Page 55 of The Primal of Blood and Bone (Blood and Ash #6)

Casteel was suddenly on his feet beside me.

I breathed in deeply, trying to speak, but the pain slammed into me like a scorching wind.

He shouted something, but I couldn’t focus on what he said as I looked down at my arms, half-expecting to find flames crawling up them.

To see blood pouring from open wounds, but they were fine.

I was fine.

But someone wasn’t.

Multiple someones.

And I didn’t only feel the pain.

Eather flooded my veins as scalding agony soaked the air, making it difficult to draw in even the thinnest of breaths.

My legs shook as the taste of bitter panic and tart confusion joined the fear and icy terror.

It settled over me, the weight oppressive.

The sheer magnitude of it—the onslaught of their pain and confusion, their terror and uncertainty, was unbearable.

I could feel myself caving under it and knew I would if I didn’t do something to stop it. And I had to. I needed to—

Steady hands clasped the sides of my face, grounding me. “Talk to me, Poppy.” Cool amber eyes lit by a bright silver aura met mine. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“Pain. So much pain and panic,” I croaked, grasping his wrists with trembling hands. “I’ve never felt anything like it. It’s so vast. So intense—oh, gods, it has to be coming from hundreds—no, thousands of people. Maybe more.”

His eyes widened. “You need to shut it out.”

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. You just need to picture a wall—the thickest Rise you can imagine,” he instructed. “Build it as tall as the skies—”

“You don’t understand. I can’t .” The eather pushed against my skin, and I suddenly knew what I’d felt earlier. The unease. That was the first warning. But of what? I didn’t know as the need to go to those who were hurt bore down on me. “I have to find them.”

“Find who, Poppy? And where? Because the source of what you’re feeling can’t be from here.” His thumbs chased away tears I hadn’t realized had fallen. “If it were, we would hear something. We would be notified.”

“I know, but I have to find them. They’re scared and…and confused. Almost as if—”

I cried out as another outpouring of pain and terror seized every fiber of my being. It fell like a crimson shadow over the chamber, over us, painting the walls red and soaking the floor in blood.

Casteel was speaking, but I couldn’t understand his words as I stared at my arm. It was raised as if I had attempted to ward something off…or perhaps call upon something. Shadows appeared under my skin and swirled.

Casteel stiffened against me, and I knew. I knew without asking that he had also noticed what was happening beneath my skin. “Poppy.”

I wrenched myself free of him, turning as the eather swelled inside me. I had to do something. I had to stop this. I needed to.

The essence of the Primals—of me —seemed to understand the rushing, desperate thoughts and responded at once. The eather seized control. It was like an instinct buried deep within me, never touched before, had been unlocked from the furthest corners of my mind. I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate.

I simply lifted my arm; fingers splayed wide. Shadowy silver wrapped in tendrils of gold sparked from my fingertips, and the air no more than a foot in front of me hissed and then split open. The tear crackled and spat as it grew and widened.

“Poppy!” Casteel shouted. “Don’t!”

My eyes locked with wide, wild amber ones when I glanced over my shoulder at him. I wanted to explain what I was doing, but I wasn’t even sure I could. Because my mind hadn’t caught up with this newly discovered instinct, and there was no time.

The pain called to me.

And so did death.

A strange scent drifted from the opening—an acrid and pungent aroma that reminded me of burnt oil but sharper, smokier. “I have to.”

Casteel’s flesh seemed to thin, causing the angles of his face to become stark. Panic filled his voice. “Don’t you dare, Poppy! Don’t—”

I walked through the opening, leaving one realm and stepping into another—

Noise .

That was the first thing I noticed as the silver glow of eather faded, revealing that I stood among a small, sun-dappled cluster of four or five trees.

So much noise came from every direction.

What sounded like trumpets blared almost continuously, interrupting the shouts and voices coming from every direction—voices that seemed to grow louder, get closer, and then quickly fade away.

And the smell? That burnt-oil scent had increased, mixing with a damp, fishy aroma and something that reminded me of the cramped streets and crowded homes near the Rise in Masadonia.

