Book Review: A Fire in the Flesh

Title: A Fire in the Flesh
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Fiction

What Its About: Sera finds herself in Dalos, Kolis’s court, and what is worse she seems to be dying as Kolis is drinking her blood. Sera could have sworn she saw a huge silver wolf watching her, which she thinks–no, she knows is Ash. Attes arrives and tries to convince Kolis not to kill her, reminding him that she is his graeca, while Callum tells Kolis to take the embers out of her. Sera sees the wolf stalk forward, and all hell breaks loose as Ash unleashes his power, knock out both Attes and Callum, before starting an all out battle with Kolis, thrashing the palace. Ash manages to get Sera out of the chains and the cage, when Kolis pulls him back because Ash did not take the chance Kolis had given him to back off. During this, Hanan appears in order to help Kolis, and Ash kills him, resulting in Bell ascending to be the Primal of the Hunt.

The two primals continue fighting each other, wreaking havoc on the place, while Sera makes a week attempt at getting a sword. Attes grabs hold of her, and tells her that Ash will die if she does not stop the two–Kolis is too strong and his drake are too powerful that Ash will not stand a chance. She is the only one who can stop them, as the embers are a part of her. She grabs one of Attes’s daggers and and uses compulsion only made possible by the primal energy she receives from the embers on both Kolis and Ash to get them to stop. Then, Sera puts the dagger to her throat and tells them to stop. Ash does, and Kolis does too, but only to grab the dagger out of Sera’s hands and plunges it into Ash’s heart.

Kolis keeps stabbing Ash as Sera screams and she only stops when Attes tells her to stop screaming as it is inciting Kolis’s ire. At this point, Sera starts to feel her heart slowing and knows that she is dying–Attes notices it too and calls to Kolis to do something about it, otherwise he will lose his grace. Kolis stops stabbing Ash, and tells his guards to put Ash in a cell. Then he picks up Sera and takes her to see Phanos, the God of Sea and Skies, where he orders Phanos to save her. Phanos takes Sera into thew water, and after speaking to her, he tells her to remember the sacrifices made. He kisses her, but the kiss is meant to fill her lungs with cold air. Many other Cereen come up to Sera and do the same, and when the last one finishes, Sera is hauled out of the water by Kolis, where she sees what Phanos had meant: hundreds of Cereen bodies floating in the water, all of them having given up their life–and eather–to save hers, at least temporarily prolong it.

Sera wakes up after sleeping off the effects and decides to escape her cell. She finds a chest of glass dicks in her room, and breaks one of them. When Callum opens the door to the cage, she stabs him through the brain stem with the end of one, and stabs him some more to keep him down for as long as possible. She also kills a guard and then runs through what she thinks is Cor Palace, looking for an exit. She finds herself in a room full of Chosen dressed in white, and they start screaming and calling for guards at the sight of her in blood. Sera runs through another door and finds herself in a dark, damp place that reeks of iron. She keeps trying to move forward but then hears a scream and cannot help herself to check it out. There, she finds a woman dressed in white feeding off of a half naked man. She sees him ask for help, so she pulls the woman off, getting attacked by her. This woman tells her that she smells like life and asks her to let her drink some of her blood as she is very hungry. Sera fights her off, and finds a bloodstone blade that she stabs into the woman, who in turn dissipates into dust. Then, she goes to check on the man, who is dead, but as she checks his pulse, she swears that she could see the man twitch despite the lack of a pulse. Before she can investigate further, footsteps approach the area, and she finds herself facing a kraken. She manages to use her powers to knock him away from her, but he gets up on his feet a little while late when she faces off his partner. Then, the dead man attacks her, and the guard kills him, muttering that he is a Craven and an abomination. Sera starts to use her embers again to escape, but the draken knocks her out and she finds herself at her lake, looking at a large, silver wolf.

