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There was a beat of silence. “Then you plan to take what is owed you and bear the weight of two Crowns?”

I forced my hands to loosen. “Yes.”

His head bowed slightly. “And will you help bring back what was ours to protect? What will allow the Consort to wake?”

Kieran sent me a glance of concern, and I really had no idea what Nektas was speaking of or what would happen if the Consort awakened. But I asked, “What is it that I need to help bring back?”

“Your father.”

I opened my mouth, but it took several moments for me to find the ability to speak. “Malec?”

“Malec is lost to us. He was lost to us long before any of us realized.”

Confusion swept through both Kieran and me. “I don’t understand,” I started. “Malec is—”

“Malec is not your father,” Nektas said. “The blood that courses through you is that of Ires, his twin.”

Shock rolled through me as I stared at the draken’s back. Isbeth…she hadn’t confirmed that Malec was my father…and she had spoken of Malec in the past tense, as if she believed that he was gone. Oh my gods, Isbeth didn’t know where Malec was, and…

“Ires was lured from Iliseeum some time ago,” Nektas said. “Drawn into the realm with my daughter while we slept. We have not been able to look for Ires. Not without being summoned, and he…he has not called for us. But we know he lives.”

My thoughts raced, settling on the painting I’d seen in the museum of Nyktos and the two…the two large cats. “Oh, gods…”

“What?” Kieran looked at me.

I swallowed, almost afraid to ask. “Could Ires shift forms?”

“He, like his father, could take other forms. While Nyktos preferred that of a white wolf, Ires was often fond of taking the shape of a large gray cat, much like Malec.”

“Fuck,” Kieran whispered.

I…I could only stand there while it felt like my heart had dropped out of my body. “I saw him,” I uttered. “We both did.”

The muscles along Nektas’s back rippled and flexed. “How?”

“He was…he was caged by the one who took Casteel,” I said. I had only briefly considered that the creature I’d seen in the cage had been Malec, but at that time, we’d believed Malec to be a deity. Not Nyktos’s son. Not a twin. “The Blood Queen,” I rasped, reeling. “She…she says she’s a god because Malec Ascended her.”

“A god?” A rough, dark laugh left the ancient draken. “A god is born. Not created. What she is…she, like the Revenants, are an abomination of all that is godly.”

Casteel…he had been right.

Nektas’s hands closed into fists. “Then your enemy is truly an enemy of ours.”

Shaken by the revelation, I pressed the heel of my palm to my chest. How had Isbeth lured a god? Had Malec shared something with her? “Your daughter? Do you know if she lives?”

Nektas did not answer for a long time. “I do not know. She was young when we went to sleep, into statas. She was barely on the cusp of adulthood when Ires woke her.”

“What is her name?” Kieran asked.

“Jadis.”

“That’s a pretty name,” I said, briefly closing my eyes. I wished I hadn’t. I saw the too-thin man behind the bone bars, his features mirroring the chaos of his mind. I saw the far-too-intelligent eyes of the cat. My father. And I had left him there. I shuddered.

I couldn’t…I couldn’t let myself go there.

The possibility that Isbeth had a draken locked away somewhere was something I would have to file away for the moment, right along with the knowledge of who my father was and the questions surrounding how he and Isbeth had come together. All I could focus on was what I knew now.

That my father was a victim of Isbeth’s, too.

And I thought of Malec, entombed beneath the Blood Forest. “If a god of Primal blood was entombed, what happens to them?”

“Entombed by the bones of the deities? They would simply waste away, day by day, year by year, but they would not die,” he answered. “They would just exist in a place between dying and death, alive but trapped.”

Gods.

That was an even more horrifying outcome than the deities slowly starving to death, but that meant that Malec was still alive, and Isbeth still loved him.

Nektas’s skin had hardened into scales. “Are you ready, daughter of Ires, the son of Nyktos and his Consort?”

A tremble coursed through me. “Yes.”

“Then speak the words and receive what you’ve come for.”

My skin tingled, and my chest throbbed. Kieran’s hand closed around mine. He squeezed. A soft breeze came from nowhere, swirling across the diamonds. The scent of lilacs reached me, and then I heard her voice among my thoughts—heard the Consort speaking the words Nektas waited for. “I...I summon the flesh and fire of the gods, to protect me and those I care for. To ride at my side and stand guard at my back. I call upon the bloodline birthed of flesh and fire to awaken.”