Page 2 of The Primal of Blood and Bone (Blood and Ash #6)

I floated through the nothingness, surrounded by darkness.

I had a distinct feeling I’d heard voices. His voice. Talking to me. Telling me stories. Pleading with me as a glimmer of light appeared in the dark. But then, the pain came. I remembered that. Intense, searing pain accompanied by suffocating dread that snuffed out the light.

I…

I did something to stop it.

But I couldn’t recall what the voices told me, what had caused the pain, or what I’d done.

Now, I drifted.

Wherever I was, there was no sensation of pleasure or pain. No feelings of fear or excitement, hate or love. It was as if I had been emptied of all emotion and purpose. Whatever my identity had once been, it no longer held any significance.

I was a part of the nothingness that surrounded me, and stayed like that until a light flashed, sending out streaks of silver that pierced the darkness.

A pinprick of sapphire-blue appeared as the light faded, growing brighter.

Bolts of stunning emerald spun from its center and twisted around the blue.

Warm, rich brown followed, curling itself around the blue and green.

And in the center of it all was the beginning of everything .

It started with an explosion that left behind small, pulsing lights of raw energy—pure essence.

That energy rippled outward, molding barren lands and mountains where nothing had existed before, and all those small, pulsing lights twinkling in the skies above were stars.

Bright, brilliant stars that began to fall, descending upon lands no longer barren.

They crashed into the earth where great winged creatures ruled, and in other lands separated by vast bodies of water to the west and east. Those stars embedded themselves deep within the ground, where trees sprouted from the land above them, nourished and grown by the star’s essence below.

As the trees grew strong, so did the stars hidden beneath, each nurturing each other until they rose from the earth.

As I saw them with eyes that mirrored their beginnings and features and skins that seemed to change on a whim, I heard their names whispered through all the realms, through all time.

Gods. Benevolent guardians. Wrathful prosecutors.

The watchers of man. Elementals. The Fair Folk.

Fates. The first gods. The Great Creators.

The Ancient Ones.

And I saw their wars, first with the great winged beasts that ruled the lands, and then with their creations.

Because they had begun to dream of what was to come.

Ten of the Ancients.

The dreamers.

The protectors.

I saw their flesh turn to fire as they burned off their essence to create the first Primals and understood why.

They were desperate to ensure the balance of power remained untainted because their dreams had warned them of what would happen if it didn’t.

A faint warmth sparked inside me and spread as creation changed .

Gods were birthed from Primal unions—gods that would one day Ascend to Primalhood.

And those ten Ancients dreamed. They saw what was coming.

The beginning of the end.

And I saw that the end started with its very own beginning. The birth of a young god, born of two Primals and Ascended into Primalhood.

The true Primal of Life.

His insatiable thirst for life and curiosity led to the first being of duality, strengthening the truce between those who walked the land, and the winged beasts who owned the sky.

But I saw what the Primal could not. He hadn’t created them in the ways of the Ancients. He’d given the beasts a choice. And from that singular act, something unexpected happened. For the fierce beasts felt beyond the physical, and that quality was passed on to the first being of duality.

Free will.

And free will led to choice. And from choice, emotion was born.

The warmth surged into heat as I saw the Primal of Life digging into soil soaked with a mixture of the blood of the very first draken and his.

And I knew he’d spent centuries tending to the fragile life he was cultivating with his breath and will.

I saw him lift a babe from the soil, their eyes a shining crimson that turned into a brilliant blue, then shifted into a mosaic of all the colors in existence before settling on a soft brown as he gazed upon the Primal.

And I knew what was unknown to the Primal.

That the free will from the winged beasts, which had been passed on to the draken, had then been bestowed upon the mortal.

But the ten who dreamed knew.

Even as they marveled at the tiny life he held. Even as they rejoiced, full of awe and pride, they knew it was the beginning of the end.

And I understood as the warmth pulsed in my chest and silver light wrapped in crimson and gold flashed behind my eyes.

Because, for them, nothing was more miraculous than the creation of life .

They cherished even their most nightmarish creations.

Loved them just as deeply as they did the beautiful, elemental beings they designed.

Until they didn’t.