Sera wakes up alone in her bed only to find Kolis nearby staring at her. He doesn’t seem furious at her attempt to escape, but he is not happy with her slaughter of the guard and of her maiming Callum. He tells her to let Callum finish what he came to do without harming him as she is filthy. Callum comes in and they talk, at which point he gives her very specific instructions on what to do when the door to her cell opens. He tells her that if she does not follow his instructions, he will harm one of the Chosen that come into her room. Sera does not follow the instructions immediately upon the door to her cell being open, so Callum follows through by killing one of the Chosen, and, is about to do the same thing with another, when she moves and asks him to spare them. Once they are done, she is left alone to bathe which is difficult for her due to the attempt on her life while she was in the bath in the House of Haides–and she realizes with a pang that she misses Ash being her lookout as he had made her feel safe. She decides to swallow her fear–there are other things to worry about, and bathes. After she has finished bathing, she waits for Callum to come back, and instead gets visited by a silver hawk, who turns out to be none other than Attes.

Attes tells her that he only serves the true Primal of Life, which for all intents and purposes is Sera right now. He explains that he was aware of Eythos’s plan, going into detail about it and how it failed; unfortunately, he couldn’t tell Nyktos because the Fates had decided that no one who knew of it could tell Nyktos about it as a way to balance out what Eythos had done. Attes shares some information with her about who he lost under Kolis, as well as information about the courts and also about Nyktos’s whereabouts. Sera orders him and makes him swear that he will support Nyktos against Kolis if it ever comes to war and asks him to find her a bone of the ancients. Before heading out, Attes asks her if she can feel Sotoria, and when she confirms that she can, he speaks to Sotoria that he will do his best to save her this time. Attes changes back in to his hawk, flies away, and at some point, Sera falls asleep while waiting for whatever else is supposed to happen.

She dreams of her lake and of Ash, but he appears more clearly defined in this dream than in any other dream that she has had, down to the details of his very special member. They cling to each other, and end up having sex, which seems very real to her and Ash says the same thing in her dream. Ash makes a comment that make Sera believe he is not doing okay, and as their dream unravels, he sees her with all the bruises that she has received, while she sees him look very unwell and sickly. She questions why her imagination would make something like this up.

After she wakes up, she has made the decision that she wants to be a vessel–exactly like she was taught all her life, and appear to be Sotoria, whose sole is inside her and whose presence she feels some of the time, in order to make Kolis fall in love with her so that she can save Ash and end Kola’s reign. Kolis comes by shortly after she wakes up and informs her that some of Nyktos’s forces are in the Bonelands, and when she asks, Kolis tells her that he does not want war–at least one that he cannot win, which reminds her of a comment that Attes had made about Kolis being extremely weakened. Kolis changes the subject to Nyktos, as she had asked Callum about him and at first Sera tells him that she is fond of Nyktos, until Kolis pulls her hand with the marriage imprint and tells her that there is no way that you can be fond of someone and have this. She ultimately admits that she loves Nyktos, but is not in love with Nyktos, and explains the difference to Kolis. Ultimately, she also has to reveal that Nyktos had his Kardia removed to sell the point of not being in love and feeling love from him. Kolis tells her that he loves her and so she asks him to let Nyktos go for her, because love is doing thing stat they won’t like because it makes. the other person happy and besides, she can’t open up herself to loving Kolis if she’s worrying about Nyktos. Kolis confirms that Nyktos is in stasis, but agrees to let him go when Sera tells him that she will not fight him if he lets Nyktos go.

A day or so later, Sera is required to be in her cage while Kolis holds court in the same room, and men and women come in with information from all different parts of the mortal realm, telling him of the requests of the mortals and the offerings that they have left behind. One man in particular keeps leering at Sera while giving his report to Kolis. Kolis finally snaps and asks him questions that make the man admit that he desires her and the man makes a comment about Sera that has her responding to him, despite being asked to stay quiet by Kolis when he told her earlier that day that they will be hosting court. Kolis asks her if she is offended by what the man had said, to which she responds that she is not—internally she had realized that she would have to care what the man thinks, but she doesn’t care. He says that the man offended him, and so he makes the man explode. Elias—the guard—comes in and asks if he needs to call for cleaning, to which Kolis says no, and causes the chair and whatever remaining parts of the man that are splattered across the chair, be turned into dust. Then he has the next God come with information about their temple. At some point, he excuses himself, and the woman comes up to Sera. She introduces herself as Dametria and tells Sera upon Sera’s own questioning that she’s from Terra. She provides some updates from Terra that gives Sera hope that her step-sister and Queen of Lasania, Ezemeria, has created a treaty with Terra to save their home. Elias comes in and tells Dametria to leave, as Kolis is coming back, which prompts Dametria to state that he was probably pleasuring himself. When Elias mentions her leaving again, she says that she is leaving and then less audibly tells Sera that she was there in the crowd when she was crowned.

