A Fire in the Flesh

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence and death.

A Fire in the Flesh is the third novel in Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Flesh and Fire series. The series is set in a world where mortals and gods interact. The most powerful gods are known as the Primals, but their power comes with responsibilities concerning life, death, war, wisdom, and love. In the world of the series, the gods and Primals are vampiric, requiring blood to sustain themselves.

The first book, A Shadow in the Ember (2021), follows Princess Seraphena “Sera” Mierel, a woman destined to become the Consort of Nyktos, the Primal of Death. Her fate is tied to a pact that her ancestor made with Nyktos’s father, Eythos, to halt the Rot, a devastating blight on her kingdom of Lasania. Sera was raised in secret and groomed to seduce and assassinate Nyktos to secure Lasania’s survival. However, the carefully orchestrated plan takes an unexpected turn when Nyktos rejects her. 

Years later, Sera becomes entangled with a god named Ash as she deals with the fallout of divine murders, her forbidden healing powers, and the political machinations of her cruel stepbrother, Tavius, who ascends Lasania’s throne. When Tavius has her stripped and beaten to teach her a lesson, Ash rescues her. He reveals that he is actually Nyktos and claims Sera as his Consort. He takes her to his domain: the Shadowlands.

In the Shadowlands, Sera begins to fall in love with Nyktos, despite her initial intent to kill him. However, when she uses her powers to revive a dead woman, she draws the attention of Kolis, the false Primal of Life, the original Primal of Death, the current King of the Gods, and Nyktos’s uncle. Kolis sends his monstrous agents after her, but she and Nyktos fend off the attack. 

Afterward, Sera learns that her mentor, Holland, is an Arae, or Fate, who has kept watch over her. She also discovers that her powers stem from the embers of life that Eythos (Nyktos’s father) placed into her bloodline. In addition, Sera is the reincarnation of Sotoria, a mortal woman whom Kolis has pursued through several lifetimes. While Sera’s existence is critical to the balance of the realms, the embers of life are killing her. Her survival hinges on being Ascended to godhood and the love of Nyktos (an impossible condition because he excised the part of his soul that allows him to love).

The story continues in the second book of the series, A Light in the Flame (2022). Sera and Nyktos search for a way to safely remove the embers of life before her Ascension. Until then, Nyktos keeps her hidden in the Shadowlands to keep her safe from the other gods, particularly Kolis. Sera realizes that Kolis (the false Primal of Life) is the true source of the Rot and must be defeated to save her kingdom and the realms from the blight.

When a group of gods attacks Nyktos’s fortress, Sera realizes that her presence is a danger to her friends and attempts to leave, but Nyktos stops her and makes her promise to wait until her coronation as his Consort before confronting Kolis. However, just before the coronation, Kolis sends Attes, another Primal, to forbid the union until Kolis approves Sera. 

Kolis summons Sera and Nyktos to his court, where she is tested by being forced to kill a draken, a dragon-like shapeshifter. Though she reluctantly complies to appease Kolis, she later resurrects the draken. When Sera and Nyktos return to the Shadowlands, the Primal Veses provokes her, leading to a fight that ends with Veses’s imprisonment. 

Nyktos finally crowns Sera as his consort, and they visit the prophet Delfai to find a way to remove the embers. Although Delfai first tells them that it isn’t possible, he later realizes that what he foresaw was wrong. Still having no answer, Sera and Nyktos return to the Shadowlands to find it under attack by Attes and his forces. 

Attes tells Sera that he can end the attack if she agrees to come with him to Kolis’s court. She complies, and at Kolis’s court, she discovers that he always knew about the embers. When Kolis tries to kill her, Sotoria speaks through her and accuses him of killing her again. Meanwhile, Sera catches sight of Nyktos, who has arrived as a wolf. The story continues with A Fire in the Flesh and concludes with the fourth and final book in the series, Born of Blood and Ash (2024). 

The Flesh and Fire series is a prequel to Armentrout’s other series, Blood and Ash, set centuries later and centering around Sera and Nyktos’s descendant, Penellaphe (Poppy) Balfour, and her Ascension as the first Primal of Life and Death. By the conclusion of the Flesh and Fire series, Kolis is finally defeated and entombed, and Sera, Nyktos, and other Primals hibernate to await Poppy’s restoration of the balance.