The helmet—Theon’s crown—hit the floor with a jarring clang. It rocked and shuddered, then vanished.

  Chunks of debris fell from the dome as a massive talon, covered in purplish-black scales, appeared, gripping the stone and ripping it free.

  Reaver.

  It was Reaver.

  Fissures formed in the wall that Theon’s body was still pinned to, spreading downward. The pillars below shuddered and then simply disappeared. The floor buckled, tiles rising into the air and breaking apart. The air distorted and warped as Reaver climbed in through the hole he’d made, sending more stone crashing to the floor.

  A shockwave of energy slammed into us. Suddenly, I was airborne and weightless, flying in the opposite direction of the god. I glimpsed Reaver’s large form twisting as a blast knocked him backward, his outstretched wings folding under the force. I hit the floor hard, and everything went dark for several seconds.

  I came to, lying in something sticky and wet. I tried to drag in air, but I couldn’t take a breath. It felt like my lungs had collapsed. I couldn’t—

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Kolis landed less than a foot from me and knelt. I saw a flash of his bloody hand before he gripped the hair at the crown of my head. With a quick jerk of his arm, he cranked my neck back as he dragged me onto my knees. “We’re not done yet.”

  Primal essence sparked from him, pure crimson and icy as it spilled into the air. The red glow rose behind him in twin arcs, forming the shape of wings made of pure eather. The flesh of his face thinned until I saw the dull crimson sheen of his cheek and jawbone.

  I didn’t want to close my eyes as the ground began to tremble.

  I wanted to keep them open. To face Death.

  But they slammed shut just as his lips pulled back, and the skin around them disappeared. He bared his fangs, and his head snapped down—

  The realm vanished.

  There was nothing.

  Not even sound. And then a loud crack jerked me from the darkness, and all I heard was snarling and growling as the manor shook, tossing me left and then right.

  Suddenly, I was lying on my back. Half of the ceiling was gone, as was an entire wall of Seacliffe. The scent of decay blew in, carrying the faintest traces of the sea. Somehow, I had ended up near Reaver, and there were shouts—pained and furious yelling. I thought I recognized the voice of the god who had tried to get me out, but there was another—a woman’s voice that was blade-thin and full of rage and sorrow. My vision seemed to pinwheel around the chamber. She was screaming…

  She was screaming for Theon, but I couldn’t see her as Reaver rose from a plume of dust, shaking his large, diamond-shaped head. The double doors blew open, and a tall female draped in crimson entered, her eyes glowing with eather. She was immediately struck with Primal essence, her body exploding.

  My eyes followed the fading bolt of eather to a tall, brown-skinned woman with braided hair—the Primal goddess I’d heard screaming. She stalked forward, a bronze-and-black crown clutched in one hand.

  A male darted into the room, and Revenants poured in behind him, their pale faces painted with red wings. There was a flash of the hooded god, and then he was behind the male, his hands on the sides of the other’s head. Reaver’s spiked tail whipped through the chaos, taking out a pillar and an entire line of Revenants. Some went flying, others were impaled on the horns lining his tail. One of his massive forelegs slammed down in front of me, splintering the tile as he stretched over me, extending his long neck. His mouth opened, and smoke wafted out before a stream of silver fire erupted. The flames swallowed the Revenants, and screams tore through the air. As Reaver roared, releasing another funnel of fire, I saw Kolis.

  The Primal mist around him had disintegrated, and something was on him—something large and covered in silver fur. He stumbled and then went down, bright red tinted with a blue shimmer coursing down his chest and arms. Whatever that something was, it was clawing at Kolis’s chest, shredding the flesh.

  It was a wolf.

  One larger than any wolven I’d ever seen. And it was shaking its head, violently tearing into Kolis.

  Darkness came for me again, and there was no fighting it this time. It swept in like a tide, tugging me under. Everything went quiet, and then I heard a low whimper, or maybe a whine. Softness tickled my cheek, and then I felt something cold and damp. The pained whining disappeared, replaced by Reaver’s gravelly voice. He was shouting. Yelling my…my name.