After Kolis returns from wherever, Kyn arrives and ignores Seraphena while talking to Kolis. He tells Kolis that he tried talking to the encampment of Nyktos’s men out in the Bonelands and getting them to leave, but they refused to do so and that Nektas is amongst them, which makes this even harder as the draken consider the Bonelands to be sacred. He asks Kolis to give him permission to destroy the Shadowlands, after also informing him that a group of Nyktos’s soldiers is camping outside of one of his own borders. Scared that they will do something to the Shadowlands and in turn hurt Nyktos, Sera gives them advice. She also reminds Kolis that if there is war, how can they build and learn to grow to love each other? Kolis offers her up to Kyn if she isn’t who she claims to be—Sotoria—and Kyn accepts his potential gift of Seraphena, as he has many ideas of what to do to her. He also brings a gift to Kolis—a badly bloodied man, who turns out to be none other than Rhain. 

Kolis wants to know why Rhain was following Kyn, and surmises that he must have gotten caught on purpose because Rhain’s father was a phenomenal tracker, who taught him how to do that. Kolis believes that maybe Rhain wanted to follow Kyn to find Nyktos or even Seraphena. Then, Seraphena hears Rhain’s voice in her mind, telling her to do what she did when she nearly brought the House of Haides down in the Shadowlands. At first, she thinks she’s imagining it, but then Kolis reveals that he had Rhain’s father and older brother killed for “treason”, all because they would not do his order and use their powers—the power of projecting. He wonders if Rhain is as skilled as his father, or if his power is similar to his brother, and then rips off his tunic, where he finds a satchel containing different belongings of different people—amongst them is Aios’s pendant. Kolis demands to know whose pendant that is, and Sera, not enjoying the view of Aios’s belongings in Kolis’s hands, tells him that it’s hers and that Rhain hasn’t contacted or spoken to her as she didn’t even know he could do that. Kolis decides to have Rhain executed, but Seraphena argues against it, telling him that he would appear much stronger and gain more love and support by being benevolent—releasing Rhain bloodied and hurt would send the message that he doesn’t tolerate people’s acts against him, but that at the same time he can be benevolent. She argues that if those folks support their own Primal, and he releases them, then that Primal will be more likely to support him. She makes another deal with Kolis in exchange for Rhain’s freedom, despite him telling her that he’s ready to die—Sera will not have another one of Nyktos’s friends dead and another ink in his skin. Kolis sends Kyn off on his own, and has someone else remove Rhain and free him. 

A day later, Kolis comes by with Ione—a goddess from Keella’s Court, who can read people’s memories. Callum is pretty sure that this is the end for Seraphena as he keeps claiming that she’s not her. Sera begins to worry and tells Kolis that she’s afraid because Taric did this to her and it was extremely painful. She still doesn’t want to go through with it, so Kolis uses compulsion on her and tells her to sit down, while Ione takes her hands and bites her to drink her blood. Sera can see that Ione sees everything—the truth of who she is and what she has lied about. It becomes painful for her, so Sera pushes her back with her powers, and then gets ready to fight her way out if Ione tells Kolis the truth. She’s dumbstruck when Ione tells him that she is Sotoria, as she had claimed and confirms all of the lies that Sera had stated to Kolis. It makes Kolis look at her differently, and Callum look confused. Kolis tells him to stop and let it go—that it’s her, though Callum tells him that she doesn’t look the same. Ione tells them that souls don’t always look the same upon rebirth-there are a myriad of factors that may make them look differently, and Kolis reiterates this later with him. On her way out, Ione calls Sera “Consort”, which causes Kolis to turn deathly quiet and alarms keep going off in Sera’s head. He tells Ione that he never approved the name or gave permission for her to be the Consort, which means that it’s all void, and she cannot be called that. Sera realizes that he gave his word in front of Kyn and Attes, and it would be the words of each brother against each other, so would mean nothing. 

