I yanked my hand back. My breath came in short bursts as I opened my senses. I didn’t feel Kolis.

  So much so that he refused to let her go.

  Kolis wasn’t here.

  Even in death.

  I hadn’t sensed him the other nights. Neither had Casteel. But he didn’t have to be here to watch, to see. He would only need an Ascended.

  Or a Revenant.

  My mind returned to the night I’d asked Casteel to take me while I stood in front of the glass wall. Had I known on some innate level that he was watching through another’s eyes? And had I…provoked him for some reason?

  He’d watched Casteel and me. I’d ensured it, even if I didn’t consciously realize I was doing it. That made me feel that stickiness on my skin again. Made me want to peel the flesh from my bones. Made me feel…

  Rage.

  Pure, unadulterated rage that was all mine—all the versions of who I once was. In that moment, I could fully accept that. Because the fury had festered and grown for centuries. Now, it burned through the shock and blazed out of control.

  Essence flooded my veins as I turned from the window, quietly crossing the bedchamber, my will forming in my mind. I stepped into the dining chamber, having the presence of mind to put some space between Casteel and me so as not to wake him. I kept walking, guided by instinct, until I reached the Solar. The air charged before me as a thin, silvery line appeared and widened, stretching wide, creating a gap. The earthy, slightly sweet scent of elm trees enveloped me as I walked through the tear, my feet leaving the smooth stone to meet the damp, cold grass at the Cliffs of Sorrow.

  I turned sharply, scanning my surroundings until I found the Cliff’s edge where I’d seen the form.

  It was empty now.

  But I knew I wasn’t alone.

  Calming my pounding heart, I listened to the night as I stood there, fingers twitching at my sides: the wind stirring the reedy grass and wildflowers and tossing my hair across my face. The trilling calls of nightbirds singing to one another. The steady rush of water over rocks, splashing and slipping over the deep crevices and edges. I focused, seeking the sounds under them. The soft smack of birds hopping through the branches of the elms crowding the Peaks. The rustle of critters moving quickly through the grass—

  My head tilted to the left as I picked up something larger and heavier, cracking a twig. The deeper thud of weight shifting. Either I was hearing the silent watcher or a tree bear.

  If it was the latter, I was about to regret this life choice.

  I zeroed in on the sounds and crossed the meadow faster than I’d seen Casteel move. I would let myself be impressed by the speed later.

  I shot into the thick shadows beneath the elms like an arrow unleashed, not even slowing as the form took shape—tall, slender of shoulder and build, dark-haired. Wings painted in crimson, the tips stretching to the pale skin of his hair and jawline. Later, I would also let myself enjoy the flicker of surprise I saw in the Revenant’s lifeless, pale-blue eyes as he jerked back a step.

  There was no time for that now.

  I slowed as I walked toward him, briefly taking in his features. He appeared young, a boy barely on the cusp of manhood—too young for this to be his fate. The tragedy of that usually would’ve caused my chest to ache with the unfairness of what had been done to him. And maybe later, my good heart would ache. But right then, I didn’t give a fuck as I kept an eye on his hands in case he went for a weapon.

  Eather warmed my throat. “Hello.”

  The moment my voice hit the air, the Cliffs went silent. No birds sang. No critters moved. The Revenant, however, did not remain still.

  He spun on his heel.

  Snapping forward, I grabbed him by the back of his neck. “Going somewhere?”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I dug my fingers into his skin and lifted him off his feet, hurling him away.

  My strength stunned me as I turned, watching the Revenant fly through the air as if he were nothing but a small pebble.

  I would definitely be impressed by that later.

  The Revenant smacked into the trunk of an elm with a crack like thunder. He landed on his hands and knees. As I prowled toward him, the scent of stale blood reached me, turning my stomach. The Revenant started to push up.

  I decided to help him.

  I drove my knee into his chin, snapping his head back and making him topple backward. I didn’t give him a chance to recover. Bending, I grabbed his throat again and lifted him, slamming him into the elm, splintering the bark, and sending a shower of serrated leaves cascading to the ground.