Until their benevolence turned to apathy.

They watched as the Primals grew closer to the mortals, and the first Primal fell in love—just as the ten had dreamed.

They stopped seeing the beauty in creation and began to only see the grave cost of unrestricted growth as the number of mortals grew and spread, overtaking the land and destroying it in the name of new creation.

And I understood what the Ancients could not. That when they saw the Primals now unbalanced by emotion and decided to take back everything they’d created, they too felt.

I understood, as the Primals rose, and the Ancients either retreated into places of peace or were sentenced to the ground, what the ten who had dreamed only realized after it was too late.

That everything done to prevent what was coming had only ensured that it would.

Without the capability to love and hate, rejoice and mourn, gain and lose, there could be no balance. For every hardship, there must be prosperity. Hate could not exist without love. There could be no joy without knowing grief.

As the essence flowed through me, I understood that there must always be balance. Life must continue, and death must always come. Because I saw what the ten Ancients dreamed—what they saw when balance was irrevocably disrupted.

I saw Ancients who had gone to ground and ones yet to Awaken claw their way free, shaking the realms. And I knew they were no longer the great givers of life and the anchors that kept the essence of the realms stable.

They were the end that erupted mountains and turned days into endless nights, toppling cities of steel and drying oceans.

I saw them rise, full of ruin and wrath.

But I also saw more.

Because in the center of those swirling colors, I saw the desperate King with the golden crown of laurel the ten Ancients had dreamed—the man who had descended from that tiny babe the true Primal of Life had held in his hands.

I saw it all: the great power that rose as heir to the lands and skies; she, the first Chosen to fail , who was the true Primal of Life; and what the union between the bringer of life and the bringer of bone would unleash.

Two daughters.

Two Kings.

And the Great Conspirator.

It was inevitable.

The end would come.

But I understood what was threaded through those dreams and existed in the whirling colors as they faded into the crimson-streaked darkness.

Every beginning has an end. But for every end, there must be a new beginning.

That’s what the ten dreamed.

The fall of ruin and wrath.

And the rise of blood and bone.

CASTEEL

Thunder rumbled in the distance as the wolven next to me stood rigid, his hands balling into fists as what I’d said about the Revenant sank in.

He’d sung the very same disturbing rhyme that had haunted Poppy—my wife, my Queen, my everything —since she was a child.

But it wasn’t just that it was fucked up and triggered a violent storm of emotions in both of us.

It was also what that Rev—now in bloody pieces strewn across the floor—had insinuated: that he had been waiting a long time for what was his.

It took no leap of logic to know the Rev meant Kolis. And what he wanted was Poppy.

Kieran’s jaw clenched. “Absolutely fucking—”

A low rumble shook the floors and walls, causing objects in the bathing chamber to fall over.

Kieran looked at me. “That can’t be another god waking up.”

I agreed.

A sudden surge of energy filled the air, making the hairs on my arms stand up.

Stone cracked beneath us. A thin fissure appeared next to Kieran, quickly spreading in a circle around us and the bed. Another fracture formed at the foot of the bed, and more at the head and along the sides.

Kieran stepped back as yet another shallow rift split the floor beneath the bed. “What the—?”

Silver light sparked and spread along the cracks in the stone. It pulsed and held, revealing a circle with an overlapping pointed cross inside.

We were staring at an old Atlantian symbol—two symbols, actually. The circle with the line through it meant life, and the one at the top meant death.

Combined, they stood for life and death.

Blood and Bone.

As the intense brightness faded and the rumbling ceased, we both looked at Poppy. Eather emanated from under her skin, illuminating the intricate network of veins that ran throughout her body.

“My gods,” Kieran whispered.

Hope and fear I’d kept in check this whole damn time crashed together, making me sway.

She will know herself.

She will recognize us.

Those words were like a prayer to the no-longer-sleeping gods as I repeated them over and over.

“ Please .” My voice cracked.

The glow faded from her veins as a mass of silver-streaked shadows gathered beneath her flesh like storm clouds in the summer. They rolled down her chest and ran over her arms and legs.

Poppy’s fingers twitched.