Once both Ione and Callum are gone, he is swept with emotion, and despite Sera’s reluctance, he strikes as a viper and drinks from her neck—something that she does not want, but unfortunately she is also unable to do anything about it once she’s in the throes of that feeding. When he releases her, she scrambles away, and realizes that her whole backside is wet—Kolis had come in his pants while feeding from her. He apologizes to her and tells her that she has nothing to worry about in the future. Sera hides in the bathroom and Kolis disappears. 

At some point, Attes comes and visits her telling Sera that he has some news—there has been some movement on Nyktos. He confirms that Nyktos had been put into stasis a second time by the bones of an ancient, and it appears that Kolis is trying to bring him out of stasis, both of which are later confirmed by Kolis in a separate conversation. Attes doesn’t stay long, but he is not happy with the punctures on Sera’s throat, despite her feeble attempts at stating that she’s fine. Afterwards, Callum and Seraphena are in the room alone, and they look like they want to both murder each other when Kolis comes in. He reveals that Callum is actually Sotoria’s younger brother, and that he was supposed to have gone with Sotoria to the fields to help her pick flowers for her older sister’s wedding, but instead he had been fucking the baker’s daughter. That was when Kolis saw Sotoria and she ran away from him. Kolis returned to the mortal realm after she was buried and tried to talk to her parents, but they cowered in the corner in front of him, while Callum was the only one unafraid of him. They talked a while, and Callum blamed himself for Sotoria’s death as he should have been there with her. He asked to see Sotoria, and Kolis explained to him that he could not do that as he was still living, so Callum cut his own throat to go see her. Kolis did the one thing not allowed to Death—brought Callum back to life. At this point, Kolis tells her all about Nyktos and them trying to get him out of stasis. 

Later on, Sera falls asleep on the divan, and dreams of her lake. She prays to see Ash, and when he does appear, they talk. He tells her that he’s heard of many different things—her escape, Kolis talking to Kyn and the deal she made, amongst other things. He then asks her if she had told Kolis the truth—that she needs Ash to Ascend. When she tells him that she had not, he tells her that she needs to tell Kolis and call in the Fates, who will answer to her and only her as she is, for all intents and purposes, the Primal of Life. When she wakes up, she finds that Kolis is watching her, which creeps her out. He asks her what she was dreaming off and tells her that she smells like mountain air and citrus—the way that Ash smells to her. Sera covers and tells him that she doesn’t remember her dreams as soon as she wakes up. They talk further and Kolis wants to know what he can do about them being together, and Sera asks to get out of this cage, which Kolis obliges her by saying that he’ll show her around and they can spend some time together. Kolis leaves, and Sera thinks about the dream—realizing that she’s heard of mates of the heart; something that happens when two people are two halves of a whole. That said, there is one problem-Ash has had his Kardia removed, so this is not possible.

Kolis takes Sera around the palace and into a hall, where many different Primals and Gods are Present. Sera quickly notices that Keella, Attes, and Kyn are amongst them. Kolis has Seraphena sit on a pillow next to him on the dais, where he sits on the throne. Keel comes up to the throne and questions Kolis about Sera and Sera’s status as the Consort of the Shadowlands. Kolis makes it clear that he has not given his permission for them to marry and for Sera to be called the Consort, and when Keella doesn’t believe this, he calls Kyn over, who confirms that Kolis never gave such an approval. Keella still does not look convinced, so Kolis tells her to ask Sera herself, to which Sera is forced to reply that she is there of her own free will, in order to keep the balance and save Ash. Keel returns to the crowd after being reprimanded by Kolis for questioning her.

