Oh, damn, I shouldn’t have said that. Shock had gotten the better of me. “I…I don’t know what you mean—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not.” A hiss of pain went through me as his grip tightened on my arm, stoking the already thrumming embers.

His wild stare dropped to the diamond I still held. He sucked in a sharp breath and lifted the arm of the hand that held the diamond so it was in my face. “What did you see?” Kolis shook me, causing my head to snap back and then forward again.

A burst of sharp pain radiated down my spine. My already too-tight skin prickled as I gripped his arm.

He reached across the arm holding me and pried the diamond free from my grasp, throwing it into the air. My eyes shot to it, my gaze following The Star as it returned to the cage’s ceiling, once more becoming the cluster of diamonds.

The milky streaks of silvery light throbbed down upon us.

I shuddered.

Because I now knew what was in that diamond.

What had witnessed everything that had happened in this cage.

The center of my chest throbbed as Kolis shook me like I was nothing more than a rag doll.

Fangs protruded below his fleshless lips. “Me? The King of Gods. And you? A once frightened maiden turned whore?”

My grip on his arm loosened as I stared at him. The blank canvas was nowhere to be found as the embers inside me swelled. There was nothing but messy rage—hot, powerful fury. The edges of my vision turned white. I thrust my hands out, slamming them into his chest as power flooded my veins.

I saw a flicker of shock on Kolis’s face that echoed through me before he released me. I fell to the floor, almost toppling as he skidded backward from the blast of eather. He caught himself before he slammed into the bars. There was a brief moment when I realized that I shouldn’t have been able to do that to him in here, surrounded by shadowstone and the bones of the Ancients.

I shouldn’t have been able to summon that storm to frighten Callum, either, but the embers…

Chest heaving, Kolis lifted his head. Through the curtain of blond hair, I saw that his eyes had turned into pools of endless nothingness, and his skin had thinned, revealing the bone beneath.

 “Then you’ve seen death,” Callum had said when I’d told him I’d seen Kolis’s true form. “True death. No one sees that and lives very long afterward.”

Panting, I took a step back, bumping into the wooden column at the foot of the bed.

“What did I tell you about using those embers?” he seethed.

Warning bells went off, kicking off instincts that told me I was in danger. My gaze flicked to the closed cage door. I pushed off the column—

Kolis was on me before I took an actual step, his hand at my throat again. Gasping for any breath possible, I clutched his arm as he abruptly pulled me away from the column and lifted me into the air. My eyes went wide as my feet dangled.

“I want you to remember one thing.” There wasn’t a strip of flesh left on his face. “Do not blame me for my actions. You caused this.”

Suddenly, the pressure around my throat was gone. There was a moment of confusion as I found myself suspended in the air, then I went flying backward.

I hit the bed hard, the soft mattress doing very little to lessen the impact. Air punched from my lungs, momentarily stunning me into immobility as Kolis levitated, the bones of his chest and arms becoming visible beneath the crackling eather.

Instinct took over. There would be no pacifying him. No manipulating him with kind words. I knew at the very core of my being that I needed to get away from him.

Flipping onto my stomach, I rose onto my knees, making a mad scramble for the other side of the bed. The distance wouldn’t do much, but—

I shouted as Kolis was suddenly behind me, shoving me flat onto my stomach. There was no time for me to react. He grabbed hold of my hair, yanking my head back so far that I thought my spine would crack. I saw The Star above me, silvery light racing across it. Fury crashed into the building panic as Kolis forced my head to the side. I tried to get my hands under me and push up, to move him off me, but he was too heavy and strong.

“Get off me!” I screamed.

His weight kept me flat, and the feeling of him against me, against my backside, was unbearable, robbing the breath from my lungs. I couldn’t breathe.

Panic exploded in my gut then, so all-consuming and intense that the golden cage around me vanished for an instant, replaced by the bare stone walls of my bedchamber in Wayfair. It wasn’t Kolis bearing down on me, it was Tavius. I was there. I was here. Trapped. Unable to breathe. Unable to do anything to protect myself against my stepbrother or against Kolis as his breath coasted over my exposed throat. I knew his fangs would soon tear into my skin. And I also knew it wouldn’t stop there. Not this time.

There was nothing I could do. I was weaponless. Powerless. Nothing I did would change that. No amount of training or preparation would help. But those embers…

They belonged to the Primal of Life.

And they now belonged to me.

They were powerful enough for Rhain to tell me to bring the building down. They were formidable enough to restore life, to break through the negating effects of shadowstone. My wild gaze landed on the bars.

“Clearly, the bones of the Ancients can be destroyed,” I’d said to Attes.

“Only by two Primals.”

The Primal of Death.

And the Primal of Life.

My heart thudded as Kolis twisted my head back. I saw The Star once more.

The embers of the Primal of Life were capable of so much, but my will…

My will was capable of anything.

Because I was not weak.

I was not powerless.

The embers hummed. The sharp glide of Kolis’s fangs scraped my throat. I wouldn’t let this happen. I refused to.

I didn’t lose control.

I fucking took it.

Summoning the essence to the surface, I welcomed the heady rush of power as it poured into my chest and veins. I embraced the all-consuming rage that I’d pushed down when he held me at night, when I realized he’d manipulated me into killing Evander, when I smiled at him and thanked him for his hollow compliments, when he offered me to Kyn, when he bit me and found pleasure doing so, and so many other times. I let in the fury that had been building in me for the days, weeks, months, and years that had ticked by, and the centuries that didn’t belong to me. As my vision turned silver, I felt Sotoria rise inside me, and it was she who screamed, “Get off us!”

Kolis froze against me.

The burst of power rippled out from me in every direction, throwing the false King off me. I heard him hit the bars this time, his grunt of surprise giving way to a sound of pain.

Energy and essence pumped through my muscles, lighting up every cell in my being, and I knew then that I was truly more than just a few embers.

I was them.

They were me.

What I wanted. What I thought.

It became reality.

In the blink of an eye, I was on my feet, but I didn’t run for the door. Slowly, I turned to where Kolis now stood. He was more bones than flesh.

Death stood before me.

But I was Life.

“Us?” he whispered.

Eather roared to the surface of my skin, spinning down my arms. Screaming, I threw my hands out to either side. Another blast of energy left me, evaporating the divan and the table. The bed rose as an area rug and stacks of untouched books crumbled. The privacy screen collapsed as everything not bolted down in the bathing chamber took to the air. I caught sight of the damn key I’d hidden away but never had a chance to use. It disintegrated. The gilded bars exploded, sending shards flying outward.

“I am done with this,” I whispered—or screamed, I couldn’t be sure. However loud it was, eather filled my voice, and it sounded like air that carried the winds of time, rushing beyond the half-destroyed cage and speeding into the chamber beyond. The throne Kolis had sat upon shattered into dust as the essence—as my will—poured from the narrow windows along the ceiling.