Except Tavius.
I’d be fine with him finding that fate.
Ash leaned forward. I hadn’t heard him move. I didn’t see him move. It was as if I’d sensed that he’d moved closer, and that made no sense. But when I looked over at him, I’d been right. He lifted a hand, curling his fingers around the strands of hair that had fallen forward. He brushed them back over my shoulder. “The food is getting cold.”
I nodded as he sat back. I didn’t even know why. Feeling foolish, I watched him place nearly the same amount on his plate but he went far heavier on the bacon.
“So, you eat food?” I asked, my thoughts reluctantly traveling to the conversation I’d had with Aios.
His gaze flicked up. “Yes,” he said, drawing out the word. “I can’t survive on consuming the souls of the damned alone.”
I stared at him.
“I was kidding.” His lips twitched. “About the eating souls part.”
“I hope so,” I murmured. “I didn’t know if Primals needed to eat or…” I forced a shrug.
“We can go quite some time without food, far longer than a mortal.” He took a sip of whiskey. “But we would eventually become weak. And if we continue to weaken, we can become…something else.”
“What does that mean?”
His eyes met mine once more. “Eat, and I’ll tell you.”
I raised a brow. “Is this bribery?”
He lifted a shoulder as he helped himself to a piece of sausage. “Call it whatever you like, as long as it works.”
Being coerced into anything, even eating when I was, in fact, hungry, didn’t top my list of favorite things. Be that as it may, I helped myself to a forkful of eggs because curiosity was always far more potent. “Happy?” I asked around a mouthful.
One side of his lips curved. A piece of egg may have fallen from my mouth and quite possibly plopped onto my plate.
All the training I’d gone through was a waste. I was terrible at seduction.
But he smiled fully then, and I was surprised that more food didn’t fall from my mouth. The smile, the way it lit up his features and turned his eyes quicksilver, was breathtaking every time I saw it.
Ash chuckled. “Very.”
“Great.”
Grinning, he chewed a piece of sausage. “We can be weakened,” he said after swallowing, and my hand trembled. “Hunger. Injury,” he continued. “Among other things.”
I took a quick drink of the lemonade, having a very good idea of what the among other things was. “Then?”
“And then, when we become weak from something like starvation or hunger, we can become something more…primitive. Something primal.” He swallowed his food. “Whatever semblance of humanity we have? That veneer slips away, and what we are underneath becomes the only thing we can be.” Those thundercloud eyes held mine. “You don’t want to be around any of us if that happens.”
A chill skated down my spine. “That happens only to Primals?”
Thick lashes swept down, and Ash shook his head. “A Primal was once a god, liessa. A god of powerful bloodlines, but a god, nonetheless. What happens to a Primal can happen quicker with a god.”
“Oh,” I whispered, barely tasting the sweet and salty bacon. “But then you could feed, right? That would stop that from happening.”
“They could.”
Something about the way he said that caught my attention. “You could.”
“I could,” he confirmed, placing his fork beside his plate. “But I do not feed.”
I frowned. “Ever?”
“Not anymore.”
Confusion rose. “But what about when you’re weakened?”
His eyes lifted to mine. “I make sure that does not happen.”
What about when I’d stabbed him? Had that not weakened him at all? And why didn’t he feed? Neither of us spoke for quite some time, appearing to be focused on feeding ourselves.
When I wiped my fingers clean on the napkin, I couldn’t hold back any longer. “Were you a prisoner before?”
There was no response from Ash. His gaze was fixed ahead as he drew his thumb over the rim of his glass. “I have been many things.”
I twisted the napkin in my hands. “That’s not much of an answer.”
Ash turned his eyes toward me. “No, it’s not.”
Pushing down my frustration, I placed my fork beside my plate before I did something irrational with it. I wanted to know exactly what he’d meant, and it wasn’t just a sense of morbid curiosity. I understood that other Primals pushed one another’s limits, but how could one be held captive?
And I wanted to be wrong. Wanted that not to be what he’d meant. Thinking of him—of anyone—as a captive without due cause turned my stomach and made me empathize with him. And I couldn’t do that. “Wouldn’t this be easier if we actually got to know each other? Or would you rather we remain basic strangers?”
“I do not prefer for us to remain strangers. To be quite blunt, Sera, I would prefer that we were once again as close as we were at the lake.” His eyes met and held mine as the breath I’d inhaled went nowhere. Heat crept into my veins as he dragged the edges of his fangs over his lower lip. I wanted that, too. Because of my duty, of course. “I want that very much, but some things are not up for discussion, Seraphena. That is one of them.”
I looked away, my shoulders tensing as I started to press him. I tamped down that desire, though. Not only because knowing more about him could prove…well, dangerous to my duty, but also because there were things I believed weren’t up for discussion. My mother. Tavius. The night I’d drunk the sleeping draft. The truth of what it had been like for me at home. I could understand that some things were just too hard to talk about.
A soft mewling sound drew my attention. I leaned forward as a small, greenish-brown, oval-shaped head appeared over the edge of the table.
My mouth dropped as I stared at the tiny draken as it stretched its long, slender neck and yawned.