Servers come around and Sera watches as one gets snagged by a Primal, nods to a request that he had made, and he pulls her back before feeding on her. Kolis asks her what the matter is, and Sera asks some questions because she is bothered by the fact that these Chosen may be taken advantage of–they never had had a choice–and when questioned by him, she tells him that she would shove a blade into the heart of any person that did not gain another’s consent. Kolis points out another couple–Evander and Jacinda–and Sera watches as Jacinda seems to be in pain and crying. Kolis tells her that Evander knows how to give great pleasure, but her enjoys pain, and Sera asks for a bade, which is handed to her by Elias. He walks up to them, gets Jacinda away, and then stabs him in the heart. Jacinda starts creaming and crying, begging Evander to please still be alive, which confuses Sera. Sera then realizes that Kolis manipulated her, and when she sees Keella’s ashen face, she asks about Evander, only to find out that he’s from Keella’s court, and realizes that Kolis had utilized Sera to punish Keella for her line of questioning. In her fury, once she’s back near the dais, Seraphena wants to stab Kolis, but is intercepted by Elias, the guard, who takes the blade from her and tells her to sit down. She follows instructions and continues to seethe internally the rest of the time that Kolis holds court.

During the court, there are two gods that come up to Kolis and one of them claims that the other had called the first one a cheat. Kolis claims that the first one is loyal to him, so he maims the second god and asks his guards to string him up. Not too long after, Veses shows up and when asked about her disappearance from Court, she creates a like about there being a coup in her court, resulting in her not being able to attend. The conversation gets more awkward when Veses tells Kolis that she would do anything for him because she loves him, even as far as sucking his cock in front of Court if he asked her to. He asks her what her job was–to keep a close eye on Nyktos for him, and then asks her if she had seen Sera. Veses tries to lie but Sera tells him that she has seen Veses on several occasions. Veses makes up more excuses as to why she never reported Sera’s existence to Kolis. Veses says something mean about Sera, and then insults her a second time in front of Kolis, to which Kolis commands her to apologize before telling her that Sera is his grace, delivering an emotional blow to Veses. She starts walking away from the dais, when Kolis calls her back and tells her that she hasn’t received her punishment. Then he calls to Kyn, who stalks up to Veses and tells her that they will have fun–both Sera and Vases seem to realize that this punishment is sexual in nature and against Veses’s wants, in full visibility of the Court. Sera demands Kolis to stop it, and fed up with her going against him and questioning him, Kolis uses compulsion on her to shut her up and take her to her room. There he tells her that he had asked her to not go against him, and yet she questioned him publicly multiple times. He then strings her up on chains in her room, making her hang from her arms with her toes being the only thing that are keeping her weight on the ground. He tells her that he’s sorry for doing this and that because he loves her, she’s going to get only this type of punishment.

Sera is left alone with Callum, who tells her that Kolis would not have done this if she truly was Sotoria, which means that deep down he might still have questions around who she is. Callum does agree with her about the brutality of what was going to happen in the court, and that it shouldn’t happen, but then tells her that Kolis wasn’t like this until Eythos’s death. Kolis returns after a while, takes Sera of the chains and apologizes to her. He tells her that he stopped the punishment from Veses and has the Chosen fill in a bath for her, before another Chosen helps her with the bath.

Sera wakes up the next day and apologizes to Kolis for her action at court, which surprises Kolis and Callum. He shows her that same day how he creates life–by drinking the blood of Jove, a male Chosen–and then having Elias give some of his eather to reanimate the human. This disturbs Seraphena as the guy hasn’t chosen this in particular, though Kolis says it’s a great honor. Kolis explains how he creates the Craven and this leads into a conversation about balance, during which Sera realizes that Kolis cannot be killed because while Ash is a Primal of Death, Kolis is the Primal of Death; without him there is no balance.

Later that day, Veses comes by to visit Seraphena and convinces Callum to leave them alone for 10 minutes. Veses tells her that she did not need Seraphena to defend her at court. She tells her that she is going to do everything in her power to make sure that Sotoria does not return to Kolis, and reveal who exactly Seraphena is, which will impact Nyktos, while Seraphena promises her that while she’s sorry for what happened in the Council hall, she will still do everything in her power to see her burn before she dies. They exchange a few barbs and Veses raises a few doubts about Seraphena being Sotoria. But ultimately Veses leaves without further consequence to either lady. That night Kolis sleeps by Sera’s side again.

