I caught his arm. “Once again.” I twisted, breaking the bone. My smile grew as his eyes squeezed shut. “You’re clearly not clever.”

Spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor, he lifted his head. “You were much easier to deal with when you were caged.”

Fury gathered in the back of my throat, tasting of ash. I gripped his chin as the air around me charged.

“Sera,” Nektas called. “He wouldn’t have been able to shadowstep into this realm. He was brought here.”

I inhaled sharply. Nektas was right. I’d been too angry to consider that. “Who brought you here?”

Callum didn’t answer, his gaze focused on the eather singeing his flesh.

“Did he come with another?” Nektas demanded of those at the table.

“Not that we are aware of,” Ezra answered. “He’s been here for a couple of days, though.”

My brows raised. “You’ve been here that long? What the fuck, Callum?”

“There was a lot to tell them,” he rasped. “You know, like how you looked behind gilded bars.”

That was it.

Callum knew it, too. His eyes flared wide. “Shit.”

Eather erupted from my fingers, burning the skin of his chin. I willed the essence inside the Revenant like I’d seen Ash do. I pushed it in, flooding him.

Callum jerked wildly, his arms flying out from his sides. A scream of pain tore from his throat as the eather pounded through his veins. His body stiffened as the silvery-gold stream of eather pouring from his mouth cut off his scream. His eyes sizzled, then popped. Thick globs of watery red liquid spilled down his cheeks and over my fingers.

“I think…” Marisol gagged. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Callum went limp.

I released him, watching him fall to the floor in a crumpled heap, smoke drifting from his ears and the charred holes where his eyes had been.

A body hit the floor behind me, and Lord Faber shouted as Marisol yelled, “Mother!”

Nektas’s heavy sigh echoed through the chamber as I knelt, wiping my fingers clean on the front of Callum’s tunic. I rose then and turned.

“Is he dead?” Ezra asked as she clutched Marisol’s back. Lord Faber held his wife’s prone form in his lap as Marisol knelt beside them, dabbing a damp napkin at her mother’s temples.

I focused on Ezra. Her white knuckles were the only indication that she wasn’t as calm as she appeared. “Unfortunately, no.”

“Unfortunately?” my mother repeated, her eyes wide and the skin at her mouth white as she stared at my hand.

“He’ll be back to his obnoxious self sooner rather than later.” I glanced down, thinking I had missed some gore but hadn’t. She was staring because gold swirled along the flesh of my hand and arm. Probably my face, too. I willed the eather to calm. “Well.” I sighed. “This wasn’t how I expected to break the news. I’m sure you are all a bit confused.”

“Confused?” Mother laughed in a way I’d never heard her before. She sounded nervous and…horrified. “What are you?”

I stiffened, bracing myself against the old, familiar sting. I’d known it was coming, but fuck, it still burned.

Nektas stepped forward. “This is your mother?”

I cleared my throat, blinking rapidly. “Yes.”

“I see the resemblance.” A curtain of red-streaked hair fell over one bare shoulder. “And yet you clearly don’t know who your daughter is.” His head straightened. “But you’re about to find out.”

I started to frown, but then I felt it. The throb of awareness I didn’t just feel in the center of my chest but also in my bones and soul.

Uh-oh.

The chamber started to shake, stirring Lady Faber from her faint. “What is…what is happening now?”

Marisol grasped her hand. “I’m not entirely sure.”

The dishes began to rattle, and thin fissures appeared in the marble tile. A blast of thunder shook the chamber, exploding the glasses on the table.

“Oh, no.” Ezra threw up her hands, causing her short, ivory waistcoat to rise above her slender hips. “We just repaired the Great Hall from the last time.”

I shot her an incredulous look as a laugh built in my throat.

“It was horridly loud—the stone and hammers,” she said. “And I swear they only banged those damn hammers when I got a few minutes to read.”

“Really, Ezra?” Marisol said under her breath. “Is now a good time to mention that? When another god is about to appear?”

“God?” Ezra laughed lightly. “That is no god coming. It is a Primal.”

Lord Faber’s mouth dropped open.

Cracks ran up the walls and over the ceiling, sending dust falling. I winced, thinking there would be far more banging hammers in Ezra’s future.

A gust of cold wind whipped through the dining hall as shadowy mist began seeping from the small cracks in the floor.

“What have we done to anger the gods?” Lady Faber whispered, staring up at me as her husband and daughter helped her to her feet.

“It wasn’t you.” Nektas looked pointedly in my mother’s direction.

She didn’t move.

“Does he really need to do all of this?” I asked.

Nektas smiled. “He does like to make an entrance.”

The air warped a few feet to my right and a ball of crackling eather appeared. The orb expanded, thinning and stretching to roughly accommodate the height of a damn giant. Icy power drenched the dining hall as the tear in the realms split wide open. Thick mist rolled out, pooling on the floor as Ash arrived, dressed as he had been when I’d left him in the Shadowlands: black breeches and a loose, linen shirt. He looked every inch a Primal of Death.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Ash’s eather-streaked gaze immediately found mine. “What happened?”

Pursing my lips, I crossed my arms. “Was that really necessary?”

“I felt your anger but decided to let it go. I knew you were okay.” He frowned, glancing at the others. All of them had lowered themselves to their knees, including my mother. At least, I believed she had. I couldn’t see her anymore, so she was either on her knees or hiding beneath the table. “But then I felt your pain.”

“I’m not hurt,” I told him.

Ash was in front of me in a heartbeat, his hand on my cheek. “It was not physical pain.”

My breath snagged. “This one-way-sensing-emotion thing is so damn annoying.”

“What…?” Ash’s eyes narrowed as he finally became aware of Callum’s body. “What the fuck is he doing here?”

“That’s what I was trying to figure out before you decided to show off,” I told him. “Well, before I did that to him anyway.”

Ash’s gaze swung back to mine, and his voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke. “I know it cannot be him who caused that reaction.”

“It wasn’t,” Nektas interjected. “And you arrived at the perfect time. I was about to explain to her so-called mother who her daughter is.”

Eather swirled madly through Ash’s eyes, and his jaw hardened.

His gaze remained fastened to mine as he said, “Rise.”

I tensed because I knew that tone of voice.

Gowns whispered over marble, and feet shuffled as I touched his arm. “Ash.”

His thumb smoothed over my lower lip. “I love you.”

I opened my mouth, but he silenced me with a kiss. And, gods, he kissed me like a man coming out of a drought, sipping and savoring until I felt a bit weak in the knees. There was no reason for him to kiss me like that in front of everyone, including my mother. Not that I was complaining, but my face felt like it was on fire.

Ash lowered his hand and stepped back. He faced those now standing at the table. Poor Lady Faber looked like she might pass out again as she smoothed a trembling hand over her gray-streaked midnight hair.

Lady Faber need not worry, though. Ash was focused on my mother like a predator when they spotted their prey.

“Your daughter is brave. More courageous than most. She is loyal, even to those who do not deserve such,” Ash said, and his tone said he was talking about the present company as he stepped toward the table. Shadows peeled away from the corner of the lamplit chamber and gathered at Ash’s booted feet. “And she cares deeply for others, even for those who, yet again, are not deserving.”