I sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s not?”
“No.” I rose then, no longer able to sit. “I’m tired. I think I’m ready for bed—”
“There is no such thing as a good Primal.”
“What?”
“The essence that courses through our veins is what made the realms, creating the air that is breathed, the land that is sowed, and the rain that falls from the skies to fill the oceans. It’s powerful and ancient. Unbiased. It’s absolute. And in the beginning, when there were just the Ancient Primals, the Fates, and the dragons, Primals were neither good nor bad. They just were. Purely impartial. A perfect balance because they felt nothing, neither love nor hate.”
Nyktos stared up at me. “Eons passed that way, seeing the birth of many new Primals, including my father. And during that time, Primals didn’t die. They simply entered Arcadia when theywere ready. The idea of fighting one another hadn’t even occurred to them, let alone killing each other. Procreation occurred for the sake of creation. And, eventually, gods were born. Then mortals. And for a time, there were no wars and no unnecessary deaths in either realm. There were disagreements in the mortal realm, skirmishes and the like, but the Primals always intervened, calming hot tempers and easing the pain of whatever loss had occurred. Then the first Primal fell, and that changed everything.”
“Fell?”
“In love,” he said, a wry grin appearing. “You see, each time the Primals and gods interacted with the mortals, they became more curious, until they were enthralled with the wide range of emotions that the mortals experienced—something that neither my father nor Nektas created. Mortals were the first tofeel, from the moment they took their first breath—and until their last. And that was something that just occurred in them naturally. But Primals were meant to be beyond such…mortal needs and wants.”
I slowly sat back down. “Why?”
“Because emotions can sway one’s decisions, no matter how unbiased anyone believes they are. If they can feel, they can be coerced by emotion.” He met my eyes.
“Then a Primal fell in love, and it troubled the Fates. They worried that love, held within a Primal’s heart, could become a weapon. They intervened, hoping to dissuade other Primals from doing the same by making what they loved the ultimate weapon to be used against them.”
“By becoming their weakness,” I whispered. “I never knew why love could weaken Primals.” I shook my head. “How are the Arae that powerful to create something like that?”
“Because they are the essence—the eather—that created the very first Primals,” he explained. “My father once told me that they didn’t even have mortal form for the longest time. They were simply in everything, everywhere.”
I blinked slowly, unable to even understand how Holland, who was very much flesh and blood, could be something that existed in the wind and the rain. “Well, what the Arae did doesn’t seem to have been all that effective.”
Nyktos chuckled. “No, it wasn’t. One Primal falling was likea domino effect. Other Primals fell in love and, eventually, even some of the Arae began to feel emotion,” he told me, and I thought of Holland and the goddess Penellaphe. “But falling in love meant the Primals also began to experience other emotions. Pleasure. Displeasure. Want. Jealousy. Envy. Hatred. And what the Arae feared became a reality because they knew that what had once only belonged to the mortals couldn’t exist within the kind of power a Primal held. Emotions began to guide the Primals’ actions, and that once-unbiased balance of power became as unpredictable as it was absolute and bled into the mortal realm. The very natures of the Primals changed. Now, goodness does not exist in Primals—not the kind weighed upon a mortal’s death.”
He set his glass aside. “From the moment a Primal is born or is Ascended, the new nature of the Primal essence starts to change us. And the older we grow, and the more powerful that essence becomes, the harder it is to remember what the source of those emotions was and to be anything other than the very mortal flesh that contains power,” he said. “And that essence—the Primal essence that allows us to influence mortals to flourish or decay, love or hate, create life and cause death—is never just good or bad. It’s only absolute. Unpredictable. Raw.” His eyes lifted from his glass to me. “You’ve carried those embers from birth, Sera, and they are a part of you. Because of them, you are neither good nor bad, not by the mortal standards you understand.”
I drew in a shaky breath. “Are you saying that how I…I feel is because of those embers?”
“Yes,” he told me. “But you are still mortal, Sera, and that part of youisgood.”
“It—”
“It is,” Nyktos cut in. “You wouldn’t feel the sourness of shame if it wasn’t. Or the bitterness of agony when you spoke of killing. You wouldn’t even care if you were deserving. You would just take. You wouldn’t be brave. You would only be strong.”
“I—” I choked on my words. Could there be truth in what he said? I blinked back sudden dampness as I focused on the empty plate in front of me. I did feel shame and agony—even confusion over the coldness of my actions. I squeezed my eyes shut and took several moments before I trusted myself to speak. “But you are good by mortal standards.”
“Only because I try to be.”
“That’s all mortals do—well, most of them anyway,” I said, opening my eyes. “They try to be good, and you try harder than most mortals do.”
“Maybe,” he murmured.
As I sat there, letting his words sink in, I thought of something. “Why didn’t the Arae make the Primals do what you did? Have thekardiaremoved?”
“The Arae believe in free will. And, yes, being that they are Fates, that is as ironic as it could possibly be,” he said. “But they should’ve done it.”
If they had, it would have saved a lot of lives and stopped a lot of heartache, but… “Do you really think they should have?”
“Depends on the day. Right now, no.” He leaned forward. “You’re finished with your supper?”
I nodded.