The next day, Sera notices that her gums are bleeding, which further confirms her thoughts that she’s running out of time. Kolis takes her for another walk, and they talk about Revenants and how they are formed. He explains that Callum is different than all of the other Revenants because he had feelings when he returned Callum to the living. He had feelings when he brought back all of the other Revenants, but they’re still different, and Seraphena suspects that it’s because Kolis really felt his emotions for Callum, while all of the others were fake. He takes Sera all the way to a parapet where they can see all the way to the Carcers and even the city of Dalos. He tells Sera a lot about what happened in Dalos–that the Fates wiped out the gods who had pledged their loyalty to Kolis after he took the embers of life and the crown. And the rest of them, he killed himself for not pledging their loyalty to him. They talk about Sera and the way she looks, and Kolis insults her by saying that he wishes she looked a lot closer to Sotoria than she was. He sense that she’s been insulted and asks her what he can do to make it up to her. Sera makes up a ruse that she wants to see a diamond the biggest diamond ever, with jagged edges–she’s speaking about the Star, but is talking about a diamond she had seen in her mom’s jewelry box. Kolis takes her back to her cage, and calls down the diamond at the top of the arch–it looks like stems, but as it floats back down, it’s actually the Star. When he lets Sera hold it–at her request–she sees how Eythos had believed that Kolis could be different and saved, but that Kolis himself killed Eythos, not realizing that Eythos had given the last of his embers away. Sera realizes that this is Eythos’s soul inside, and lets out a phrase that alerts Kolis that she had seen something.

He demands to know what she has seen, and hurts her while doing it. Knowing who was in the star and who had seen everything that was going on beneath in the cage fills Sera with such rage that she uses a bit of her embers. This in turn pisses off Kolis, and he turns on her. He gets on her, his weight pressing down and she is overtaken by panic. But then she remembers something that Attes had told her–that the Bones of the Ancients can be destroyed by either the Primal of Life or Primal of Death. And in her anger, Sera realizes that the embers were hers, and her will was stronger than anything else, so she sends a ripple of power–what she wants happens. She screams at him, and he hears Sotoria in her voice, stumbling away from her. Sera uses the magic her embers grant her and she takes Kolis down, embedding a bone of the ancient in him, while talking about what he had done to Eythos. She stabs Kolis through his heart, as he goes completely still beneath her, as if accepting his fate, and then she frees Ash with her embers. At some point she collapses and has an out-of-body experience, her eather following Ash along as he fights and feeds his way to her.

He arrives to her just in time, and Attes also shows up along with Elias, who pledges himself to Seraphena. They all talk about things–who she is, what to do, and they decide to have Kolis hidden to give them time. They want to leave behind the Star because Ash doesn’t want Sera to use any more of the embers, but she tells him that it’s his father, and then she goes and gets it. Elias and Attes disappear with Kolis, while Ash shadowsteps with her and takes her to an underwater cavern fill with lavender flowers growing everywhere. They put the star down, and they take some time to clean themselves. When it’s time to go, Ash picks up some clothes for her and for himself, before coming back to her and helping her get dressed.

They head back to the Bonelands, where they encounter Bele, who is happy to see them. She tells them that they had apprehended a man, Elias, and have tied him up on a column, which shortly thereafter is occupied but the Draken who cause a rock to fall and knock Elias out. Sera asks that he be freed, and not too long after Attes arrives with Keella, and they show them the Star. Keella tells them that the only way to get the Soul out is either to get the person who put the soul in to take it out, or by the Primal of Life. A small argument ensues because Ash doesn’t want Sera to use her embers, but Sera knows that this is important–especially because Sotoria is also inside her and they need to get Sotoria’s soul. So she frees Eythos who drifts around Ash and basically tells him that he’s proud of his boy, before disappearing off to where the souls go. Keella explains the process of removing Sotoria’s soul from Sera’s body, and Ash doesn’t want to go through with it, resulting in another argument. But ultimately, they make it happen, separating Sotoria from Seraphena, and Keella and Attes take the Star with them to hide it from Kolis.