My legs went out from under me. I landed beside the bed on my knees, watching as Kieran pitched forward, catching himself with his palms on the bed.

She will know herself.

She will recognize us.

A spasm ran through her arm, and her knee bent slightly. Picking up her hand, I shuddered as I felt the change. “Her skin is warm. See?”

Placing his hand over hers, Kieran exhaled roughly. “It is.”

Relief left me fucking weak as her left arm jerked and her chest rose. I could’ve sworn ours did the same.

“Poppy,” I whispered, leaning toward her.

A heartbeat passed, and then her fingers tightened around mine. Kieran gripped our clasped hands, and my cheeks dampened.

She will know herself.

She will—

All I could hear was Kieran’s shallow, quick breaths as her lashes fluttered and her eyes opened.

There were no pupils. No discernible irises. Framed by thick lashes, they were orbs of pure molten silver, brimming with the essence—the eather—of the Primal gods.

I no longer felt the stone beneath my knees. Neither Kieran nor I moved.

She will know herself.

She will remember—

The air in the chamber became stagnant, and I had the distinct sense that time had ceased to function properly. Heart pounding, I inhaled, suddenly smelling the fresh, delicately sweet scent of…spring. Renewal. Life.

Lilacs.

Kieran stiffened, and because his hand still gripped ours, I saw tiny bumps rise along his forearm.

A new, slightly musty scent filled the chamber. It was like…stale lilacs. Or fallen leaves in autumn.

“Death,” Kieran murmured, a tremor coursing through his hand.

He had always picked up that faint scent on her, but we’d never understood why.

Now, it made sense.

The breath I took halted as the grip her fingers had on mine loosened, and her hand went limp.

My throat was dry, and my voice was a coarse whisper when I spoke. “Poppy?”

The back of my neck prickled a heartbeat before unfettered power flooded the chamber once more.

But it was different this time. Stronger.

I could feel it pressing on me and watched as Kieran staggered, going down on one knee.

What felt like a charge of energy rippled from Poppy’s hand into mine and then Kieran’s.

Hot and intense, it traveled up our arms, a silver glow tinged with gold and… shadowy crimson that lit up the veins.

“Fuck,” Kieran rasped as fawn-colored fur sprouted on his arm before disappearing in a wash of light.

Every muscle in my body tensed as Poppy’s veins once more lit with eather. Somehow, I knew. I knew what was coming. “Oh, shit.”

Essence erupted from her, tearing her hand from ours and lifting her toward the ceiling.

She was in the same position she had been in while in bed, her hair now flowing down like a waterfall of dark-red wine.

Her gown rippled around her as tendrils of crackling essence arced from her and slammed into us.

The realm turned silver for the briefest moment before I flew backward, the power flinging Kieran to the opposite side of the chamber. I didn’t hit the wall. Neither did he. Through the pulsing strands of eather, I saw him suspended in midair.

Pressure built in my skull and then spread, clamping down on my lungs. I didn’t know what was happening. And, fuck, I couldn’t think with the heated essence racing up my back and running over my shoulders.

Then, I felt it.

A quake began in the center of my chest, where the faint essence that all Atlantians carried within them resided, eather flowing into my abdomen.

The energy ramped up, expanding and growing within me until the corners of my vision turned silver, shaded with gold and crimson.

Raw, burning pain seized my heart as the eather soaked my flesh, drenching every vein and entrenching deep in my bones.

The power flowing through me felt unending and inescapable.

Old. Inevitable. And I could sense it changing every part of my being.

That was the source of the white-hot pain: the essence shattering bones in one breath before rebuilding and fortifying them in the next.

I clenched my jaw as every vein in my godsdamn body collapsed and then expanded, strengthening as the essence wrapped itself around each organ.

I bore the agony of my flesh catching on fire and then hardening, starting at my feet and traveling all the way up.

As it reached the base of my skull, pain exploded in my head, shorting out every sense.

My hearing. Sense of smell. Sensation was the next to go—thank the fucking gods.

Right before it took my vision, I saw Primal mist seeping from Kieran’s outstretched arms, swirling gold and silver.

And then I saw the mist churning around my arms in a dizzying rush of shadows and crimson.