  “Hold on.” Another voice cut through the haze, one full of authority and carrying smoke and shadows. I felt myself being lifted, enveloped by the scents of citrus and fresh air. “You just need to hold on. Do you hear me, Poppy? You need to hold on.”

  I wanted to.

  But there was only snow-frosted silence.

  And then…

  And then I heard her.

  “Give her to me,” she demanded in a voice that was strong but not steady. There was a tremor under each word that tasted like panic and regret. “Give her to me, Ash.”

  A glimmer of warmth brushed my cheek. The touch was featherlight at first, and then, as if I had stepped out into the summer sun, the warmth spread, chasing away the numbing cold that had invaded my muscles and bones.

  A breath lifted my chest.

  I smelled lilacs…fresh lilacs. And a strange taste that hadn’t been there before filled my mouth: sweet and slightly floral, almost like a ripe pear but with a metallic edge to it.

  It tasted like…blood.

  Like life.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered as that sunlight filled me. “You can let go now.”

  I did just that.

  I slipped into the sun.

  And I let go.

  HE WHO IS BORN OF THE BLOOD OF GODS

  Casteel

  Screams filled the air like smog. Some of horror. Others steeped in pain that went deeper than bone.

  They came from wherever I heard Kolis’s haunting voice, somewhere inside Wayfair and beyond the inner Rise, lifting from the broad, cobbled avenues of the Garden District and the cramped, dirtied streets of Croft’s Cross.

  Death was everywhere.

  The sound of it should’ve been enough to reach the part buried deep inside me that recognized things like duty and responsibility.

  But those parts were dead now. In their place was nothing but a knot of coldness, lodged deep in my chest.

  Fists banged against the sealed doors of the Great Hall. He shouted, calling my name. Other voices joined in, but his remained the loudest.

  “Cas! Let us in!” he yelled, the doors shaking under the force of his blows. “Cas!”

  When the doors remained closed, sealed by the inky, overlapping vines, I felt his presence bearing down on me, that woodsy imprint brushing against my thoughts.

  Tearing my gaze from the too-still bodies lying in the Great Hall—what remained of my father—I rose. Unused muscles across my upper back twitched, adjusting to the strange weight of wings. A breeze drifted in from the shattered glass dome, carrying with it the iron-rich scent of blood and the lingering stench of stale lilacs. The feathers… They were oddly sensitive.

  The shouting continued.

  He kept trying to break through, using the singular pathway forged by the notam that now extended to me.

  I shut him out, quickly and precisely, as I glanced down.

  “Fuck!” he shouted. “Cas!”

  The shirt was torn, the edges soaked in blood. Through the ragged tears, I saw that the flesh that had been ripped open was now the bright, shiny pink of healed skin. I could see the dark-gray, crimson-tinged shadows moving beneath. Could see silver bone where patches of skin had faded away. Reaching up, I halted as I saw that the hand was half flesh, and the four fingers were bone and shadows. I gripped a fistful of the linen and tore the ruined shirt free, letting it drop to the floor, then lifted my chin to the dome above and the jagged shards of glass that remained intact.

  I summoned the essence, and it responded in an icy rush, flooding my veins with power. My will formed in my mind, and the realms answered.

  “Casteel!” he roared, surely feeling the surge of energy.

  A crackling ball of silver formed and then thinned, stretching wide as the realm tore open. The briny scent of the sea and decay drifted out of the tear.

  My lips curved up on one side as the crackling, spitting tear widened, revealing bare branches and a vast colonnade.

  Whatever she—and I knew it was her—had done to prevent me from leaving Carsodonia no longer held.

  The vines peeled themselves off the floor, retreating to clear a path as I walked forward.

  A burst of scorching eather slammed into the doors, throwing them open.

  “Casteel!” he yelled. “Don’t! Don’t—” He stumbled to a halt, and his shock rolled across the Hall like a cold wave. “Dear gods…”

  I stepped through the opening and into Pensdurth, my gaze rising to the sprawling manor atop a rocky, windblown bluff as the realm sealed behind me.