The two are left with their friends, and Rhain even talks to Sera thanking her for saving his life. It’s not long before they have to go, so the gods all go down on their knee and give her a warrior’s goodbye, which has her tearing up as it’s hard to say good bye. Ash takes Sera to her lake, and she makes him promise that he will truly live; that he will figure out how to get his Kardia back and learn to love–to spend time with his friends, and not shy away from that. He promises gruffly. They spend a little time together joined and talking, with Sera thanking him and saying her good-byes. She then tells him that it’s time–it’s time for him to take the embers and let her die. So Ash drinks her blood, until she’s nearly to her last heartbeat, last blood. He then has her drink from him, after telling her that he’s not good with out her. She drinks the blood and her memories come flooding back–of the time she was out at night to smell the flowers and her mother came out and they chatted a bit before her mom left because Sera had said that the flowers smell in a certain way that her father also said; of the time that Odetta made a comment about her being touched by life and death; how Holland had spoken about being unafraid of death; how Ezra had told her about something and then told her that Sera matters to her. She sees Jadis, and Reaver, and flashes of people she has grown to care for, before she remembers how things started and happened with Ash. Ash speaks to her in the present and he sounds terrified, begging her not to leave him, and then screams that he loves her; that he’s in love with her.

Sera floats in darkness and hears voices, and the sees a light–which tells her or rather shows her the story of the Ancients and the wars and the mortals. She learns and inherently knows that she is not part of the cycle of life, she was the cycle; she was Life. Sera becomes aware of pressure on her body, and then also of someone holding her–but she’s not sure exactly, beyond that he’s important. And suddenly eather erupts from her in a deafening boom, with Ash being ripped from her, and her eather cracking things and destroying them, and then she disappears into light. She becomes light.

Sera sleeps and dreams, and hears as various voices including his voice tells her stories and talk to her. He tells her about how he first saw her in his wolf form, and about this dream that he had of her lake, which lead him to convince himself it was anything but a sign and forced him to take actions that made things worse. He explains how he felt alive around her from the first time and that he should have known from the first kiss, which has Sera wondering about it. He talks about her stabbing him, which makes her smile but she doesn’t know why because it’s strange, and he talks about his fear that had him acting in a piece of shit way. Sera keeps floating in her lake, and her own memories keep coming up to the forefront of her conversations with Ash and others. Another voice comes to tell Ash to feed and Sera knows that she will be hungry. Ash tells her that he should have known then what she was to him–his heart mate–the one thing that could return a Kardia where it was removed. He tells her to take as long as she needs and he will wait for her.

Sera continues dreaming as other voices show up, and then she dreams about a large feline resembling a cave cat in her lake, and the cat lets her touch it, purring. Then, she also sees two smaller kittens, and when she looks back at the cat, she sees herself. Sera starts waking up and the voice tells her to take her time. But she does wake up and she’s really thirsty, filled with need to feed. Sera instinctually realizes who Ash is –the one she ultimately submits to and he was the end to her beginning. He realizes what she needs and talks to her, causing Sera to get images in her mind from her memories about what he meant, but he tells her that he is hers and she needs to feed. Sera recognizes the swirl of gold in his palm and puts her own palm with the same imprint on his, causing a slight jolt as they touch. She comes to him and then he order her to feed, so she does, learning how to release her fangs. She keeps feeding on him, and they end up having sex while she feeds. Before long, she remembers who she is and realizes that Ash had saved her, remembering what he had screamed at the lake–he loves her even if he cannot, that he is in love with her. She finishes feeding, and closes his wound, and then kisses him. She has so much that she wants to tell him, but first they continue having sex. Once she comes, she realizes that Ash has not come with her, and instead had stopped. He ultimately asks her if she knows who he is, which at first confuses her, but then she remembers how she had struggled recalling his name and other people’s name while they spoke to her during her sleep; how she’d behave upon waking up. She tells him that she will always know him and uses his name.”

At that, Ash loses control of his form and turns into his Primal form, then uses his eather to hold her down, while he spills his fears of losing her and her potentially not remembering him. He tells her that once he lets her go, she has to run because he will not be able to help himself fuck her in this form. She tells him to go ahead and do it anyways. They end up having sex again, while Ash tells her that he’s never going to take her for granted, never dishonor her, and he will always stand at her side, protect her, and give his life for her, and will kill for her. He tells her that she is his everything and then says I love you to her for the first time when she can actually hear it.