My heart thumped as the voices grew closer, but they sounded strange.

“… a flow of ash, rock, and gas that can move upward of four hundred miles per hour. There’s no escaping an eruption of this magnitude.

It’s…” The voice choked, and then a throat cleared.

“It’s devastation on a scale we haven’t seen in… ”

I turned toward the voice, spying the shadow of someone walking quickly past the trees. I couldn’t place the accent and its sharp, quick speech pattern.

“…the loss of life will be significant.” Another voice reached me, this time feminine, and it came from behind me.

“How could there be no warning?” someone else questioned from my left. The way the man had said warning , it was like he’d dropped the r . “No signs?”

Although I had no idea what event these people were speaking of, it had to be what I’d felt.

Throat dry, I walked from the grouping of trees—

And jerked to a halt, my eyes widening and lips parting. I couldn’t process what I was seeing. Absolutely none of it made sense.

My body flashed hot and then cold as I stared past a neatly trimmed lawn filled with people scattered about, some alone and others in small groups.

None of them wore anything I recognized.

Gone were the graceful or even drab gowns I was familiar with.

Women here wore odd, snug trousers made of some sort of strange blue material or tight skirts that skimmed the knees, exposing what many would consider a scandalous length of leg.

Men seemed to favor shirts with peculiar insignias rather than fitted tunics or waistcoats.

Some of the breeches were short—really, daringly short—no matter the sex.

Some blouses didn’t even cover the wearer’s stomach and appeared more like a corset sheared in half.

The footwear was also puzzling. Their shoes were either pointy and heeled or flat and brightly colored.

The strangeness didn’t end there. I saw hair the color of the sky and other unnatural shades. Many had tiny, often white objects in their ears, and nearly everyone held a rectangular object in their hands that they either stared down at or spoke into.

Those who passed me seemed to either be unaware of my presence or would merely glance toward me with an expression I imagined mirrored mine before quickly looking away.

Bewildered, I lifted my gaze past the people.

Dizziness swept over me. I was before some sort of river full of choppy, dark water.

It wasn’t the uninviting inlet that held none of the beauty of Saion’s Cove that caused my heart to thump as if it were trying to break free of my chest. It was a large vessel moving across it.

A type of ship I’d never seen before, with more than two levels and taller than many homes.

It had an open deck that people stood on.

Beneath them were what I could only describe as several metal boxes with wheels larger and thicker than anything I’d seen on a carriage.

There was more than one of the drifting platforms in what appeared to be a harbor of sorts.

I could see at least three of them, one traveling in the opposite direction.

But it was what stood across the river that caused the air to slowly leak from my lungs.

I gaped at the towering structures of steel and glass that reached far above the clouds, dwarfing everything around them and casting long shadows over the earth below.

The buildings were as tall as mountains, yet many appeared slim, and I couldn’t even begin to fathom how they’d been built.

Surely, the gods had to be involved in such a creation.

But something about them seemed too cold to have been shaped by anything with blood coursing through its veins.

I took another step forward, my toes curling into the damp grass. Where in the actual fuck was I? A seed of panic took root, stroking the essence. My hands fisted as I scanned what I was beginning to think was some kind of park—

My mouth completely dropped open as my gaze landed on a colossal statue standing proudly on an island.

I couldn’t decipher how far away the towering lady in flowing robes was, but it couldn’t be that far.

I didn’t know what material she had been crafted from, but it carried a green sheen.

She held a torch, thrusting it into the sky high above her, and a crown sat upon her head.

It must be a depiction of a goddess. Perhaps she had been responsible for these impressive structures.

However, she looked nothing like the renderings of the goddesses I’d seen.

I dragged my gaze from the statue and saw a bridge raised in the air like a suspended pathway with enormous stone pillars anchoring thick, web-like cables that seemed to hold it up by sheer force. It stretched far across the water and was packed with those strange metal boxes on wheels.

“…the city, located about five miles away from the eruption sight, includes the neighboring towns,” a male, speaking fast, his tone harried, caught my attention. “…has a population estimated to be three million.”

Three million…people?