Ash looked over with a raised eyebrow. “Huh. I didn’t even know she was in here.”
I dropped my napkin. “What is her name?”
“Jadis. But she has recently taken a liking to being called Jade,” Ash told me as the draken flapped a wing onto the table and scanned the many dishes. “I’m surprised it took her this long. Usually, she wakes at the first scent of food.”
The female draken squawked as she placed her front claws on the table. They were tiny but already sharp enough that they rapped off the wood. Her wings were thin and nearly translucent, and I swore her eyes doubled in size as she got an eyeful of the remaining food.
“How old is she?”
“She turned four a few weeks ago. She’s the youngest. Reaver—the one that was with Lailah the other day—is ten years old,” he said, and she hauled herself onto the table. He sighed. “Jadis, you know better than to be on the table.”
The little draken swung her head toward the Primal and made a soft trilling sound.
A smile appeared on Ash’s face. “Off.”
My eyes widened as the draken stomped its back foot and emitted a sharp cry.
“Off the table, Jadis,” Ash repeated with patient fondness.
The draken made a sighing sound and hopped down. Spike-tipped wings appeared over the edge of the table as she made quite the disgruntled-sounding yap.
Ash chuckled. “Come here, you little brat.”
Jumping down from the chair, Jadis’s claws tapped on the stone. Ash bent to the side, extending an arm. “She can’t fly yet,” he said as Jadis hopped onto his arm and then into his lap. She trilled, eyes glued to the plate of bacon. “She’s still got a few more months before she can hold her weight for any amount of time. Reaver is just learning to fly.”
I watched him reach over and pick up a slice of bacon. “Can you understand them in this form?”
“I’ve been around them enough to understand them when they’re like this,” he explained as Jadis munched away happily. “For the first s
ix months of their lives, they are in their mortal forms, and then they shift for the first time. They typically remain in draken form for the first several years. That’s not to say you won’t see them in their mortal forms, but I’ve been told it is more comfortable for them to be this way. They mature just like a god or a Primal does—like a mortal for the first eighteen or so years of their life. But during that time, they hit a rapid growth spurt in their draken form. Within a few years, they’ll be nearly Odin’s size, and by the age of maturity, the size of Nektas.”
It was hard to imagine the little thing now eating bacon growing to the size of the massive draken that had greeted us upon entering the Shadowlands. I thought of Davina. “How do they shift from something that’s the size of a mortal to Nektas’s size?” My brows pinched. “Unless he is an incredibly large male in that form, too?”
“He is about the same size as I am,” he said. That was large but nothing like the draken. “You would think it would be painful, but I’ve been told it’s like stripping off too-tight clothing.”
There had to be Primal magic involved. “How long do they live?”
“A very, very long time.”
“As long as the gods?”
“For some, yes.” He glanced over at me. “Reproducing is quite complicated, or so I’m told. One could go several centuries without a fledgling being born.”
Several centuries.
I sat back, swallowing heavily.
“That’s enough.” Ash moved the plate away when she made a grab for it. “Nektas will burn me alive if he finds out I’ve been feeding you bacon.”
“Is Nektas her father?”
“Yes.” His tone thickened as Jadis lifted her head and looked back at him. “Her mother died two years ago.”
My chest constricted. It made my heart ache to think of something so small being motherless.
Jadis lowered her head and vibrant, cobalt eyes met mine. She hummed, lifting her wings.
“She wants to come to you,” Ash told me. “Are you okay with that?”
I nodded quickly, and Ash lowered her to the floor. She was fast, reaching my side and rising onto her hind legs. “What do I do?”
“Just extend your arm. She’ll grab on without using her claws. Luckily, she’s past that stage,” he added with a mutter.
Yikes.
I did what Ash had instructed, and Jadis grabbed onto my arm without hesitation. The press of her paws was cool as she climbed up my arm and then hopped into my lap.
The draken stared at me.
I stared at her.
She made a bleating sound as she swished her tail over my leg.
“You can pet her. She’s not a serpent,” Ash said softly, and when I looked over at him, two of his fingers shielded a corner of his mouth. Clearly, he hadn’t forgotten my reaction to those snakes. “She likes the underside of her jaw rubbed.”
Hoping she didn’t view my finger as something as tasty as the bacon, I curled the side of my finger under her jaw. Her scales were bumpy where I imagined the frills would eventually grow around her neck. She immediately tucked her wings back and closed her eyes.
I grinned, a bit awed by the creature. “I still can’t believe I’ve seen draken—that I’m touching one,” I admitted, my grin spreading as she tilted her head. “I read about them in the books chronicling the history of the realms and had seen drawings of them. They were always written as dragons and not draken, but I don’t think many believed the dragons truly existed. I don’t even know if I did, to be honest.”
“It’s probably best that way,” Ash commented. “I do not think either would live very long in the mortal realm, neither draken nor mortal.”
I nodded as Jadis’s neck vibrated against my finger. Mortals tended to destroy things they’d never seen before or were afraid of. “I have a question that feels sort of inappropriate to ask in front of her.”
Ash laughed quietly. “I cannot wait to hear this.”
I wished he wouldn’t laugh. I liked the sound far too much. “Do they eat…?” I pointed at myself with my free hand.
