And that was something I’d realized on the journey back to Atlantia. There would be no more talks or ultimatums. What was to come couldn’t be stopped. It never could be. And in a way, the War of Two Kings had never ended. There had just been a strained truce, like Isbeth had said. All the years Casteel sought to move pieces behind the scenes, to free his brother and gain land for Atlantia hadn’t been wasted. It had given Atlantia time to gain what they didn’t have before.
“No,” Eloana agreed quietly, sadly. “Sometimes, it cannot.”
I glanced to where Hisa stood beside Naill. “Can you please send word to the Blood Crown that I will meet with them in the woods outside of Oak Ambler by the end of next week?” I told her. “Make sure they understand that whoever they send had better be fit to receive a Queen. That I will only speak to her or to the King.”
The corners of the commander’s lips curved up as she bowed at the waist. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“A message?” Eloana asked. “What are you planning?”
“First, I brought my friend back from Solis. The one I believed to have Ascended. She hasn’t, but she was wounded with what I believe was shadowstone, and my abilities aren’t working on her.” I dragged my palms over my knees. “Delano took Tawny to one of the rooms and summoned a Healer. I would ask that you look after her. She is…” I inhaled deeply. “She was my first friend.”
Eloana nodded. “Of course. I will do all that I can to help her.”
“Thank you.” I cleared my throat. “I’m going to take a bath.” A shower was… I couldn’t do that and not think of Casteel, and the only way I was surviving currently was by not thinking of him. “I’m going to Iliseeum. Once I return, I will send the Blood Queen the kind of message only Casteel would be proud of.”
“Knowing what my son would be proud of,” she said, voice thickening, “I can only imagine what kind of message that will be.”
I felt my lips curve up in a tight, savage smile. “And then I’m going to finish what you started centuries ago. I will return these lands to Atlantia, and I will return with my King at my side.”
Golden eyes locked with mine. “And if you fail?”
“I won’t.”
Chapter 49
I slept for a few hours and ate a couple of mouthfuls of food only because I had to. Then I dressed in breeches and a simple white shirt that belonged to Casteel. It was far too large, but the black bodice worn over the shirt kept me from swimming in it.
Many tunics and shirts of mine now lined the walk-in wardrobe, but it felt good to have Casteel’s shirt against my skin. And he’d liked it when I wore the bodice like this the…the last time I’d seen him.
I stopped at the bed, my gaze straying to the nightstand, to the little wooden horse. My heart squeezed. I hurried over to it, taking the toy in my hands. In the chest by the doorway, I found a pouch. Placing the horse in it, I left the bedchamber and then the quarters as I tied the bag to my waist.
I checked on Tawny, finding her the way I’d left her—asleep and far too still. The dark veins had traveled to the curve of her chin. Eloana sat at her side. “I summoned Willa,” she said, and the breath I took was painful. “She will bring one of the oldest Healers. He will know how to treat her.”
“Thank you,” I said, inhaling and exhaling slowly.
She nodded. “Be careful, Penellaphe.”
“Always,” I whispered and then left the room, my chest aching.
Kieran waited for me in the foyer, and from there, we joined Hisa in the Temple of Nyktos. It would only be the two of us who made the trip this time. Vonetta would remain as their parents were en route to Evaemon with their new sibling. I’d told Kieran that he should stay, but that had gone in one ear and out the other, even when I pulled the Queen card and then the I-am-a-god-obey-me line. He insisted on accompanying me, claiming that none of the others would remember the path we’d taken last time. Maybe he was right. Maybe he just couldn’t sleep or stay still either, his thoughts swirling from one horrific possibility to another. What if my plan failed? What if the draken refused? What if she hurt Casteel? What if he needed to feed? What if I needed…to feed? What would I do? I couldn’t even think about drinking another’s blood. What if I lost him? What if he lost himself again?
And I knew this wasn’t easy for Kieran. Before, he had been able to tell how Casteel was doing because of the bond. He didn’t have that now. He just had all the what-ifs I had.
