“The scholar hungers for truth more than she fears it,” he rumbles.
No,I think.I fear it plenty.
But I need it more.
The Seer of Essence’s attention swings to Kieran, those burning red eyes locking onto him with predatory focus.
“We begin with the warrior.”
Kieran’s hand stays on his blade, and his posture remains steady, but I’ve spent enough time watching him to notice his subtle tells—the tension in his jaw, his breathing going shallow, and his knuckles turning white from gripping the hilt too tightly.
What his heat’s showing me now, however, is new.
It’s pulling inward instead of pushing out, like his body’s trying to protect his core. I’ve seen his heat flare in anger, surge in combat, and burn like a furnace when he’s close to me, but this is none of those.
This is his fire retreating.
He’s afraid.
Kieran Cross—who has seventy-three tally marks inked onto his skin, fights like violence is a language he was born speaking, treats his blades like other people treat prayers, and held me on the Crown while I fell apart and stayed by my side through deadly seas—is afraid. And somehow, that terrifies me more than the giants surrounding our boat.
“Do not resist,” the Seer of Essence says, low and final. “It will only prolong the pain.”
His red eyes flare, and Kieran takes a sharp breath in.
The Seer walks closer without causing a ripple. “There is a hunger here,” he announces, his booming voice carrying across the water. “A thirst for violence that goes beyond training, beyond duty, and beyond skill.”
My throat tightens. Because this is exactly what Kieran told me below deck when he cooked me the fish.
“You do not fight because you must.” The Seer’s lips curl into a sneer. “You fight because only violence makes you feel alive, and when the violence stops, you lose who you are to the beast you keep caged.”
Kieran’s face goes white, like the words were carved into his soul and gutted him entirely.
The Seer of Origins glides forward, staring at Kieran with uncomfortable intensity. “Now we will examine your past and understand why violence poisons your soul,” he says, and when his ember-gold gaze intensifies, Kieran’s body goes rigid. “The reason is clear—your mother is a mortal woman who caught the eye of a god.”
A god.
If the Seer’s insinuating what I think he is, then Kieran’s father is a god.
My brain immediately starts cataloging.
Gods who interact with mortals. Gods associated with combat. Gods whose children might inherit violent tendencies.
The answer arrives a second before the truth is confirmed.
“Ares came to your mother in the guise of a soldier,” the Seer of Origins continues. “He stayed for one night of passion and power. Then he disappeared, as gods tend to do, leaving a child growing in her womb.”
Kieran’s hand drops from his blade, and it clatters to the deck.
“You carry divine war-blood in your veins.” The Seer’s ember eyes seem almost sympathetic now. “You are the son of Ares. That is why violence feels like home, why peace feels like a cage, and why the hunger for violence never stops. It is not a choice. It is not a flaw. It is simply what you are.”
Son of Ares.
Kieran’s the son of the god of war.
The information slots into place in my mind, rearranging everything I thought I knew about him. Because Ares is a god of rage, passion, bloodlust, and obsessive love, all of it cranked to a volume that shakes the ground. He’s raw feeling with a sword in his hand, and Kieran’s been carrying that weight without knowing where it came from.
His thermal signature runs hot because everything he experiences hits his system at divine intensity. I thought he was suppressing emotion, but it’s more than that. He’sdrowningin it. He’s been funneling it into discipline and steel because the alternative is letting all that feeling loose, and a man with Ares’s blood who stops controlling himself is a man who levels cities and doesn’t stop until there’s nothing left to burn.
