“Fuck,” I gasped, letting go of him and stumbling back.
I couldn’t believe he had used such an immature move, but then again, it wasn’thishead he’d just cracked.
And he’d seriously cracked the Revenant’s head. Or at least I thought so. My vision was a little wonky at the moment, but it sure looked like blood was pouring from the center of the Rev’s forehead. Maybe he’d cracked mine, too, because warm liquid ran down my face, as well, and there appeared to be two of him.
Gripping the dagger, he tore it free and landed on his feet. I pushed aside the sharp, thudding ache behind my eyes, summoned the eather, and—
He threw the dagger—or daggers—directly at me.
Son of a bitch.
Throwing out my hand, I stopped the blade about an inch from my face—my actual face—and shattered it. “Nice try.”
“I wasn’t trying.”
He twisted sideways as if to run, but I lurched forward. He reached behind him, pulling a—
Godsdamn it!
A second dagger had been strapped to his back. It must’ve blended in with his black shirt. I should’ve checked. I knew better.
I jerked to the side, my breath catching as the dagger whizzed past my cheek. I felt a sharp, stinging pain as the Revenant crashed into me. I hit the ground hard, air punching out of my lungs as fury at myself clawed at my insides. I couldn’t believe I’d allowed him to get the upper hand. I was better than this.
“Just like old times,” he said, straddling my hips as he winked an eye through the blood. He grabbed my hair, yanked my head up, and then slammed it down.
Starbursts exploded in my eyes as I swung out, eather pulsing through me.
He caught my wrist and slammed my head back down again, tumbling my already thoroughly scrambled brain. “Tell me, Sotoria.” He leaned over me as the air charged around us. A presence filled the meadow—a powerful,oldpresence that felt…vaguely familiar. “Tell me what you think I want.”
“How aboutItell you?” came a deep voice with a melodic lilt, much like the Atlantians but thicker.
Kolis snapped the Revenant’s head up, and his bloody lips pressed into a thin line. “Of course,” he muttered. “It’s you.”
A blur of leather-encased legs passed my head a second later, and then a rather large hand gripped the Revenant’s throat. In the next heartbeat, he flew backward and crashed into the same tree I’d thrown and pinned him to earlier.
“Poor tree,” I murmured.
A tall and broad form in all black stepped into my line of sight. Dimly, I knew he was a god—a Primal god—as I dragged my dazed gaze up. A sheathed sword was strapped to his back, and a dagger to each hip. Gods, he was tall. Maybe an inch or two taller than Casteel. The breeze lifted strands of light or maybe dark-brown hair from the collar of his tunic as he turned to look at me.
“Poor tree?” he repeated, his silver eyes beneath a proud brow fixed on me.
I heard him.
I really did.
But I couldn’t respond as I saw his full lips part. His jaw flexed, the chiseled shape unsettlingly familiar. In the back of my mind, I knew I should get up or at leastsitup, but I was frozen as my gaze lifted, and I stared at him. At the shallow scar cutting across his left cheek and traveling across the bridge of his nose to end at his hairline.
I blinked once and then twice as those features finally cleared and pieced themselves together. Or maybe it was my jumbled thoughts finally working together cohesively.
My heart started beating fast as my eyes locked with luminous, silver ones. His warm, golden-bronze skin paled, and he seemed as…stupefied as me.
I knew him.
Recognized him.
Not because he so clearly resembled Casteel—he looked more like Malik and was nearly the spitting image of their father.
But because I’d seen him before while in stasis, slipping…falling through countless images of places and people. And he…he had been one of those people.