“Kieran?” I asked as we made our way down the narrow tunnel.
“Poppy?”
I swallowed, my throat dry. “Are you…are you doing okay?”
He didn’t answer right away, and I thought the hand he held the torch with trembled. “No.”
I briefly closed my eyes.
“Are you?”
“No,” I whispered.
We traveled the windy underground tunnels, mostly in silence after that. There were no jokes, no real conversation at all. We passed the area of the partial collapse hours before we had the first time, and I moved ahead of him when we saw the pinprick of light. I worked my way out, and then we crossed the barren land. Making our way, I made sure it was I who stepped under the shadow of the winged women. The ground didn’t tremble. What I believed were the Consort’s guards remained under our feet. The city of Dalos shimmered in the distance as we walked toward the shadowstone Temple.
The first thing I noticed was there was no slumbering stone draken. “Where is….?”
“There.” Kieran’s steps slowed as I followed his gaze to the Temple stairs. A man with black hair streaked with silver stood in the center of them, dressed in black pants and nothing else. “You think that’s Nektas?” he asked, his voice low. “In his mortal form?”
“Maybe.” Shards of diamonds crunched under my boots.
“The wolven is correct,” the man spoke, and my brows lifted. The draken’s hearing was extraordinary. “You have returned several members less than the last time. That does not bode well.”
I stiffened as I stopped many yards from the Temple.
“If you are seeking Nyktos, you are not in luck,” Nektas continued. “He has joined his Consort once more in sleep.”
“I’m not here to see Nyktos,” I said, taking in the fine ridges all along his back. They looked like…scales.
“I understand.” A heartbeat of silence. “Or is it that you now understand the power you wield?”
Wanting to know how the draken was aware of my epiphany, I glanced at Kieran. He sent me a look that said he knew I was about to ask a rather irrelevant question.
I fought the urge and won. “I understand.”
His head tilted, but he still did not look at us. “Before you speak, you must be sure, for these words cannot be rescinded. Once you summon the flesh and fire of the gods, to protect and serve you, to keep you safe, they will be cast in fire and carved in flesh.”
My mouth dried. “I’m sure.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“The Blood Crown took what is mine. They took everything from me, and they will continue taking everything.”
“And?” he queried quietly. “You seek to use us to take everything from the Blood Crown, then? To destroy them, the cities they protect themselves in, and those who stand between you and them?”
I pressed the marriage imprint against the pouch that held the toy horse. “I seek the aid of the draken to fight the Revenants and the Ascended—to fight beside Atlantia. I do not seek to destroy the cities or kill those caught between them and me. For the most part, the people of Solis are innocent.”
“You seek to fight with the guards of the gods at your side, but you do not expect cities to fall?” He barked out a short laugh. “You are not ready for war.”
“You misunderstand,” I stated carefully. “Or I misspoke. I do not seek to do those things, but I understand that they may be necessary. I am ready for war. I would not be here if I wasn’t. But I do not plan to soak the lands with blood and leave n
othing but ruins behind.”
There was a beat of silence. “Then you plan to take what is owed you and bear the weight of two Crowns?”
I forced my hands to loosen. “Yes.”
His head bowed slightly. “And will you help bring back what was ours to protect? What will allow the Consort to wake?”
Kieran sent me a glance of concern, and I really had no idea what Nektas was speaking of or what would happen if the Consort awakened. But I asked, “What is it that I need to help bring back?”
“Your father.”
I opened my mouth, but it took several moments for me to find the ability to speak. “Malec?”
“Malec is lost to us. He was lost to us long before any of us realized.”
Confusion swept through both Kieran and me. “I don’t understand,” I started. “Malec is—”
“Malec is not your father,” Nektas said. “The blood that courses through you is that of Ires, his twin.”