  With a quick look, I spied the long, spike-like dagger strapped to his thigh. He reached for it at the same moment I did, but I was faster.

  Wrapping my fingers around the iron hilt, I tore it from its sheath. The blade was black. Shadowstone. And long—nearly the length of my forearm.

  Perfect.

  I thrust it into the center of his chest between his lungs, just below his heart. The Revenant grunted as he grasped the hilt.

  “Nope.” Grabbing his arm, I yanked his hand away and twisted.

  He let out a shout of pain as the bone snapped and broke through his skin.

  “We’re not done yet,” I told him.

  Those pale eyes widened a fraction as I gripped his right arm and gave it the same treatment. This time, his cry of pain was sharper, and his body quaked.

  Stepping back, I took in my handiwork. He was impaled several feet from the ground, with his arms hanging at limp, awkward angles. He looked like one of the porcelain marionette dolls Isbeth had given me, except he was somehow less creepy.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” I said.

  He remained silent, chin tucked against the ragged rise and fall of his chest and dark hair resting against the painted wings on his face.

  Gripping a fistful of hair that seriously needed to be washed, I jerked his head up and stared into those lifeless eyes. They looked like a Revenant’s, but then I saw it. The flicker of eerie light in the pupil.

  “Kolis,” I called softly.

  The Revenant’s jaw clenched.

  “I know you’re in there,” I said.

  The light in the pupil pulsed.

  I held his stare. “I assume you wanted to talk.”

  The pulse of light flared brighter.

  “So, let’s talk.”

  Silence.

  Frustration sparked, stirring the eather as I fought the urge to find out if I could kill a Revenant. I had no patience for this. It was the middle of the night, cold, and it wouldn’t take long for the Revenant to heal his broken bones. Casteel would likely wake soon, too, and I really wanted to be back before that happened because he would not be happy.

  Not even remotely.

  “You don’t want to talk? Do you prefer watching like the perverted creeper you are?”

  A flash of red overtook the light in the pupils.

  I forced a smile. “Or are you a coward?”

  The aura turned pure crimson, and the Revenant’s lips peeled back over bloodstained teeth.

  “There you are,” I said, stepping back.

  A low tsking sound came from him. “I’ve always been here, Sotoria.”

  CHAPTER 48

  POPPY

  A shudder crawled over my skin, partly because of what he’d called me and because it was the voice I’d heard in stasis. “Do not call me that.”

  “But it is your name,” he responded, his voice strengthening. “You are her.” Those milky eyes lit by crimson swept over me, slow and deliberate, making my skin crawl. “Finally.”

  My palms tingled with the desire to introduce them to his face. I wanted nothing more than to give in to that need, but instinct whispered it would be a mistake—that he’d exploit any emotion I showed and gain power and control from eliciting a response.

  And I refused to give him that.

  I had to deal with him like I did Isbeth. Keep calm. Give nothing away.

  I forced the tension out of my muscles. “That’s not my name.”

  He laughed, spitting blood. “Would you prefer I called you Poppy?”

  “I’d prefer that you crawl back into the hole you came out of and die, but I have a feeling you won’t do that for me.”

  “It is the same,” he said, ignoring my comment. “Sotoria. Poppy.”

  My brows furrowed. The same?

  “Come now, Sotoria,” he said in an almost singsong way, the bloody smile increasing as his gaze swept over the shadows surrounding us. “You weren’t the smartest when I first saw you here.”

  I drew back my head, offended.

  “You were naïve, gullible, and easily frightened,” he continued, his tongue skimming over his bloody teeth. “But you learned. You became smarter. Stronger. And now, you’ve awakened. You have the knowledge inside you to answer your own question.” He paused. “So…toria.”

  The way he said it. As if the name were two words… Because it was in the language of the gods—the Ancients.

  So’ meant my or mine.

  And toria meant garden. Flower. Or…

  I inhaled, but it didn’t feel like I took a breath. Toria meant pretty flower.