A rush of emotion hit her at this and he explains to her that he doesn’t know when he started to fall in love with her, and they talk about that and her own fear that she would never know what it felt like to be loved by him. At some point Nektas comes knocking to ask if they are okay because he heard screaming. Ash threatens him and Sera tells him that she’s fine. Nektas calls her Meyyah Liessa, which finally makes it sink in for Sera what had happened–that she is the Queen of the Gods. They continue having sex and having periods of spending time in bed together while talking about things–her fangs which Sera calls “things” and Kolis who currently isn’t a problem as Ash explains that Kolis was weakened by Sera’s Ascension and he’s holed up in Dalos, though everyone across Ilisseum felt Sera’s ascension. So all of the shock has bought them some time. Finally Ash comes clean–the reason that he didn’t want to take Sera as his Consort was because on the day that she was born, he had a dream of her at her lake and dying, and him going into full destruction mode. At first he chalked it up to imagination, but he kept track of her over the years, and then tried to deny that the dream was anything but that–just a dream. But he started sensing her feelings and many of them were the same as those in the dream, and he realized that it was not a dream. He knew that Kolis had to be involved in her death somehow, and what he saw and felt himself be like in that dream terrified him so much that he had his kardia removed before bringing her to the Shadowlands so that he could not fall in love with her and have that dream come to pass. He reveals that he thinks that they are mates of the heart, the more they talk about their memories of the dreams they shared together–dream walking–and how he feels about her. He tells her that the Mate of the Heart are very much legends, and explains that the fates are involved in the creation of these. He explains to her how they may be involved, and tells her that she can call Holland if she doesn’t believe him, because there’s littler that she cannot do. She runs out naked onto the balcony when realization hits, and checks that the Rot went away.

They continue resting after Ash returns from talking with someone else and he tells her that she can tell him anything–that they have the kind of trust where they know that they can be honest with one another and comfortable knowing that what they share with each other will not alter the way they look at each other. Sera knows that he’s referring to what happened when she was Kolis’s prisoner, but she’s not ready to share that and at first waves it off as “it was nothing” but then realizes that it was the same thing that Veses had said of the situation in the Council Hall. He tells her that he’ll be waiting for her to share whenever she is ready. They then talk about Rhain, because he is going to grab some food for them, and his loyalty to both of them, and about his own abilities. Sera reveals to Ash that she had lied about something Holland had shared with her and Ash makes a light-hearted comment, which makes her realize that this is what’s different about him now–he’s lighter. She tells him that Holland had said that the ever changing thread was really relating to Ash’s heart as love is more powerful than the Arae can even imagine, and that Holland knew that Ash could love her. Ash tells her that he probably knew that he was already in love with her. She ultimately realizes that they truly are heart mates, which is why Ash had the vision. He tells her that he loves her and she asks him to say it again, and then they end up making love.

My Thoughts: Reading everything that Sera had to go through just to survive under Kolis was tough, because I knew that she should ideally be with Ash. But part of the purpose of her going through this is to realize that she always had a choice–she could either not use the embers as Kolis had asked her to and continue to be at his mercy, OR she could own the embers–that they were hers–and command them to do her will. Everything that happens with Ash upon regaining his freedom until the end of the book is really sweet and tender. I love that he has found a way back to love, and has grown in that aspect to tell her the truth of what he feels–him being in love with her–and save her in the end. I figured that would happen somehow, considering that in the From Blood and Ash series, it is revealed that Sera had two sons with Ash, but not in this manner. That said, their love story is a little bit different and I feel like it’s more tender than Poppy’s and Hawke’s from From Blood and Ash, while theirs was a bit more violent and wild. One question that I do have–is Poppy potentially Sotoria? I wonder, based on the description of Sotoria in this series and Poppy’s own description in From Blood and Ash, whether she can be Sotoria, which is why that story of Sotoria resonated with her.

Either way, I can’t wait for the next book in this series!