Страница 125 из 155
I was relieved to hear one part of that. “And then what? You can’t keep her locked up forever.”
“And I can’t free her either.”
“Because she will go to Kolis.”
“Yeah, but besides that? I want to believe that once you become my Consort, she’ll know it’s a line she can’t cross and that she no longer has control.” Nyktos’s jaw tightened. “But I can’t be sure, especially knowing now that she’s already tried to take you before.” He looked at the table, his brows furrowing. “She never let on to the fact that she felt you.”
“How was she able to feel the embers when not even Kolis could?” I asked, frowning.
“Veses is the Primal of the Rites—of Ascensions. And not just mortal ones. If any Primal could sense a godling or a god when they were near their Ascension, it would be the true Primal of Life and her,” he explained. “But she hasn’t been able to sense even a godling nearing the end of their Culling since Kolis took my father’s embers—something she’s been vocally a
“Let me guess,” I said. “Kolis’s act weakened her abilities?”
He nodded. “But none of us realized how powerful those embers in you are.”
I thought that over. “So, she knew that Taric and the other two gods were searching for the source of the energy that was felt in the mortal realm, and they ended up here. She also sensed something in me—eventually realizing that what she felt were the Primal embers. She put two and two together and ended up at me, and then figured…what? That Kolis would be angry with you for hiding me, so decided to have me dealt with so it didn’t blow back on you?”
“Seems to be that way,” he murmured, scratching at his chin.
“She cares about you.” The words soured my tongue, and I hated thinking them, let alone saying them, but if she was worried what might happen to Nyktos, she cared about him. Not only that, her actions could incite both Nyktos’s and Kolis’s anger.
Nyktos huffed out a humorless laugh. “In her own twisted way—or so she claims.”
I liked that even less than I did the idea of her remaining below in the cells for all the many reasons I didn’t want to think about. But also because I felt like I was missing a key piece of information.
A delicate charge of energy danced from his flesh to mine as he touched my arm. “You should try to get some rest. It’s late. We can talk more about all of this later.”
“I don’t want to leave Reaver or risk waking him by moving,” I said, and Nyktos smiled faintly before lowering himself to the floor, sitting just below me. “Are you going to stay here?”
Nyktos tipped his head back against the cushion and stared at the ceiling. “As long as you are, I will.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“There has to be better seating.”
“I’m fine just here.” He glanced at me. “But you should still try to get some rest. Reaver will be fine.”
I nodded.
“But you’re not going to rest.”
I half-shrugged.
“I could use compulsion, you know.” His fingers rubbed a patch of taut skin above his heart. “And make you do the sensible thing and rest.”
“But you won’t.”
“I won’t.” He sighed. “Morning will be here soon enough, and the day will be long.”
The coronation. Finally. Tomorrow would be long, as would the day after when we left for Irelone, but my mind wasn’t ready to relax. I couldn’t shake the feeling that a whole lot about Veses—and him and Veses—didn’t make sense. There was something I needed to know—had to understand. “You told her I was your Consort in title only.”
A shadow of emotion danced over his features, gone before I could decipher it. “I did.”
The breath I took hurt, and that should’ve served as a warning—one I didn’t heed. “Why?” I whispered. “You wanted the other Primals to believe that we shared some sort of attraction to one another, but you didn’t want her to think that?”
“She’s different,” he said, turning his head away as he dragged a hand over his face.
I tensed and then forced myself to relax as I glanced down at Reaver. “How so? Better yet, how did you even begin to explain why you’d take a Consort in title only?”
Nyktos didn’t answer for several long moments as he stared at the bare stone walls. “It’s complicated, Sera.”
“I’m sure I can understand.”
“But it’s something that I ca
The veneer cracked even further. “You mean it’s something you will not explain.”
Nyktos’s eyes closed as he dropped his hand to his bent knee.
I waited. When he said no more, it took a lot for me to keep the whirlwind of emotion rattling around inside me contained. “Do you care for her?”
“Fates.” He laughed flatly, shaking his head. “I pity her. I loathe her. That’s all I feel for her.”
His answer left me even more confused. “And what do you feel for me?”
Nyktos was silent and then tipped his head back to look at me. Eather pulsed intensely behind his pupils. “I feel too many things. Curiosity and excitement that remind me of what I think yearning must feel like. Need. Want,” he said roughly, his voice low. “Amusement at times. Sometimes, even anger. But always awe. I am always in awe of you. I could keep going, but most of all, what I feel is the closest thing to peace I’ve ever experienced.”
The messy knot of dark hair slid a little as the once-Chosen, now seamstress, tilted her head. “Don’t move,” Erlina ordered softly.
“Good luck with that,” Bele commented.
Erlina laughed quietly.
I sent the goddess a narrow-eyed glare from where I stood on a stool in my bedchamber. Someone had cleaned up the mess Veses had left behind before I returned, but I swore I could still feel her here. Smell her. Roses. My lip curled.
“By the way,” Bele added from where she was sprawled across the settee, her head resting on one arm and her legs propped on the other. She wasn’t even looking at me as she flipped a dagger in her hand for the umpteenth time, something she’d been doing since Aios had finished styling my hair and left. “I heard Jadis threw a massive fit when Nektas was leaving her and Reaver in the mountains and she realized that she wouldn’t be at the coronation.”
My brows lifted. “Really?”
“Yep.”
Hearing that made me a little sad. I would’ve loved to have the younger draken there. But even with Kolis’s permission, that didn’t mean things wouldn’t go south. And after what’d happened to Reaver, no one wanted to risk the younglings.
“You’re moving again,” Bele said.
I glanced over at her. “No, I’m not.”
“You’re swaying,” Erlina confirmed.
I was?
“Yeah, swaying like you had one too many glasses of wine,” Bele tacked on.
“What are you even doing here?” I asked as Erlina snipped a thread near the curve of my hip. My tone bordered on my mother’s whenever she’d seen me somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. My earlier happiness at seeing Bele when she arrived with Aios had faded about five hundred remarks ago.
“Making sure you stand still.”
“You haven’t done a good job of that,” Erlina said around the needle she held between her teeth.
I rolled my eyes.
Bele snorted.
“I haven’t moved that much,” I defended.
Erlina’s hands stilled as she looked up at me with dark brown eyes, her brows raised.
“Whatever,” I muttered.
“I have never seen someone as antsy as you.” The dagger flipped into the air once more. “It’s like you have sparanea in your veins instead of blood.”
I frowned. “Sparanea?”
“Yeah, they’re everywhere in the mountains of Sirta, where it’s snowing,” she said, referencing Hanan’s Court. “They’re basically tiny spiders that are really fast and super venomous.”
“What the fuck…?” I whispered, shuddering as my mind immediately began hurling images of tiny spiders crawling around inside me.