“Did you believe it?” she asked.

I looked over at her. “Believe what?”

Her attention was fixed on the book she held. “You haven’t been listening.”

I hadn’t, so there was no point in lying.

“I was telling you what Phebe wrote about what Etris saw before she died—it doesn’t matter.” A breeze toyed with a lock of dark hair, sending it across her face as I wondered who in the fuck Phebe and Etris were. She looked over at me. “You matter to me.”

I stumbled, nearly tripping. “What?” I laughed.

Her stare was serious. “I just wanted you to know that. You matter to me.”

The smile slipped from my face. Did she know about the sleeping aid…? My chest turned to ice. How could she? Feeling my face warm, I shook my head. “Did this Phebe write in this book to tell you that?”

“Oh, yes. Most definitely.” She grinned, the hem of her gown snapping at her ankles as she began walking.

I remained where I was, palms damp. My chest clamped down—

My chest.

I saw tiny Jadis nestled against my chest, she and Reaver sleeping soundly. The image of them dispersed like smoke, replaced by flashes of Aios and Bele. Ector’s smile. Saion’s deep laugh…

Ash and I in the sweet-pea-smothered passageway of the Garden District before I knew it was him.

“I did not ask for your help,” I’d spat.

“But you have it nonetheless.”

My heart stuttered, and then I found us here, at this very lake, my head resting in his lap, his fingers a light touch on my arm. I thought maybe I’d fallen in love with him even then. I just hadn’t known. If I had…

The memory faded into a more recent one. I saw Ash and me at the coronation, looking at the golden swirls on our hands.

Ash had leaned back, one of those rare, genuine smiles on his face as he surveyed the crowd. “The Fates are capable of anything.”

“Liessa? Sera?”

The voice jarred me from the whirling memories. “Don’t leave me. Please.”

It was Ash, but he sounded different. Raw. Terrified. I’d never heard him so scared. “Please,” he pleaded. “Fucking Fates, I can’t lose you. I can’t…I love you. I do. Fates, I do. I fucking love you. How can I not? How can this not be love?” He screamed to the elms, or at least I thought he did. I wasn’t sure if it was him or if it only came from my mind. “I love you, even if I cannot. I’m in love with you.”

Then I wasn’t there.

I wasn’t anywhere but in death…

I love you.

Death wasn’t silent.

Or peaceful.

It sounded full of feral rage.

I love you, even if I cannot.

Death was a roar of fury and agony, the sound of a soul shattering.

Of a heart breaking.

I’m in love with you.

CHAPTER FORTY

I floated in the quiet darkness.

There was no pain. No happiness. No fear. No excitement. There was no sense of anything. I was just there. Who or what I was no longer mattered.

I was just an it.

A thing like every other living creature. A collection of differently shaped pieces meant to turn to ash…

Ash that would return to the earth, enriching the soil and providing for the life the lands gave birth to.

But the darkness wasn’t entirely silent. There was a distant hum. A whisper. A name being called. Begging. The far-away plea tugged at me.

Seraphena , child.

I stopped floating at the louder echo. That of a…soul. One I knew, because I had been something before I was nothing—someone who made up the collection of uneven pieces. I’d had a name.

Open your eyes, girl. The voice came again—an old, worn voice that belonged to…to…

Odetta.

She was a part of the cycle now, just as I was, right?

No, child, you’re not.

I cracked open my eyes. A pinprick of light appeared in the darkness, becoming a shade of swirling sapphire. Light sparked at its tail, and emerald shot out, wrapping itself around the blue. Rich brown followed, and then the three lights spun around a dark center.

In that center, there was a…a past. The past. A beginning of everything. And it started with a blast—an explosion that left small, throbbing lights behind as the raw energy rippled out, creating barren lands and mountains where there was nothing but emptiness before.

Those small, throbbing lights were stars—bright, brilliant stars. And after a time, they fell to lands no longer barren. Some fell where great winged creatures ruled while others fell to lands separated by sweeping bodies of water to the west and to the east. And those stars buried themselves deep in the ground—ground that eventually healed from their impacts. Soil that sprouted saplings, which grew into strong trees that fed what was buried deep beneath. Stars that were fed and nurtured and grown from the roots of the trees they’d given life to. Stars that stayed beneath the surface until they too were as strong as the trees, till they rose from the soil to walk as…

 Ancients.

I saw them, their ever-changing eyes full of their beginnings as warmth sparked inside me. That warmth filled all my different-shaped pieces as I saw a fire in the flesh, one that created the Primals. Crackling heat flooded my limbs as I heard the names they were called, both here and beyond, in unfamiliar lands full of towering cities and steel beasts.

Then I saw the Primal of Life, whose features were so painfully familiar. He reached into soil soaked with the blood of the draken he’d spent centuries cultivating, tending to with his breath and will, and the water and fire of the realms. He lifted a small babe, red-faced and howling. The babe’s eyes opened for the very first time, crimson that turned to a brilliant, stunning shade of the sky. Those eyes became a kaleidoscope of all the colors in the realms before changing to soft brown as the babe quieted upon seeing the Primal.

I saw the first mortal born, not in the image of the Primals and gods, but in the way of the Ancients, who were born of stars.

And I saw those Ancients rejoice in the continuation of life that had been shaped in their image. Then I saw that begin to change as those created in their image destroyed what came before the Primals, their very first creation—the realms themselves. And as the pulsing warmth expanded in my chest and shimmering silvery light appeared behind my eyes, I understood.

I understood.

The eather, the essence, had come from the stars that had fallen eons ago.

I understood.

Because I saw the Primals rise and the Ancients fall as my heart took its second first beat. I saw them faded into places of peace and rest. I saw many go to ground, and I saw that some remained to ensure what I now knew had to be more important than anything else.

There must always be balance, that life must always continue on. That death must always come.

I understood.

As the eather flowed into my fingers and down my legs, I saw the horror of what would happen if the cycle of life was broken. I heard the screams of thousands, of millions if death was vanquished, and I knew.

I knew that the Ancients who’d returned to the ground must never, ever return to the surface.

Because they were no longer the beginning of everything, the great creators, the givers of life and the balance that kept the realms stable.

 They were the end that would shake the realms, erupting the tallest mountains, spewing forth flames and clouds that would consume all in its path, turning day to night. They would boil the rivers and turn seas to deserts, laying utter waste to sprawling stone kingdoms and toppling those great steel cities in distant lands.