He was smiling again, and that was another thing I wished he wouldn’t do. “They’re hunters by nature, so they eat almost anything—including mortals and gods.”
“Great,” I murmured.
“You shouldn’t worry about that. You’d have to really make a draken mad for it to want to eat you. We’re not nearly as tasty as we probably think we are. Too many bones and not enough meat, apparently.”
“That’s good, then.” I smiled as Jadis pressed her little head against my finger. “How do they act as your guards?”
Ash was quiet for several moments. “They know when a Primal they have become close to has been wounded. They can feel it. They will defend those Primals in certain situations.”
“Like what kinds of situations?”
He finished off his whiskey. “Any that doesn’t involve other Primals. They are forbidden to attack another Primal.”
“Did…did Nektas know what I did before, in the mortal realm, when you walked up on me without announcing your presence?”
“You mean, when you stabbed me in the chest?” He grinned.
“I don’t know why you’re smiling.”
His eyes had changed. They weren’t doing that swirling thing again, but they’d lightened to a shade of pewter. “Your unwillingness to say what you did gives me a little hope that I won’t have to fear another attack.”
“I wouldn’t get too comfortable with that belief,” I muttered. All at once, I wished I actually thought before I spoke—for many reasons.
He laughed, though, and his response equally amused me. I also felt something a lot like shame. “To answer your question, yes. Nektas knew something had happened,” he told me, and my heart skipped against my ribs. “He sensed that I wasn’t seriously injured, though.”
“I stabbed you—” Jadis nudged my hand because it had stopped moving. I returned to rubbing her.
“It was barely a flesh wound.”
“Barely a flesh wound?” I sputtered, offended.
“If you had managed to seriously injure me, Nektas would’ve come for me.”
“Even into the mortal realm?”
“Even there.”
Thank the gods I hadn’t seriously injured the Primal. If so, I’d be nothing but a pile of ashes. “How would he have felt it?”
“He’s bonded to me.” Ash paused. “All who reside here are bonded to me. Just as the draken in the other Courts are bonded to those Primals.”
I swallowed thickly at the further confirmation that I would not survive this. “I really need to get a better grip on my anger.”
Ash laughed. “I don’t know about that. Your anger is…”
“If you say amusing, I’m already going to fail at getting a handle on my anger.”
His answering smile evoked a whole other emotion, one I really hoped he couldn’t sense at the moment. “I was going to say interesting.”
“I’m not sure that’s any better.” I continued scratching Jadis under the jaw, pushing the bubbling unease aside. “I didn’t know about the bonding part.”
“Of course, not. Mortals have no need of that knowledge.” A couple of moments passed. “Not as scary as her father, is she?”
“No.” She was still happily vibrating. “She’s adorable.”
“I’ll remember you said that when she’s Nektas’s size.”
His teasing words sent my heart racing. She was several years away from Nektas’s size. And if I succeeded in my plans, neither of us would be here to see that.
“I assume you’re done with your breakfast?” Ash spoke, drawing me from my thoughts. I nodded. “Good. You and I need to talk, and I prefer to do that away from any potentially breakable items you may or may not want to throw.”
Chapter 27
Ash had taken Jadis as we stood, which was a good thing since I apparently wasn’t going to like anything he was about to say to me.
The small draken had immediately thrown herself over one of his shoulders, front and hind legs sprawled and wings lowered. I had to stop looking at her because she looked totally ridiculous and utterly adorable.
Saion was waiting for us in the hall. “Here,” Ash said to him and reached up, plucking Jadis off his shoulder. “We disturbed her morning nap, so she’s in need of another.”
The god’s forehead wrinkled as he took the limp draken. “And what am I supposed to do with her?” He held the draken the way I imagined one would hold a child that’d soiled itself.
Jadis squawked at him.
“Rock her to sleep,” Ash suggested, and I blinked. “She likes that.”
Saion stared at the Primal. “Rock her? To sleep? Seriously?”
“That’s what I do.” Ash shrugged. I was also gaping at him now. “It always works for me. If you don’t, she’ll resist falling asleep. Then she’ll get cranky, and you don’t want that. She’s been able to cough up sparks and some flames lately.”
“Great,” Saion muttered, draping the draken over one arm.
“Have fun.” Ash nodded at me to follow him, and it took me a moment to get my legs moving.
Glancing over my shoulder as we walked down the hall to our right, I saw Saion swinging his arms back and forth. “I don’t think he knows what rocking something to sleep means.”
Ash looked and laughed under his breath. “She’ll let him know soon enough.”
I dragged my gaze from what had to be one of the weirdest things I’d ever seen in my life.
“I thought this would be a good time to discuss your future here,” he said as we walked past the throne room.
“That sounds ominous.”
“Does it?”
“Yes.” I sighed. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a knack for decorating?”
“I’m a minimalist.”
That was an understatement.
I wondered what his private quarters looked like. Probably just the necessities. A nightstand. Wardrobe. Enormous bed. It felt like it went beyond minimalism, though. There were no paintings or sculptures, no banners or any other signs of life. The walls were as cold and hard as he was, so maybe that was just him.
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