The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and..

decades.”
I didn’t touch the glass. “And you know what has
happened in Atlantia? Solis?”
“I am the King of Gods.” He leaned back, crossing a leg
over the other. The repose and everything about him was
relaxed. It rattled me because there was a thread of
intensity under the looseness. “What do you think?”
My lips parted in disbelief. “Then you know about the
Ascended—what they’ve done to people. To mortals. Your
children. How have you not intervened? Why haven’t any of
the gods stepped in to do something to stop them?” The
moment my demands left my mouth, my entire body seized
with dread. He was most certainly going to kill me now,
shared blood or not.
But he smiled. “You are so much like her.” He laughed.
“She will be thrilled to learn this.”
My shoulders tightened. “Who?”
“Do you know that most of the gods who sleep now
were not the first gods?” Nyktos asked instead of answering,
sipping his wine. “There were others known as the Primal.
They were the ones who created the air we breathe, the
land we reap, the seas that surround us, the realms and all
in between.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” I admitted, thinking of what
Jansen had said about Nyktos once being the God of Death
and the Primal God of Common Men and Endings.
“Most do not. They were once great rulers and
protectors of man. That did not last. Much like with the
children of those who sleep now, they became tainted and
twisted, corrupt and uncontrollable,” he told me, his gaze
moving to his drink. “If you knew what they had become,
the kind of wrath and evil they spread upon the lands and
man, you would be haunted till the end of your days. We
had to stop them. We did.” That one eyebrow, his right one,
rose again. “But not before we ended the mortal lands as
those who survived remembered, sending them into the