“What?” I ventured. “Do you know what the Revenants are?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “An abomination of life and of death.” He stood abruptly, eyes settling to a pearly shade of steel. “What you face is a greater evil that should not be, and I…I am sorry that you will see what is to come.”

Well, that didn’t bode well at all.

“You need to leave, Queen.” The doors behind me swung open.

I stood. “But your guards—”

“You were born of flesh with the fire of the gods in your blood. You are a Bringer of Life and a Bringer of Death,” Nyktos interrupted. “You are the Queen of Flesh and Fire, due more than one Crown, one kingdom. What you seek, you already have. You always had the power in you.”

Chapter 42

You always had the power in you.

The words echoed through me as I roamed the halls of the Evaemon Palace several days later, trying to learn where all the many halls led and the purpose of all the rooms while Casteel spent time with his father and mother in the brightly lit family room.

An unrelenting malaise nipped at my heels, following my steps just as Arden, the silver-and-white wolven, and Hisa and another Crown Guard did. Except they were far quieter than my thoughts.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that my friends’ lives had been risked. And for what? To learn that whatever these Revenants were, was a greater evil than we knew? Which, by the way, meant that was all we knew. No one, not even Casteel’s parents, could hazard a guess as to what a Revenant could be and how it would warrant such a warning.

I traveled the back hall of the west wing where the staff offices were located, as were the laundry and the kitchens. Warmth crowded the area, along with the aromas of fresh linen and roasted meat as I admitted that the trip to Iliseeum hadn’t been a complete and utter waste. I had learned that Nyktos was a Primal god, something Valyn vaguely remembered hearing his grandfather mention once. And until now, he’d believed that his grandfather had been speaking of the gods we’d always known. Discovering that I had Primal blood explained why my abilities were so powerful. It also meant that the mother I remembered—the one Alastir had claimed was a Handmaiden—could very well have been my real mother. And, once again, I was back to the possibility that Ian could be my half-brother. That we shared the same mother but different fathers. Discovering that was huge and important to me, but only to me. It wasn’t what we’d gone for.

Which was to gain the aid of Nyktos’s guards—the draken.

At least, I’d gotten to see one, so there was that. Sighing, I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. I’d left the crown in the bedchamber, and I wished I’d left my brain there, as well, where Casteel had managed to pull my thoughts from the trip to Iliseeum multiple times in the ensuing days.