“Can I…can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” I smoothed the skirt of the gown as I straightened.
“Will you attempt to go after Kolis while you’re there?” Aios asked.
Her blunt question caught me off guard. I shook my head.
She pressed her lips together as she looked away. “I hope you speak the truth. I don’t understand why you would’ve tried something like that before, and I worry that you will do so again.”
“It was different then. I didn’t think there was any other option,” I said, feeling the uncomfortable weight of my words. The guilt. “Now, there is.”
Aios was quiet for a moment. “Why would you think that was an option in the first place?” Her eyes met mine. “You’re brave. Strong. You have embers in you—powerful ones—but why would you even think you could somehow harm a Primal?”
“I have reasons to believe that I can.”
“Whatever reasons you have, you’re wrong.”
The slippered heels I wore barely made a sound as I took a step toward her. “There is something you don’t—” I let out an exasperated breath, not finding it in me to lie. “I’m Kolis’s graeca.”
Aios’s chest rose with a sharp breath. “That’s impossible.”
“I have Sotoria’s soul,” I said, giving her a brief explanation of how I knew. “Eythos placed her soul in my bloodline, along with the embers,” I said, my voice low even though no one was around us to hear. “Eythos knew what he was doing when he put her soul in with the embers. He was creating a…a weapon. I am Kolis’s weakness. If I’d made it to him, I could’ve stopped him. That is why I left.”
“But…” Creases formed above her brows as she shook her head. “You don’t have Sotoria’s soul. You are Sotoria.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “I’m Sera. I’m not her.”
“I know. I’m sorry. You are you.” Her fingers went to the thin chain again. “I…I just wasn’t expecting you to say that.”
I laughed hoarsely. “Yeah, well, I didn’t expect to hear it when Holland told me either.”
She exhaled heavily. “If Kolis were to discover…”
“That was my whole point in leaving before,” I said. “I don’t know if I look like her or not. I was hoping I did, and it wouldn’t require me to…seduce him.” My stomach soured. “So, that’s why I left. It wasn’t just what you said. It’s my destiny. It’s been my destiny. Becoming Nyktos’s Consort isn’t. It never has been.”
“Couldn’t your destiny be both?”
My gaze flew to hers, and my mind immediately went to how I had wanted to be Nyktos’s Consort.
“Now, I understand,” Aios said, her lips puckering. “That’s why Nyktos wanted to delay this. He wouldn’t have risked Kolis taking out his frustration on the Shadowlands for anything else.” She brushed her braid back over her shoulder. “And you no longer hope that you look like Sotoria?”
My skin chilled with my reluctance to answer the question. To speak the truth. But I did. “No,” I whispered. “And I shouldn’t feel that way, even with Nyktos’s plan. Because I could still do something. I could still try. That’s what I’ve been preparing for—”
“I never told you what my time with Kolis was like, did I?”
I blinked, shaking my head.
“I, like Gemma, was one of his favorites.” Aios laughed, but this one was like shards of glass. “He kept me in a cage.”
My lips parted as horror seized me.
“Granted, it was a large cage of gilded bones.”
“As if that makes it okay,” I blurted out.
Her smile was tight. “It doesn’t, but…” She swallowed. “As sick as this feels to say, and as hard as it will be to understand, the cage wasn’t as bad as what happened once Kolis grew bored with his favorites. And that always happened. Sometimes, in days or weeks. Other times, months or even years.”
Years? Spent in a cage? I would…
I would lose myself in days.
I sat on the edge of the couch, only because I thought I might fall down if I didn’t.
“You see, his Court is lawless and yet full of unknown rules that, if broken, result in death. There is no other way to explain it. Only the cruelest, most manipulative survive in Dalos.” Her fingers twisted the chain. “But his favorites were always protected—and, yes, he often had more than one at a time. Every need or want, except for freedom, was provided for. Decadent food. Jewels. Lush furs.” Her fingers stilled. “No one was allowed to speak to us. Touch us. He routinely killed his own guards when he believed they looked too long in our direction. He never…he never forced himself on his favorites. Barely even touched them. Not even the ones who offered themselves to him as a means of escape.”
I hadn’t expected that.
“He just wanted us there, like pretty adornments that he could visit whenever he wanted to gaze upon them. Those who could do naught but listen to him prattle on endlessly for hours, about how Eythos was the real villain and how unfairly he’d been treated.” She rolled her eyes. “Fates, there were times when I honestly would’ve preferred to take a dagger to my ears than listen to him. But Kolis…he could be deceptively charming when he wanted to be. Enough that you started to relax around him, maybe even let down your guard, even though you knew better. I think that is one of the worst things about him. His ability to cause someone to doubt what they know to be true. To somehow be surprised when that charming veneer vanishes. You see him for what you always knew him to be as he throws you to the serpents.”
“What…what do you mean? About the serpents,” I asked, half-afraid of the answer.
“Other gods. Primals. Godlings. Those who serve him. Honestly, I shouldn’t even refer to them as serpents. That’s an insult to the serpents.”
“Actually, I don’t think you can insult serpents. They’re the worst.”
Aios cracked a grin, but it faded quickly. “Everyone in his Court knows that Kolis eventually grows tired of his favorites. So, they wait while you’re showered with things they want—while their friends or even family are killed for the crime of looking in your direction. They know they’ll get their due. The moment a favorite got their freedom was often the last moment of their life. The things they did to people who had done nothing wrong—whose only crime was becoming the unwilling object of Kolis’s fixation…” She inhaled sharply as my stomach continued to churn. “And Kolis, he did nothing. Not when they were beaten. Raped. Killed. That is what he took pleasure in. Watching those he’d chosen and cherished be stripped to nothing. If you survived the initial release, then the real fun began. You were watched by his most trusted—and they were allowed to do whatever they wanted. They could kill you if that pleased them. You had no rights. It was like a game. Seeing how long they survived. There were often bets. Once, one of his cast-off favorites became pregnant. It was not her choice. Nor was it when I saw Kolis take the babe from her arms and plunge a dagger through the poor child’s heart.”
I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth. Bile rose. “How…?” I cleared my throat. “How did you escape?”
“I survived,” she said, and the horror of what her survival must’ve entailed haunted those moments of silence. “And when the opportunity presented itself for me to leave Dalos, I gutted one of his favored guards and made my escape.”
My lips twisted in a smile of vindictive pleasure.
“I see you approve of that.”
“I do. I hope it hurt.”
The glow of eather shone brightly in her eyes. “It did.”
“I’m…I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t even comprehend how someone could do or allow that. Any of that.”