To him.
A shiver erupted over my skin as I stared at the dark waters.
Ash lifted his hand, and everything stopped. Froze. The water spilling over the rocks halted, suspended in the air. The ripples ceased, and my heart could have, too.
My hands slipped from the pommel as the lake…split in half, peeling back and exposing the flat, glossy shadowstone bottom. In the moonlight, a fissure appeared in the stone. Wisps of silvery-white mist seeped from the crack, and without a sound, a wide and deep rift appeared.
I’d been in this lake hundreds of times throughout my life, splashing and playing as a child, hiding and forgetting. This lake, the water and the land around it, had felt like home. And the whole time, this was what existed under the surface. This was what my lake was.
Ash’s fingers brushed mine as he nudged Odin forward. The horse followed, whinnying softly.
“You’re right, you know? There was time at the lake to make sure you knew who I really was. I should have told you.” His arm curled at my waist, and he tugged me back. I didn’t fight him. I pressed against him, my heart careening.
A white haze swirled around Odin’s legs as he took us into the misty rapture. Another shudder rocked me. I didn’t know if it was the descent or the Primal’s words. “But you spoke with no fear. You acted fearlessly. Each time I saw you,” he continued. “You interested me, and I hadn’t expected that. I didn’t want that. But at that lake, you were just Seraphena,” he said, and my breath snagged at the sound of my name spilling from his lips. It was the first time he’d said it. “And I was just Ash. There was no deal. No perceived obligations. You stayed simply because you wanted to. I stayed only because I wanted to. You let me touch you because that was what you wanted, not because you felt as if you had to. Maybe I should’ve told you, but I was…enjoying myself with you. I wasn’t ready for that to end.”
And then he took me into the Shadowlands.
Chapter 22
What Ash admitted, the truth of what he said, was swept into air that was neither warm nor freezing. Into the complete and total darkness that swallowed us.
Lightheaded and dizzy, I feared I would never see again. I reached down as I strained against the unyielding wall that was Ash’s chest. It caused the rawness along my back to ache as I clasped his arm. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see anything—
A tiny pinprick of light appeared above, then another and another until hundreds of thousands of specks of light cascaded over the sky.
Stars.
They were stars, but not like the ones in the mortal realm. They were more vivid and radiant, casting a silvery glow that was far more powerful than the moon. I scanned the skies, searching and searching.
“Where is the moon?” I asked hoarsely.
“There is no moon,” Ash answered. “It is not night.”
My brows snapped together as I took in the sky that very much resembled night. “Is it day?”
“It is neither day nor night.” The arm around my waist loosened. “It just is.”
I didn’t understand as Odin traveled forward, each step clanging off cobblestone. I looked down, spying fingers of mist trailing softly over the road. I returned my stare to the sky. The longer I looked at it, the more I realized it didn’t resemble a night sky. Yes, there were stars, and they were brighter than anything I’d seen, but the sky was more…shadowy than black. Darker than the stormiest, most overcast day in the mortal realm. It reminded me of the moments before dawn, when the sun rose behind the moon and beat back the darkness, turning the world a shade of iron.
“Is there no sun?” I asked, wetting my lips.
“Not in the Shadowlands.”
Barely able to comprehend that I was actually in the Shadowlands, I wasn’t sure what to do with the knowledge of there being no sun or moon. “Then how do you know when to sleep?”
“You sleep when you’re tired.”
He stated this as if sleeping were that simple. “What about the rest of Iliseeum?”
“The rest of Iliseeum appears as it should,” he answered flatly.
I wanted to ask why and what that meant, but the barren landscape changed. Tall trees appeared, and as we traveled, they grew closer and closer to the road. Bare, twisted trees that were nothing more than skeletons. Several large, rocky hills loomed ahead, spaced around the road we traveled on.
Uncertainty beat at me, along with all those messy emotions I couldn’t describe. But so did curiosity. The part of me that had always yearned to know what Iliseeum looked like stirred. I started to lean forward but stopped and forced my body to relax against his.