  Poppy.

  My pretty flower.

  My pretty poppy.

  I was hot and cold all at once, moving back another step without realizing it. That rhyme. It really had been him. My ears buzzed, drowning out all other sounds. I couldn’t feel the cold ground beneath my feet or the breeze lifting the strands of my hair for a moment.

  The sharp, humming noise ended as abruptly as it’d started. “Were you there that night? In Lockswood?”

  “I’ve always been there, Sotoria.” He almost sounded…disappointed. “Why don’t you believe me?”

  Anger and disgust rose and began swirling around one another. I knew I would lose control the moment they collided. “That’s not what I meant. Did you have something to do with that night?”

  “No,” he answered, just as I heard the faint crunch of a bone fusing itself back together. “I need and want you alive. Why would I have had anything to do with a situation that could have so easily gotten out of hand?”

  That sounded way too logical. “Because you’re insane?”

  The crimson burned in the Revenant’s pupils. “Careful, Sotoria.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Kolis,” I retorted, mimicking the exaggerated rise and fall of his pitch.

  His smile faded. “I see the bitch’s blood has tainted your tongue.”

  “Are you speaking of my mother?” Thicker clouds gathered overhead.

  “Not that bitch,” he seethed. “The other bitch. Seraphena.”

  “Do not,” I said, grabbing his healing arm, “call her a bitch.”

  “Which one?”

  “Either,” I snarled, snapping the bone once more.

  The Revenant’s howl ended in a disturbing, raspy laugh as I repeated the process on the other arm. “You do realize you’re not harming me, right?” he said.

  “I do.”

  “Vicious,” he hissed, blood leaking from his mouth and running down his chin. “You used to be so sweet, like sugar dipped in honey.”

  Well, now I knew I wasn’t anything like Sotoria because no one would ever describe me like that.

  “Your blood tasted like it, too.” My stomach churned. “It changed a little each time. Less sweet. More sweet. This time…” The Revenant drew his lower lip between his teeth. “It tastes like…honeydew.”

  No.

  Bile clogged my throat.

  He did not say that.

  “But sweeter,” he whispered.

  “You’re not good with adjectives, are you?”

  “And you’re not good at knowing when not to speak,” he countered. “Are you?”

  Lifting a hand, I extended my middle finger.

  The aura in his eyes flashed an intense crimson. “I see you’ve forgotten what happens when you show me disrespect.”

  “Want to know what I think of that?” I lifted my other hand and extended that middle finger, too.

  He stared at me for several long moments. “Want to know when I first tasted your blood?”

  “Couldn’t care less.”

  “I’m talking about in this lifetime,” he went on. “And I’m not talking about the very first time I tasted your blood. That was before you could even stand on your own.”

  Before I could…

  For fuck’s sake.

  I couldn’t process that revolting statement—didn’t even want to try. “I’m not interested in this walk down nightmare lane.”

  “Oh, but I am very interested in taking that walk, Sotoria.”

  My hands fisted at my sides. “Do not call me that.”

  “I’m talking about the first time Teerman had his fangs in your skin,” he said, his voice dropping along with my stomach. “I have to wonder how you never knew.”

  “I don’t,” I lied. “Did you—?”

  “He wasn’t supposed to do that, but I spent so much time inside him.” He tipped the Revenant’s head back against the bark. “Your blood was to be drawn and vialed. You were not to be fed upon. But he inherited some of my…” His head lowered. “Desires.”

  I was going to vomit.

  In his face.

  “I didn’t expect that to happen,” he cut in. “He managed to control himself until you first bloomed.”

  “Answer my—” Wait. First bloomed? He couldn’t seriously mean what I think he did.

  He chuckled, the sound like dry bones scraping together.

  He did.

  “Then he couldn’t control himself. Or was it I who couldn’t?” He lifted the Revenant’s shoulder in a painful-looking shrug. “Perhaps both of us. Though he handled…his lessons. That was all him.”

  My skin tightened.

