“No. It wasn’t.” My gaze shifted to the plates. “I was…treated more like a guest than a prisoner.”

Cold air blasted off Ash. “A guest kept in a cage?”

“A reluctant guest,” I amended, feeling my chest knot. “But you don’t have to worry about that. Kolis didn’t do anything like that.” A moment passed, then another. No longer thirsty, I placed the glass on the table. “Did he use food in that way with you?”

“He did.”

I briefly closed my eyes as fury rose, stoking the embers. I had to take a deep breath. “I hate him,” I said, folding my hand over his. “I really—wait.” I looked down at our joined hands, realizing just then that his skin didn’t feel as cold as it had the night before. Or this morning, when we woke, even. “Your skin is a little warmer.”

He reached over and picked up the glass with his other hand. “Feels the same to me,” he said, taking a sip. “It does taste good.” He tipped the glass back, eyeing the contents. “Probably could get by with one or three less strawberries.”

“I like it sweet,” I murmured, sliding my hand up the corded muscle of his forearm. Maybe it was my imagination? It must have been because Ash hadn’t fed since I’d awakened from stasis.

“While I don’t mind that you’re feeling up my arm,” he drawled, “if you continue, I’m afraid I’ll never make it to Vathi.”

I pulled my hand away and cleared my throat. “I wish I could go with you.”

“I wish you would talk to me.”

My head cut to his. “About what?”

“That’s another long list,” he stated. “But we can start with what you were dreaming about last night.”

A thin breath of air made it past my lips. “I already told you. I don’t remember. So, you can go ahead and remove that from the list.”

Tension bracketed his mouth as he looked away, and I knew that what I’d suspected last night was true.

He didn’t believe me.

“Would you like me to remind you?” he said quietly.

I stared at him, my heart thumping as it began to race.

“You were screaming.”

Shit.

A muscle flexed along his jaw. “You were screaming the word no.”

Shit.

I swallowed. “I don’t know why.”

His gaze flicked to mine. “I think I have a pretty good idea.”

Muscles all throughout my body began to tense as if I was preparing to leap from the settee and run. It was like the flight response kicking in, but I could feel the fight instinct gearing up to take over, and I didn’t want that. Ash wasn’t at fault here. He was only concerned. So, I took a moment to calm my ass down.

“I know you’re worried about me,” I started, and Ash’s gaze returned to mine, “but I’m okay.”

Several moments passed, the silence stretching between us. “It’s all right, you know?” he said. “To not be okay. To not always be strong.”

A jolt ran through my body as my hands curled around nothing but air. “Nektas said something like that.”

“I’m sure he did. He’s said it to me before.”

I dropped my hands to my lap. “Why…why was he telling you that?”

“My father. Not knowing my mother. Kolis. Veses,” he said, and my chest fisted with anger at merely the sound of her name. “I could keep going, but I think you get the point.”

I did.

And I wished I didn’t because it made my heart ache for everything he’d had to deal with.

That was why I wasn’t going to tell him about the nightmare. He didn’t need that living in the back of his head, haunting him, along with everything else.

“But you got through it because you had to, right?” I said. “And you were able to do that because you’re strong. You’re a survivor.”

“So are you.”

My brows snapped together. “I am, but that has nothing to do with survival.”

“It has everything to do with surviving, liessa.”

I shook my head, my palms beginning to sweat. How did we even end up having this conversation when we had far more important things to discuss? “I get what you’re saying. I do. But I am okay. I’m not—” A sudden charge of energy bore down on me, pimpling my skin. I stiffened.

A frown pulled at his brow. “Sera?”

“I…I feel something. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like I can feel the air changing. As if…”

Ash’s chin dipped, and a low growl rumbled from him. “Is it fucking Kolis again?”

“No.” Ash rose as I stood. “But it feels like something is coming.” Eather throbbed in my chest. “Something powerful and…”

Old.

Something Ancient.

Sucking in a sharp breath, I spun toward the doors. No sooner had the thought finished than the air between the two shadowstone pillars warped.

Ash curled his arm around my waist and hauled me back as a sphere of eather materialized, rapidly swelling and elongating as it unfurled. But this was no random ball of eather. Instinct told me it was a tear in the very realm itself. An opening.

A portal.

The first thing I saw was skin. A whole lot of bare flesh and honed muscle in the shape of a tall, broad man with shoulder-length brown hair and skin a shade somewhere between the bronze of Ash’s and the copper of Nektas’s. The man casually walked out of the portal like he was merely taking a stroll in a park.

That was if one walked in the park only wearing loose-fitting, white linen pants and absolutely nothing else.

Well, he was wearing something else. Small gold rings in both of his brown nipples. I supposed that counted as some sort of attire.

I really needed to stop looking at his nipples.

I lifted my gaze. Scrolling vines similar to what adorned the throne room doors were tattooed up the sides of his throat, stopping at the curve of a jaw that could’ve been carved from granite. Except I didn’t think that design was made of ink. It was a shade or two darker than his flesh and appeared to churn from within his skin, like the shadows often did in Ash’s. I looked past sculpted lips, a chiseled nose, and arched cheekbones, momentarily distracted by the asymmetric features. And then I saw his eyes.

My lips parted. They were a kaleidoscope of colors: a warm shade of brown, the dewy green of the newly grown patches of grass outside, and the blue of the Stroud Sea. Bursts of silver were sprinkled throughout the colors like stars.

I’d seen those eyes before.

During my Ascension, when I’d seen how the realms were created.

“What the fuck?” Ash snarled, his flesh thinning. Shadows appeared along his throat.

The being’s strange eyes flicked to Ash, his head moving in a way that sent a chill of unease down my spine. There was something utterly inhuman in that simple movement. Almost as if the entire realm shifted around him to accommodate the gesture. One side of his lips curled up, and instinct warned me that smile was not a good thing.

“It’s okay.” I stepped around Ash—or tried to. He sidestepped me. “He’s an…” I trailed off as the being’s gaze shifted to me. He waited to hear what I said. What I would reveal. My throat dried. “He’s a Fate—an Arae.”

The other side of the Ancient’s lips rose then in a close-lipped smile. It reminded me of Kolis’s smiles—the ones that were practiced and shallow as if he didn’t understand the emotions behind smiling and was simply copying others’ expressions.

How could Holland be an Ancient? He was nothing like this being standing in front of us.

“I don’t give a fuck what he is,” Ash fumed, the shadows deepening as they spread up his throat in nearly the same pattern as the one on the Ancient’s skin. “I only know he had better have one good fucking reason for arriving unannounced and uninvited in our home.”

Our home.

It was just two words, but they suddenly made me feel all warm inside—

The Ancient laughed.

Okay. Now was not the time to focus on how those words made me feel all ooey-gooey. Like, at all. Because the Ancient’s laugh was even more creepy than his smile.