  The port city was full of the dead, but it was not vacant.

  Awareness throbbed in my chest, and instinctually, my senses opened and spread out. They were sharp. More…finely tuned. I could sense the essence in those within Seacliffe Manor’s walls, even from where I stood.

  There were gods inside. All were old, but only some were powerful. Others were weak, their ability to harness eather in the mortal realm diminished to little more than parlor tricks. My head tilted as I inhaled. At least one was truly more powerful; chock-full of eather. A Primal god.

  My lip curled.

  They were not alone.

  Beings that had once been mortal but now drank from the living were also inside. Vamprys.

  Others were present. Those neither alive nor dead. Revenants.

  And there was something else. Echoes of fading power. Those I could not…sort through out here, but I…I could feel her in those echoes. Caught the faintest scent of jasmine threaded with decay and fresh blood. Ice filled with smoke seeped into my chest as I straightened my head.

  Anger was too tame a word. Rage was too weak. Fury, too polite. What coursed through me was ruinous, soaking into my muscles and tendons, entrenching in my bones, and then igniting a cold fire that burned hotter than any flame.

  It was ruin.

  Thick clouds formed over the Bay of Pensdurth and darkened, turning the color of charcoal as a flash of intense, silver light flared behind the windows lining one of the manor’s halls. Wisps of smoke seeped from my fingers as I prowled forward. The dead trees lining the road shuddered and collapsed without a sound as I passed. One after the other, along both sides, they shattered, leaving only hazy clouds of ash behind. The remaining trees leading to the steps of Seacliffe withered away as I stopped in the center of the road, the mist swirling as it rose around me. I lifted a hand, turning it so my palm faced me. Eather thrummed. The ice in my chest spread. I closed my hand.

  The eastern front wall of Seacliffe Manor split with a crack of thunder, stone and wood wrenching apart. Dust billowed out in a rapidly expanding cloud as larger chunks of mortar smashed through the pillars of the colonnade. The roof heaved and then cracked, caving in as its support crumbled to the ground.

  The screams began before the dust had even begun to settle, rising from within as rays of sunlight pierced the haze, finding those who had traded sunlight for power.

  I smiled as they paid for that now in fire and blood. Every so many feet, flames erupted in scattered bursts and clusters as the sun ate away at the vamprys’ flesh. Acrid smoke choked the air, and the smell of charred skin rose as the dust cleared.

  Behind the smoking, twisted, burnt bodies that had fallen where they caught fire, and those who still burned as they crawled toward the shelter of the manor, there was red.

  Revenants.

  Revs.

  Dozens of them, standing in the partially intact atrium and the exposed chambers, their eyes a milky, lifeless blue, and their features obscured by crimson-painted wings.

  A command echoed from the manor like the crack of a whip in a language no longer spoken.

  The Revs crept forward as one.

  With a flick of my wrist, I moved the debris, sending the wreckage of stone and plaster sliding off the sides of the bluff.

  After all, I wouldn’t want anything slowing their eagerness to greet Death.

  Apparently, neither did they.

  The Revs poured out of Seacliffe’s ruined front, swarming the road like a horde of crimson cockroaches.

  They came at me—at me—with swords made of shadowstone.

  But they hadn’t seen me yet.

  I changed that, letting the mist whip back.

  Those closest stumbled, jerking to a halt as the painted wings lifted, and pale eyes widened. If Revs could feel fear, they did then.

  Cold amusement tugged at my lips.

  They recovered, coming at me in a blur as they picked up speed.

  But I had no time for them.

  So, I made nothing of them, tearing through the Revs with fangs and claws steeped in the essence throbbing within me. I moved like a shadow, slipping under swords as I cracked bones. Shredded throats. Clawed hearts from rib cages. Ripped limbs away from those I touched. Tendrils of essence rose and struck like pit vipers as I punched my hand through a chest, the essence freezing tissue and bone until the body cracked like delicate glass. All around me, they fell and stayed where they had fallen, littering the road.

