A Shadow in the Ember (Flesh and Fire 1)

I wanted to ask if he knew who she was, but her identity felt like another violation and a risk to her soul. It had already suffered enough. “So, what your father did for Sotoria was to keep her safe.”

“What he did for Sotoria wasn’t perfect. Some could argue that, in a way, it was even worse. But it was the only thing he could do to try to keep her safe.”

“Was Kolis always like this?”

Ash glanced in Nektas’s direction. “He’s always had a reckless, wild edge to him. A sense of grandeur that he believed was owed to him,” the draken said. “But there was a time when Kolis loved mortals and his gods. Then, he slowly changed. I don’t think even his age can be blamed. His rot…it took him long before we lost him.”

My mind felt like it would implode.

“Both my father and Keella have paid dearly for that over the years.” Ash’s gaze settled on me. “He didn’t just grow to hate my father, he came to despise him and vowed to make him pay.”

I tensed, trying to prepare myself for what I would learn next. It was almost hard to believe. To think of Kolis, who I had been raised to believe was without flaw, the gracious and benevolent King of Gods, as this selfish monster.

But now I knew why he did nothing to stop the abhorrent treatment of the Chosen.

“It was Kolis who killed my mother, striking her down while she was pregnant with me,” Ash shared, tone flat. “He did it because he believed that it was only fair that my father lose his love just as he did. He destroyed my mother’s soul, ushering in her final death.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth in horror. There was this immediate desire to deny what he said. Not to allow myself to believe it. But that wouldn’t be right. It would be unfair and wrong to force Ash to prove what I instinctively knew was true. Sorrow burned the back of my throat and stung my eyes. His parents being murdered was bad enough, but to know it had been done by someone who shared his blood? I thought I might be sick.

Ash swallowed thickly. “Like your mother, I believe that her death took a piece of my father with him.”

I wanted to go to him. Touch him. Comfort him—something I wasn’t sure I had ever felt the need to do before. I wouldn’t even know how to do it, so I pressed my hand to my chest and remained seated. “I’m so, so sorry. I know that changes nothing. I know you don’t want to hear that, but I…I wish I could somehow change that.”

Stormy gray eyes met mine, and then he nodded.

I lowered my hand to my lap. “How have the other Primals allowed this? How did none of them other than Keella step in when he took your father’s place? When he brought that poor girl back to life?”

“Kolis destroyed all record of the truth,” Ector explained from the other end of the table. “Both in Iliseeum and in the mortal realm. It was then that the Primal of Death was no longer depicted. He went to great extremes to hide that he was not supposed to be the Primal of Life. Even when it became apparent that something was not right. That he was losing his ability to create life and maintain it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The destiny was never his, just as the Primal of Death’s was never my father’s,” Ash said. “I was born into it, my destiny reshaped. But Kolis forced this onto himself and my father. What powers of life he gained were temporary. It took centuries for those powers to wane, and by that time, my father was dead, and Kolis had mastered…other powers. But there has been no Primal born since me. He cannot grant life. He cannot create it.”

Something struck me. “Is that why no Chosen have Ascended?”

“Yep,” Bele said with a nod. “But he can’t stop the Rite, can he? That would raise too many damn questions. And so, the unstable balance has shifted even more.”

“Toward what?” I asked.

“Death,” Ash replied. Ice touched my skin. “Death of everything, eventually. Both here and in the mortal realm. It may take several mortal lifetimes for it to destroy the mortal realm completely, but it’s already started. Two Primals of Death cannot rule, and that is what is happening. Because at Kolis’s very core, that is what he is.”

My gods.

“Only the Primals and a handful of gods know what Kolis did—what he truly is,” Ash spoke again. “Most of the Primals are loyal to him, either out of apathy or because his actions Ascended them into Primal power. The others who think that what he did was unthinkable? They do not act out, either out of fear or an abundance of caution and intelligence.”