault, and I was sure that knowledge fueled Ash’s rage. It fed mine as I turned. Kolis was strengthening his defenses, likely in preparation for giving his answer to the offer I made. There was still time left in the eirini—at least a week—but he was already preparing for us.
For war.
I stood there for several moments in the moonlight, staring at the splashes of blood tainting the newly grown grass. The wildly churning essence calmed as a sudden prickling sensation erupted along the nape of my neck. Before I knew it, I was crossing the courtyard. I entered the palace, the stone cold beneath my feet. It was as if I were being urged forward. I didn’t think it was my heightened intuition. It felt more like the eather inside me. The Primal essence continued to intensify, throbbing in the pit of my chest. I walked beneath the crystal chandelier, making out the low murmur of several voices and another sound—one too muffled for me to make out.
Crossing under the wide, sharply pointed archway, I smelled the iron-rich scent of blood. I passed the empty, white marble pedestal and the closed doors on either side of the area. Reaching where the hall split in two, I went right without much thought. It was like I already knew where to go.