A Shadow in the Ember (Flesh and Fire 1)

Chapter 24

My hands slipped from the tub to the cooling water as my heart thundered. “Really?” I whispered.

“Yes.”

I sucked in several breaths. “You can tell what I’m feeling?”

“Right now, it’s just disbelief.”

“That…” I was glad I was sitting down. “That seems like a really intrusive ability.”

“It is,” he agreed, placing the pitcher aside. He didn’t move. Neither did I. “That’s why I rarely intentionally use it. But, sometimes, a mortal or even a god feels something so strongly, I cannot prevent myself from feeling what they do. That is what happened when I looked at you. Your emotions reached me before I could block them. I knew that as willing as you appeared, you were not.”

What did you do, Sera?

My mother’s panicked cry echoed. I closed my eyes as harsh realization swept through me. Sir Holland was wrong. My mother had been right. That insidious voice inside me had been right. It had been my fault.

Pressure constricted my chest and throat as I shook my head. No. That wasn’t true, either. It wasn’t only my fault. I opened my eyes. “I was…scared. I was to marry the Primal of Death,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I was anxious. Of course, I felt hopeless. I felt like I had no control. But I was there. I was still there.” None of that was a lie. “I knew what was expected of me, and I was willing to fulfill it. You were not.”

He was quiet, but I felt his gaze on me—on my back. “No, I wasn’t. I had no need of a Consort forced to marry me. And whether or not you were willing to carry through doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t your choice. It never was.”

“It is my choice to honor the deal,” I argued.

“Truly?” he challenged. “Your family would’ve allowed you to refuse to take part in the deal? To refuse a Primal? Are you saying that you were in a position to refuse? One where the expectation hadn’t been drilled into you since birth? There was never any consent in your choice.”

Gods, he was right. I knew that. I had always known that. I hadn’t expected him, of all people, to acknowledge or care about that, though, especially since it had been the deal he’d made. But that didn’t change anything. Not what the deal did for the kingdom, not what my birth signaled, or what I must do.

I opened my mouth and then closed it as a different type of emotion reared its head. Respect. For him. For the being I needed to kill to save my kingdom, and for the Primal who had unintentionally become the source of my misery. How could I not respect him for being unwilling to take part in something I truly had no real choice in?

Confusion also followed because had he not considered any of this when he first set the terms? He could have set any price. He’d chosen this.

Another thought occurred to me, and my head jerked up so fast, it tugged on the skin of my upper back. “Are you reading my emotions now?”

“No,” he answered. “And that is the truth. I know to keep my…walls up around you.”

I wasn’t sure if he was suggesting that I was highly emotional. Regardless, I was grateful he had his… “What do you mean by walls?”

“It’s like the Rise around Haides and the lands but in here.” He tapped a finger on the side of my head. “You build them mentally. They are shields of sorts.”

“That sounds…difficult.”

“It took a very long time to learn how to do it.”

“There’s something I don’t understand,” I said after a moment. “Why did you even ask for a Consort? When you made the deal, you could’ve asked for anything.”

“The answer you seek is a very complicated one.”

“Are you suggesting that I’m not clever enough to understand?”

“I’m suggesting it’s a conversation that should take place when you’re fully clothed.”

“And you don’t run the risk of me attempting to drown you?” I snapped.

Ash chuckled as he wrung the excess water from my hair. “That, too.” Using one of the pins I’d removed, he twisted the length of my hair, pinning it so the ends didn’t fall back into the tub. “I hope my services this evening lived up to whatever expectations you may have had.”

Immediately, my mind flashed to a different sort of service, and I wanted to punch myself. Hard. “They were passable.”

My response got another laugh from him. “If you’re done,” he said, rising. “I can put the balm on your wounds.”

I was still dumbfounded by his ability to read emotions—still irritated by his refusal to answer why he had asked for a Consort. But I gripped the edges of the tub. Water splashed as I rose and turned to where he stood.

His chest was so still, I wasn’t sure he breathed, but the white, luminous wisps in his molten-silver eyes churned wildly. The intensity of his stare scalded.