  “Watching your sweet flesh bleed was quite…arousing, however.”

  I needed to stop listening to him. Everything he said could be a lie meant to mess with my head—and it was working. My heart slammed against my ribs, and my stomach continued to churn.

  “It didn’t happen always, but when you slipped into oblivion, we couldn’t help ourselves.” The Revenant’s body tipped forward. “He was smart enough to take from your vein where it wasn’t visible, and you wouldn’t look. After all, my pretty flower was so obedient then, submissive to the Priestesses. You would never…explore such forbidden, shameful areas.”

  At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about. He sounded fucking unhinged. Or maybe it was more that I didn’t want to understand because I was stuck in denial. But my body understood. My skin prickled and itched, starting to feel like a foreign entity instead of a part of me. Because…

  I did know.

  I knew exactly where. And I had been taught—groomed—not to even think of that area, let alone touch it outside of bathing. And I was always in so much agony after Teerman’s lessons that it felt like the pain was everywhere—

  Or was that also an illusion of denial? Had I known the two couldn’t be related and just hadn’t understood what was happening at the time? My chest tightened, and my fingers twitched.

  “It’s such a decadent vein.” His voice rumbled and thickened while my skin felt like something was alive beneath it. “I drank from there before. The one near your prettiest flower. And you know what, so’lis? You liked it then just as much as you liked it before.”

  I lost it.

  There was no other way to describe my response.

  “Shut up.” Lunging forward, I grabbed the hilt of the Revenant’s dagger as I drove my knee up, slamming it into the area between his legs. “Shut the fuck up, you sick fuck.”

  His body spasmed as I twisted the blade, but Kolis laughed. He howled.

  “Keep laughing,” I seethed, gripping his hair with my other hand. “It only makes you sound as unstable and weak as you are.”

  That shut him up.

  “I know what you want,” I said, holding his stare as the essence flared in me, turning the corners of my vision gold streaked with silver and shadows. The wind picked up, whirling across the meadow.

  “Is that so?” he whispered.

  “It’s not going to happen,” I bit out. “Keep sending your Revenants to watch, and I will end them. I don’t care. But know this, you weak, pathetic…fuckboy.”

  The Revenant blinked. “Fuckboy?”

  “You heard right.” I smiled. “And hear this. I’m going to kill you, Kolis.”

  He went completely quiet and then said, “Then you’ll have to do better than this.” He pulled against my hold until strands of hair snapped. “You’ll have to be smarter.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  He laughed.

  And then his arms lifted—his healed arms.

  Fuck.

  He saw the moment I realized it. “Yeah.”

  He gripped the sides of my head and swung his forward. Pain exploded behind my eyes as he slammed his head into mine.

  “Fuck,” I gasped, letting go of him and stumbling back.

  I couldn’t believe he had used such an immature move, but then again, it wasn’t his head he’d just cracked.

  And he’d seriously cracked the Revenant’s head. Or at least I thought so. My vision was a little wonky at the moment, but it sure looked like blood was pouring from the center of the Rev’s forehead. Maybe he’d cracked mine, too, because warm liquid ran down my face, as well, and there appeared to be two of him.

  Gripping the dagger, he tore it free and landed on his feet. I pushed aside the sharp, thudding ache behind my eyes, summoned the eather, and—

  He threw the dagger—or daggers—directly at me.

  Son of a bitch.

  Throwing out my hand, I stopped the blade about an inch from my face—my actual face—and shattered it. “Nice try.”

  “I wasn’t trying.”

  He twisted sideways as if to run, but I lurched forward. He reached behind him, pulling a—

  Godsdamn it!

  A second dagger had been strapped to his back. It must’ve blended in with his black shirt. I should’ve checked. I knew better.

  I jerked to the side, my breath catching as the dagger whizzed past my cheek. I felt a sharp, stinging pain as the Revenant crashed into me. I hit the ground hard, air punching out of my lungs as fury at myself clawed at my insides. I couldn’t believe I’d allowed him to get the upper hand. I was better than this.