Shock rolled through me as I stared at the draken’s back. Isbeth…she hadn’t confirmed that Malec was my father…and she had spoken of Malec in the past tense, as if she believed that he was gone. Oh my gods, Isbeth didn’t know where Malec was, and…
“Ires was lured from Iliseeum some time ago,” Nektas said. “Drawn into the realm with my daughter while we slept. We have not been able to look for Ires. Not without being summoned, and he…he has not called for us. But we know he lives.”
My thoughts raced, settling on the painting I’d seen in the museum of Nyktos and the two…the two large cats. “Oh, gods…”
“What?” Kieran looked at me.
I swallowed, almost afraid to ask. “Could Ires shift forms?”
“He, like his father, could take other forms. While Nyktos preferred that of a white wolf, Ires was often fond of taking the shape of a large gray cat, much like Malec.”
“Fuck,” Kieran whispered.
I…I could only stand there while it felt like my heart had dropped out of my body. “I saw him,” I uttered. “We both did.”
The muscles along Nektas’s back rippled and flexed. “How?”
“He was…he was caged by the one who took Casteel,” I said. I had only briefly considered that the creature I’d seen in the cage had been Malec, but at that time, we’d believed Malec to be a deity. Not Nyktos’s son. Not a twin. “The Blood Queen,” I rasped, reeling. “She…she says she’s a god because Malec Ascended her.”
“A god?” A rough, dark laugh left the ancient draken. “A god is born. Not created. What she is…she, like the Revenants, are an abomination of all that is godly.”
Casteel…he had been right.
Nektas’s hands closed into fists. “Then your enemy is truly an enemy of ours.”
Shaken by the revelation, I pressed the heel of my palm to my chest. How had Isbeth lured a god? Had Malec shared something with her? “Your daughter? Do you know if she lives?”
Nektas did not answer for a long time. “I do not know. She was young when we went to sleep, into statas. She was barely on the cusp of adulthood when Ires woke her.”
“What is her name?” Kieran asked.
“Jadis.”
“That’s a pretty name,” I said, briefly closing my eyes. I wished I hadn’t. I saw the too-thin man behind the bone bars, his features mirroring the chaos of his mind. I saw the far-too-intelligent eyes of the cat. My father. And I had left him there. I shuddered.
I couldn’t…I couldn’t let myself go there.
The possibility that Isbeth had a draken locked away somewhere was something I would have to file away for the moment, right along with the knowledge of who my father was and the questions surrounding how he and Isbeth had come together. All I could focus on was what I knew now.
That my father was a victim of Isbeth’s, too.
And I thought of Malec, entombed beneath the Blood Forest. “If a god of Primal blood was entombed, what happens to them?”
“Entombed by the bones of the deities? They would simply waste away, day by day, year by year, but they would not die,” he answered. “They would just exist in a place between dying and death, alive but trapped.”
Gods.
That was an even more horrifying outcome than the deities slowly starving to death, but that meant that Malec was still alive, and Isbeth still loved him.
Nektas’s skin had hardened into scales. “Are you ready, daughter of Ires, the son of Nyktos and his Consort?”
A tremble coursed through me. “Yes.”
“Then speak the words and receive what you’ve come for.”
My skin tingled, and my chest throbbed. Kieran’s hand closed around mine. He squeezed. A soft breeze came from nowhere, swirling across the diamonds. The scent of lilacs reached me, and then I heard her voice among my thoughts—heard the Consort speaking the words Nektas waited for. “I...I summon the flesh and fire of the gods, to protect me and those I care for. To ride at my side and stand guard at my back. I call upon the bloodline birthed of flesh and fire to awaken.”
Nektas turned his head to the side, the vibrant blue of his irises a stark contrast to the pitch-black of the vertical pupil.
The ground trembled and gave a low rumble. Kieran’s grip on my hand tightened as we took several steps back. Dirt and small diamonds spilled into the air around the base of the Temple. Chunks of crystal exploded out to the sides. Gleaming talons stretched out from the dust, sinking into the black stone. A large, leathery shape cut through the cloud of debris, arcing high as dozens of claws carved into the tower from all sides. They erupted from the earth below, pulling their scaled, winged bodies out of the soil. They climbed the sides of the tallest spire, one after another, their grayish-black tails whipping through the air. The first reached the top— its deep-purple-black scales glimmering under the sun as it shook the dirt from its body. Stretching out its long neck, frills of spikes opened around its head as its wide mouth dropped open, and a deafening roar rattled my bones.