  Catching a Rev’s arm, I spun them and drew them back, sinking my fangs into their throat. Blood poured down my chin as my essence poured into them. Their body stiffened—

  Pain flared, sudden and hot, radiating across a wing and shooting down my spine. Ripping my fangs free, I cranked my head around with a hiss as several silver feathers fell to the ground, covered in blood.

  The Rev shot forward, driving the shadowstone sword in a straight, forceful blow. I felt the impact more than I felt the pain. Looking down at the hilt now flush with the center of my chest, I straightened my head and dropped the Rev I held onto the road.

  I laughed, the sound full of icy smoke and frosted shadows as I grabbed the sword.

  The shadowstone splintered into nothing.

  Snapping forward, I gripped the Rev by the cheeks. My fingers pressed in, smearing red paint as I leaned in until my lips were inches from theirs. “Ouch.”

  Eather erupted from my hands, cascading over the Rev. Their veins lit up with muted silver and shadowy crimson. Smoke drifted out from under their eyelashes a heartbeat before silver flames consumed the Rev’s eyes.

  I shoved them back as their lips stretched wide, smoky eather erupting from their mouth in a silent scream.

  I turned, seeing that the road ahead was empty except for the bodies scattered down its length.

  The seeping wound in my chest was already healing, but my wing throbbed. Instinctually, and without much thought, I willed the wings away. Something deep in my back, between my shoulder blades, shifted. The skin there tingled, and the muscles spasmed and then contracted. The sensation was…strange, and the wounded wing stung as they both flattened and folded inward, slipping beneath the skin. I could still feel them inside me, under flesh and muscle, tucked along my spine.

  Walking forward, I picked up speed and leapt over the space where the colonnade had once stood, landing in what was left of the atrium.

  I scanned the wide, long hall ahead as I drew in a deep breath, searching for that sweet jasmine scent. I found it within seconds. A low snarl rumbled from my chest. Rising from the crouch, I moved again, letting my senses swell. I was close to the gods—close to the Primal.

  Ascended swarmed from both sides of the hall, rushing toward me, their fangs bared and sharpened bloodstone clutched in their hands.

  I had even less time for them.

  My gaze flicked to the ceiling. Eather thrummed and expanded within me as my will took shape. Grabbing the head of the first Ascended to reach me, I snapped their neck as a low, grinding sound came from above.

  The Ascended stopped in their tracks, heads jerking upward as the walls trembled.

  “The roof!” one of them shouted, spinning around. “Ashwood, the sun!”

  That name stopped me. My gaze shot to the Ascended who had yelled the warning. A dark-haired female ran back into the chamber as wood splintered and nails shrieked, tearing free. The roof was torn upward with a deafening crack, peeling back like it was nothing more than a can being opened as I tracked the female Ascended to a group of vamprys pressing themselves against the wall farthest from the Hall. One male caught my eye. Tall, with hair as black as night and dressed in crimson silk and doeskin breeches, the expression on his pale face was haughty as fuck, even as he turned to run like the coward he was.

  I was willing to bet that was Eldric Ashwood—someone I would make time for.

  Because I was still petty like that.

  Sunlight bathed the hall, igniting the Ascended as my eyes narrowed. Lifting my hand, I helped Ashwood escape as flames roared with a whoosh, sending him through the paneled interior doors and into another chamber. The air crackled as the fire spread, and screams rang out. The ceiling lifted, sending shingles flying.

  I moved past the panicked, chaotic Ascended as flames engulfed them, my steps slowing before the rounded entrance to the chamber with a still-intact roof. Kicking in the doors, I immediately found Ashwood.

  In the center of the sitting room, amid shards of wood and broken furniture he must’ve crashed into, he staggered to his feet and turned to me.

  He backed up, his black eyes widening, his mouth open to speak.

  I didn’t give him a chance.

  Moving faster than he could track, I was on him before he knew it, gripping his chin. “What was it you said about my claim in your silly missive? About my bloodline?”

  He gripped my arm, clawing at the skin.

  “I believe you said it was tainted.” I dug my fingers into the joints of his jaw, forcing his mouth open. “And I also believe you said something about those opposing the one true King and the Blood Crown falling.”