My mouth dropped open in surprise. “Really?”
“Really. And if you thought that was surprising, just wait.” Placing the decanter down, he turned with the glasses in hand and offered me one. “This Primal god is clearly an ancestor of mine.”
I tensed. “Come again?”
“Yep.” He raised the glass. “Wine?”
I took it from him. “You’re descended from a Primal god?”
“You only have to take one look at him to know.” He lifted his glass to his lips. “Looks so much like Malik and our father that it was eerie as fuck.”
“Wow.” I didn’t know why that shocked me—or why it seemed…important.
“Apparently, you’re not the only one with an interesting bloodline,” he remarked.
“No doubt.” I took a sip of what turned out to be some sort of mulled wine. I shook off the weird feeling. “What’s his name?”
“Attes.”
“Attes?” I repeated, my stomach dipping weirdly. “I…I don’t know of a Primal god with that name.”
“Neither did Kieran or I. But he knows Kolis. Not a fan.” He watched me over the rim of his glass. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, unsure why I felt so odd.
As Cas explained how the mark had been removed, I was actually grateful that I had no memory of the event. However, I was stunned that the Primal would put himself through something like that. “He used his own hand to weaken the power of Nektas’s blood?”
Cas nodded.
“Why? Why would he do that for someone he doesn’t know?” I asked, but the words I spoke didn’t sit right with me.
“I don’t know.” Cas dropped into the wingback chair. “But I imagine he knows your grandparents.”
I jerked, nearly spilling the wine. “Grandparents,” I whispered. “It’s so weird to think of the true Primal of Life and a Primal of Death as my grandparents.” I took a rather large, unladylike gulp of the wine. “How badly was he hurt?”
“You really do not want a description of that.” He leaned back, resting the hand holding his glass on the arm of the chair. “But don’t worry. He said he would heal.”
A tiny, sick part of me wanted the description, but I managed to ignore it. Instead, I moved on to something equally disturbing. “Where was I marked?”
His hand tightened around his glass. His anger rose sharply, lashing like frozen rain against my skin. “Come sit with me.”
Alarm bells rang. “I don’t know if I should.” I held his stare. “Tell me.”
A muscle thrummed along his jaw. “Your chest.”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
“It was here.” He placed his hand in the center of his chest.
Blood pounded in my ears as I stood there. I’d been doing so well with everything I was being told. I had listened. I was processing, remaining levelheaded, even as I realized Kolis had stripped me of my free will.
But I wasn’t calm. I wasn’t really processing anything. I was justnumb. And it took hearing that he’d touched me there for me to realize that. Disgust coated my skin, and I wanted nothing more than to take a wire brush to it. It didn’t matter that it had happened on some sort of metaphysical level. He’dtouchedme. He’dusedme. A knot lodged in the back of my throat and my eyes stung. My skin prickled.
I wouldn’t cry, godsdamn it.
It didn’t matter if they were tears of anger. I would not shed a fucking tear. It had nothing to do with it being a vulnerability or a weakness. Crying felt like…acknowledgment. Like I was givingshape and form to what Kolis had done, making it real. And I couldn’t allow it to feel real.
Casteel leaned forward, his eyes never leaving me as he placed his glass on the floor by the chair.