Nektas faced me. “From this moment to the last moment, they are yours, Queen of Flesh and Fire.”
My breath caught, burning my throat as wisps of smoke wafted from the purple-black creature’s nostrils. It opened its jaws and let out another rumbling roar. Flames spilled from its mouth, a rolling tide of silvery-white flames. It launched from the obsidian tower, rocketing into the sky, its wings unfurling and sending a gust of wind over the ground. The others called out, their shrieks turning into keening calls. Awakened from their deep sleep, dozens of draken followed, leaping from the tower and taking flight, one after the other. They flew toward the Mountains of Nyktos and then, eventually, they would take flight for Solis.
For Carsodonia.
Chapter 50
“You need to wake soon. There are draken here,” I told Tawny. “Actual draken.”
She didn’t awaken, but the blackness in her veins had stopped spreading. Whatever the Healer Willa had brought with her had given Tawny was working. It was also changing her.
Her golden bronze curls were now bone-white. Somehow, the snowy hair made her all the more stunning.
“The draken are beautiful.” I smoothed back a curl. “If a bit…temperamental. They have been asleep for a very long time, so I suppose they’re allowed to be grumpy.”
“Grumpy?” Kieran snorted, surprising me. I hadn’t heard him come in. He’d been with Vonetta, spending time with their parents and their new sister. If he was here, I knew what that meant. “More like bitey.”
“You deserved it,” I reminded him as I fixed the blanket around Tawny. “He got too close to one while he was resting. Almost lost a hand.”
“More like an arm,” he muttered.
I looked over my shoulder. “I don’t think bitey is a word, by the way.”
“It’s not?” Kieran murmured, looking past me, to where Tawny lay. “She looks better.”
“She does.” I faced her. “It’s time?”
“Yes.”
Giving her hand one last squeeze,
I placed it on the bed. I rose and smoothed a hand over a similar outfit to the one I’d worn to Iliseeum. The bodice was of thicker fleece material, though. Colder weather had arrived in much of Solis.
“I’ll be back….” I leaned over, pressing my lips to her warm forehead. “I’ll just be back. I promise.”
It took less than half a day to travel to the northern-most point of Atlantia, to the wall which ran all the way to the Pillars of Atlantia outside of Saion’s Cove. There, I was reunited with Setti. I stroked his nose and scratched his ear. I hoped he took it easy with me. My horsemanship was seriously lacking, and he, well, there was a reason he was named after the God of War’s warhorse.
“Incoming,” Kieran murmured.
Over my shoulder, I saw Casteel’s father approaching, his chest and shoulders covered in gold and silver armor, a helmet tucked under his arm. My stomach tightened. I had only seen him once since I initially returned to Evaemon, and that was brief, a passing in the halls. He’d immediately returned to the northern part of the kingdom.
Wolven stirred from the grass, lifting their heads as he neared. Valyn bowed, and they went back to napping or daydreaming or whatever it was that they had been doing.
“You still plan to send your message?” Valyn asked, his gaze flickering to where the crown rested on my head. I didn’t know what made me decide to wear it, but it was there and it felt right.
I nodded. “It is what Casteel would do.” And I knew that was true.
Valyn made a sound of agreement, and several moments of silence passed. I took a deep breath. “I’ll get him back,” I promised. “We will get him back. I swear.”
Swallowing thickly, he nodded as he looked over at me. “I know you will.” He paused. “My son is a very lucky man to have found you and made himself yours.”
His words embraced my wounded heart, and the acceptance behind them choked me. It took me a moment to speak. “It is I who is lucky to have been found by your son and to have become his.”
The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood And Ash Series Book 3) Page 64