A Fire in the Flesh (Flesh and Fire, #3)

“I remember. But Kyn didn’t know that. He still doesn’t, for obvious reasons,” he reminded me. “Kyn was supposed to capture you, but not before he leveled the Shadowlands, leaving only the road to the Abyss and the Vale remaining. When I took you, I stopped that from happening.”

I inhaled sharply, thinking about the people in the city of Lethe, both mortal and god. I felt a little dizzy. “Was that what Kolis ordered?”

“In a roundabout way. He told Kyn to make a statement.” Attes’s shoulders tensed. “You don’t tell a Primal of War or Vengeance that and not expect utter devastation.”

I swallowed down the knot of fear building in my throat.

“The attack ended as soon as I took you,” Attes said. “I swear.”

“You give your word?” I sneered, heart thumping. “As if that means anything.”

He sighed. “You don’t trust me.”

“No shit,” I snapped.

Attes studied me for a few tense moments. When next he spoke, his voice was lower, calmer. “Kolis has known about you for a very long time.”

“I know.” My hands curled into fists. Fury surged at the painful reminder that Kolis had been aware of me since the night I was born, and had only been waiting for the embers to mature and me to use them. And everything Ash sacrificed? The deal he’d made with that bitch Veses, allowing her to feed from him to ensure my existence was kept secret? It had been for nothing.

The embers in my chest throbbed, responding even more now. Static raced down my arms, startling me. Lifting them, I saw that the fine hairs there had risen.

Attes’s stare sharpened on me, almost as if he sensed the energy ramping up inside me. Maybe he did. Either way, I needed to calm myself. That was easier said than done, though, when I normally existed in one of two states: restless or ready to murder someone. Most of the time, there was no in-between.

And I really wanted to murder Veses.

Badly.

However, I was in a fucking cage, talking to Attes, and Veses was hopefully still imprisoned in the House of Haides, so that wouldn’t happen.

“Then you know there was no stopping what happened,” Attes said. “Kolis would’ve taken you one way or another. The only thing that could’ve been prevented was the unnecessary mass loss of innocents.”

“Am I supposed to thank you for that?” I nearly shrieked.

“I don’t need your thanks but would appreciate it if you kept your voice down,” he ordered. “There are guards outside this chamber. And while shadowstone is thick, it’s not completely soundproof.”

“What will happen if they discover you in here?” I asked, giving him a cursory glance. “Naked?”

“Does my nudity bother you?” The fucker grinned until a godsdamn dimple appeared in his cheek.

Fuck common sense.

Bending, I picked up the comb I’d dropped and threw it right at his face. “No,” I growled as his hand snapped out, catching the comb an inch from his nose. “But I bet it will bother Kolis.”

The grin disappeared as he tossed the comb onto the bed. “Yeah, it would.” His gaze dipped to my mouth and jaw. “But you would likely pay a far steeper price for it than I.”

Cheeks warming, I realized he was looking at the bruises. I stiffened. “As if you care.”

“You have no idea what I care about or don’t.” His jaw tightened as he looked at the closed doors.

“You’re right. And, frankly, I don’t care.”

“You need to.” A moment later, he waved his hand, and a pair of black leather pants appeared out of thin air, encasing his legs.

Reluctant jealousy rose. If I had that talent, I’d conjure something that constituted clothing. I started to ask him to do that for me but realized wearing something that didn’t run the risk of flashing a nipple would raise questions.

“We likely do not have long for this conversation,” he continued. “So, I need you to understand that I’m not here to betray Nyktos or you—especially you. After all, I have saved your life before. More than once.”

“What?” I scoffed. “You’re going to have to refresh my memory—” I cut myself off. Attes had stopped Kolis when he was draining my blood to get at the embers. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten that. My anger at Attes’s betrayal had sort of blocked out that little fact. “You intervened when Kolis was feeding on me. I wouldn’t go as far as to say you saved my life.”

A quick grin returned to Attes’s lips. “But that wasn’t the first time.”

A frown tugged at my brows, then they lifted as I finally saw—or acknowledged—what had been right in front of me, having flown in through the window. “That was you? The hawk in the Dying Woods?”

A slight grin appeared. “It was.”

As Attes’s confirmation landed like a fist to the chest, my mind suddenly blanked for several seconds. And then I remembered what Ash had said about hawks—that they were a symbol that belonged to his father, along with the wolf. Kolis used the same representations, except his were golden, while… “Eythos’s hawks were silver,” I murmured.

Attes frowned. “They were.”

I blinked. “Did Eythos shift forms?”

“He did. All Primals can.”

“And was his a hawk?” I surmised. “Or a wolf?”

“A wolf,” he confirmed. “Though, he always wished to fly with the hawks.”

I started to ask why he hadn’t chosen to take the form of the bird of prey, then, but did that matter? No. “And Kolis? What does he shift into?”

“A hawk,” he said with a wry twist of his lips.

I blinked. Why in the realm would Eythos and Kolis—nope. Not important. “If that was you in the woods that night, why didn’t—?” I almost said “Ash” again but using the name only a few called him by in front of Attes didn’t feel right. “Why didn’t Nyktos know you were there?”

“Primals cannot sense one another when we’re in our nota forms—when we take the shape of the animal we find ourselves most connected to,” he explained. “Just as Kolis didn’t sense him in his wolf form.”

And I hadn’t felt Attes until he shifted. “Why?”

His bare grin returned. “Because when we’re in our nota forms, it is us but…not.”

Well, that just explained everything, didn’t it?

“Seeing you in the Dying Woods that night was luck. I was snooping when I came across you there.” The light glinted off the silver cuff encircling his biceps as he rubbed a hand over his chin. “I’m half-afraid to ask what you were doing.”

I wasn’t going to get into that. “What about in the Red Woods? Before then?”

“That wasn’t me, but it was one of my many unique hawks. I felt its death and then sensed it come back to life. That was how I knew Nyktos had brought you to the Shadowlands.”

My thoughts raced as I ended up asking probably the least important question. “What do you mean by unique hawks?”