I stared at him, my heart slowing. I wasn’t there. I didn’t feel the cool tile under my knees or the too-tight, rough rope around my wrists. I donned the veil. I retreated into myself, but I didn’t fade to nothing. I wasn’t an empty vessel. The canvas wasn’t blank. Something dark and tremendous sparked inside me, like a violent strike against flint. An icy fire was birthed in the center of my chest. It poured through my body, filling all those hollow places. My blood hummed, and the center of my chest throbbed. I tasted shadow and death in the back of my throat as that icy fire burned through me. I lifted my eyes to Tavius’s, the corners of my lips curling up.

I heard words pass my lips, sentences full of smoke. “I’m going to kill you.” I barely recognized the voice as mine. “I will slice the hands from your body and then carve your heart from your chest before setting it on fire. I will watch you burn.”

Tavius’s pupils expanded. “You…you stupid bitch.”

I laughed. I didn’t even know where the laugh had come from, but it felt ancient and endless. And it wasn’t mine. I thought Tavius heard it. For a second, I swore I saw fear in his eyes. Doubt. For just a second, and then his lips curled into a sneer.

“You won’t be doing anything, sister. I doubt you’ll be able to even speak your name by the time I’m through with you. You’ll be broken,” he swore. “You will respect me.”

“Never,” I whispered and then looked away, focusing on the stone hand holding the hilt of the spear.

Seconds ticked by as Tavius remained kneeling beside me, his chest rising and falling rapidly. I stayed in that faraway place where nothing but icy fire filled my insides, leaving no room for dread or fear or anything else. When Tavius rose, I felt nothing but the kiss of promised retribution. When he walked behind me, I held my chin high. When he roughly tossed my braid over my shoulder, exposing my back, I didn’t move. When the air cracked again, I didn’t flinch.

The snapping pain streaked across my back, from my shoulders to my waist, sudden and intense. A harsh breath punched out of me. That was the only sound in the Great Hall. The Royal Guards remained silent. Tavius didn’t even speak. I forced myself to breathe through the pain.

The whistle of the whip was the only warning. I braced myself, but there was no way to prepare. No breathing exercise to ease what was to come. Fiery pain erupted as my entire body jerked forward and then fell back as far as the ropes would allow. I shuddered, telling myself that I could handle this. Tavius wasn’t strong enough to break skin.

He was the weak one.

The night rail slipped down my arms, gaping in the front as I slowly rightened myself. As soon as I could, I would carry out my promise. I would cut off his hands and feed that whip to him until he choked on it. I would carve out his heart and then watch him burn.

“Look at you.” There was a thickness to Tavius’s voice. He snapped the whip off the tile, and my entire body flinched. He laughed. “Still so defiant, but it’s an act. You’re afraid. Weak. Would you like me to stop? You know what to say.”

I turned my head to the side, seeing him through the strands of hair that had slipped free. He was standing behind me. “Tavius,” I said between gritted teeth. “Please…kindly go fuck yourself.”

Someone inhaled sharply—one of the Royal Guards. I heard boots shuffling, but Tavius laughed again, cursing me. I could make out him lifting the whip, and I closed my eyes.

“What in the gods’ name are you doing, Tavius?” My mother’s voice suddenly rang out through the Great Hall. My eyes flew open to see them both garbed in the white of mourning. She gasped. “Dear gods—”

“Have you lost your senses?” Ezra. That was her. The flare of stinging pain along my back faded as I saw her standing next to my mother. “My gods, what is wrong with you?”

“First off, neither of you two addressed me appropriately. But given the shock of the last several hours, I will let it slide,” Tavius stated calmly, unbothered by their reaction. “As for what I’m doing, it is what should’ve been done—” He staggered to the side, eyes widening as he stared at the floor. “What the…?”

Ezra had come to a stop on the steps. A blur of plum and gold poured in through the open doors of the Great Hall as Royal Guards arrived, and under me, the petals vibrated as the floor trembled. Thin fissures formed in the tile and ran across the carved caligae enclosing Kolis’s feet. I watched as the tiny splinters traveled up the stone legs. Confused, I lifted my head. What in the world…?

A blast of thunder shook the entire Great Hall. Someone cried out. Delicate flutes left behind on trays and tables exploded. Chairs toppled. Tables shattered. Plaster fell from the columns and walls as cracks raced up pillars and screamed across the ceiling’s glass dome.

A gust of icy wind whipped through the Great Hall, and the air…the air charged with power. The hairs all along my body rose as a faint mist seeped out from the fissures in the floor.

Eather.

Tavius took a step back as the space between us began to vibrate. Air crackled and hissed, emanating silvery-white sparks that swirled and lashed through the space just as the whip had. Then the very realm tore open.

And darkness tinged in silver spilled out from the tear, splashing on the floor and rising in a thick, dark, swirling mist. In the throbbing mass, a tall form could be seen as thick tendrils curled through the air, spreading across the floor, forming a pillar of night and then another, completely obscuring all others in the Hall. In each column of churning shadows, a form took shape. As the shadows—all of them that filled the Hall—retracted as if drawn back to him.

I knew who stood in the center without even seeing his face or any features inside the pulsing mass of midnight that stretched up and outward in the shape of massive wings that blocked the sun’s light.

Death had finally returned.

Chapter 20

There were only ten beings in either realm that were powerful enough to tear open the realms.

A Primal.

But as the shadows stopped the maddening spinning, and the shape of wings became nothing more than a hazy outline, I saw who stood in the center, and it made no sense.

Because it was him. The Shadowlands god.

Ash.

He looked over his shoulder at me, the striking planes of his features a brutal set of harsh lines. I stared at him, my heart thumping. His skin…it had thinned, taking on a silvery-white glow. The breath I took lodged in my throat.

Oh, gods…

The silver of his irises seeped throughout his entire eyes until they were iridescent. They crackled with power—the kind that could unravel entire realms with just a lift of a finger. A web of veins appeared on his cheeks, spreading across his throat and down his arms under the silver band on his right biceps then traveling along the swirling shadows that had gathered under his skin. He was…he was like the brightest star and the deepest night sky given mortal form. And he was utterly beautiful in this form, wholly terrifying.

The buzz of incredulity filled me, throwing me straight into denial because it couldn’t be.

It couldn’t have been him this entire time.

“Who…who are you?” Tavius rasped.

Slowly, his head turned to where my stepbrother stood. “I am known as the Asher,” he said, and I shuddered. Is it short for something, I’d asked when he told me his name. It is short for many things. “The One who is Blessed. I am the Guardian of Souls and the Primal God of Common Men and Endings.” His voice traveled through the Great Hall, and absolute silence answered. I could barely force air through my lungs. “I am Nyktos, ruler of the Shadowlands, the Primal of Death.”