Page 242 of Born of Blood and Ash

His fingers curled into my hair. “I missed you, liessa.”

Gods.

Every beat of my heart was his. “Show me how much you missedme later.”

The deep, sexy rumble that came from him sent a heatedthrill through my blood. “I can’t wait.”

Neither could I.

Pressing one last kiss to my forehead, Ash stepped back andturned. Down the hall, Rhain was studying the floor as if it held the answersto life.

I cleared my throat. “Has he woken up?”

“He did right after I got him here,” Ash said as we walkedahead.

“Huh,” I murmured, scanning a cell that looked like a treebear had burst through it, leaving several rows of bars shattered. A rusty darkcolor stained the floor of what had to be Veses’cell. I looked over the etchings in the broken bones. Primal wards. They werepowerful, just as the bones were, and would even hold a weakened Primal, butthey were not unbreakable. Veses was proof of that.“He’s a little too quiet to still be conscious.”

Attes snorted. “That’s because hestarted running his mouth, and Ash quickly grew annoyed.”

I glanced up at Ash as the faint stench of stale lilacsreached me. “What did you do?”

One side of his lips curved up as we stopped in front of acell. “Quieted him.”

I faced the narrow cell. There were no cots or chairs. Justbone chains connected to the back wall—

I squinted. Something dark and wet was splattered on theback wall. My gaze lowered to where Callum lay sprawled on his back in themiddle of the torchlit floor. The entire front of his gold tunic was drenchedin blood, and there was a large puddle beneath him.

“Exactly how did you quiet him?” I asked, spottinga rather straight, pinkish-red line across Callum’s throat.

“Removed his head,” Ash answered.

I slowly turned to him. “You did what?”

“Decapitated him,” Ash said as if he were listing anuninteresting step in a recipe. “With a sword.”

“His head reattached itself,” Attesshared, folding his arms over his armor-covered chest. “It was quite disturbingto watch the tendons and muscles do their thing. They sort of crept andslithered across the floor until they reached his head.” He sent me a grin asthe picture he painted formed in my mind. “You should’ve seen it.”

“I’m glad I didn’t.” Nausea rose so sharply I thought for amoment I might vomit all over Ash, but as my stomach calmed, I rememberedsomething. “You threatened Callum once,” I said to Attes.I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten this. “You said you knew how to kill aRevenant.”

A dimple appeared on Attes’s cheekas he grinned. “I do, but it’s not pretty. Kolis calls it the Fire of theGods.”

Ash frowned. “Draken fire?”

“I’ve seen that work on a fresh Revenant,” he said, and Iimmediately wondered exactly how that had come about. “But ones that have beenaround for a while? They have to be burned beyond just a crisp, and they takelonger to die that way. They need to be turned to ash. But what Kolis wastalking about—the Fire of the Gods—it’s draken blood.Ingested draken blood. Burns them up fromthe inside.”

Nektas’s brow rose. “Makes sense.Just coming into contact with our blood kills or severely wounds most.Ingesting our blood would kill almost anything.”

But not a Primal or Ancient. Instinct told me that draken blood did something else entirely in that case.Something not good.

“I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable asking the draken to open their veins for us,” I said.

Nektas shrugged. “As long as itdoesn’t require much, it wouldn’t be a problem. Our bodies heal quickly.” The draken peered into the cell and smiled. “We can test it outwith that one.”

“You can open your vein and force-feed Callum, but thatwon’t work with every Revenant out there,” Attespointed out. “We would need to have it bottled, and as you well know, storing draken blood isn’t easy since it also burns through mostfireproof stone. The only thing it doesn’t is—”

“Basalt,” Nektas cut in. “Anothertype of shadowstone.”

My stomach churned. “You mean more slag?”

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