“This,” he sneered, forcibly turning my hand so the golden swirls of the imprint faced me. “This tells me you feel far more than fondness for my nephew.”

Oh, shit.

My heart started banging all around my chest. I hadn’t even considered the imprint.

“Only a union formed out of love can be blessed.” The wisps of eather slowed in his eyes. “You love him.”

Pressure clamped down on my chest. I didn’t know what to say. My thoughts raced, but nothing my mind spewed provided a way out of this.

“So, tell me something,” he said, that cold bitterness seeping back into his voice. “What are we going to do?”

“I…I don’t know what you mean.”

“With you. My nephew.” He paused, looking down at my hand. “With this.”

I swallowed thickly, the word fuck on a constant loop in my mind.

“Cutting off your hand won’t change how you feel.”

My eyes went wide. Had he seriously considered that?

“So, tell me, what am I to do?”

Acid churned in the pit of my stomach. “I don’t know how this imprint happened. It wasn’t something I decided on,” I said in a rush. “It just appeared.”

“Whether it was a conscious act or not is irrelevant.”

A tremor started deep within me, birthing an icy fear that had little to do with my safety and more to do with Ash’s. The only thing I could think about was the truth—and I thought I could make it work. “I don’t know you.”

He frowned.

“I don’t remember you or…or anything from my past lives, only what I’ve been told,” I continued. “But I know Nyktos. I got to know him. And, yes, I do love him, but…” My chest ached with what I was about to say next. “I’m not in love with him.”

Kolis’s eyes searched mine. “There’s a difference between the two?”

I hesitated, seeing that he truly didn’t know there was. “Yes, there is a whole realm’s worth of difference between the two.”

“Explain,” he demanded.

“It’s hard to put into words—”

“Then think very hard so that putting it into words will not be so difficult.”

“Loving someone isn’t…it isn’t less than being in love. It’s just not as strong or as irrevocable. Loving someone can change,” I rambled, my heart thumping as he listened closely. “It can grow into being in love, and it can fade. Being in love…it doesn’t do that. It only gets stronger, and you would do anything for that person. Anything.” My throat thickened as I thought about the dream I’d had. “Being in love is…it’s unbreakable.”

Kolis fell quiet and looked as if I’d spoken an unfamiliar language to him. Then again, this was the very same person who believed a prisoner could become a companion.

My anxiety ramped up. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a cliff, my toes curling into the abyss. I had a plan to free Ash, and I knew what it would take to carry it out.

Breathing shallowly, I counted. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Hold. And as I did, I shut it down. All of it. My concern. The fear. My rage. Everything. Just as I’d done so many times during my life until Ash.

Doing so now caused a suffocating sense of sorrow to settle in my throat and chest, but it had then, too. I breathed past it, though. I shut it all down as I exhaled, even my awareness of Sotoria, breathing long and slow as I became nothing.

An empty vessel once more.

A blank canvas down to my bones, suitable and ready to become whoever I needed to be. Strong but hollow, and whatever Kolis wanted me to be.

The racing of my heart slowed. The trembling ceased. The embers quelled. I was just like his smile. Learned but hollow. “If…if you don’t know the difference between the two, then how can you claim to love me?”

Kolis sucked in a sharp breath, dropping my wrist as if I’d burned him. He rose, his movements shaky. “I love you—” His eyes shut, his large shoulders tensing. “I’m in love with you.”

“Then prove it,” I whispered.

His eyes flew open.

 “Release Nyktos.”

 The madly whirling eather stilled in his eyes. “And why in the fuck would I do that?”

“Because I asked you to.”

“Let me repeat myself.” His voice grew thick with fury, each word spat like a venom-tipped arrow. “Why in the fuck would I do that?” A muscle in his temple throbbed. “When your demand proves what’s so plainly visible on your hand and in your behavior.”

“I ask for his freedom because it doesn’t make sense for you to do so. He’s your enemy. My husband.” I lifted my chin at the low snarl coming from him, allowing myself to only feel a smidgen of fear. I could control that. My tone. Him. The eather. The learned instinct was like slipping on a gown that only felt a little too tight, and it was so obvious to me then that I hadn’t fully become nothing until right now. “My husband, whom I love but am not in love with. I wouldn’t do anything for him, but will you do anything for me?”

“I think that should be obvious,” he spat. “Considering I killed my brother to bring you back to life and then spent what has felt like eons searching for you.”

“But I don’t remember any of that.”

His nostrils flared. “Do you remember me not killing you after you stabbed me? Should that not be proof enough?”

“No.”

Kolis’s eyes went wide. “And why not?”

“Because not killing someone you love is the bare minimum. That’s not doing anything for them,” I told him, thinking this was something I’d never thought I would actually have to explain to someone. “No matter what you have to gain from their death.”

He snapped his jaw shut.

“But freeing Nyktos?” I picked up my glass and rose.

Kolis took a step back from me.

I could barely hide my smile. “That is something you don’t want to do, but you would be doing it simply to please me.”

“And why would that please you?”

“As I said, I love him. I don’t want to see any harm come to him,” I reasoned, more calmly than I’d ever done in my entire life. I crossed to the table and boldly turned my back on Kolis. “I don’t want to have to worry about him, and I will. And that has nothing to do with love.”

I picked up the decanter and pulled out the stopper. “He protected me, even before I became his Consort.” I filled a glass for myself and then poured Kolis one. Hopefully, he wouldn’t destroy this flute. “You’ve endangered me.”

“I have done no—”

“But you have.” Holding the glasses, I faced him. Kolis hadn’t moved from where he stood near the divan. “But you also didn’t know who I was. I didn’t either, not for a long time.” I offered him the glass.

He hesitated but then took it.

“Anyway, I don’t think I can fall in love with another if I’m worrying about the one I do love,” I said, taking a sip of the fruity water.

“And why would you be interested in…falling in love?” Kolis demanded, the hollows of his cheeks flushed.

“Because I’ve never known what it’s like to be in love and to be loved in return—” My voice cracked, as did the vessel I’d become. Closing my eyes, I turned my head and waited until the burn of the truth eased. The sting didn’t fade completely because what I’d said was true, and no matter how empty I made myself, I could still feel that agony. “I would like to know how that feels.”

There was silence, and then the air around me stirred. My heart skipped a beat as I opened my eyes.

Kolis stood less than a foot from me. “This feels like a manipulation,” he said. “But the pain I just witnessed was real.” A moment passed, then his voice lowered. “Why would you want to love me?”

Man, wasn’t that a damn good question? A very loaded one, with so many reasons why I could never, ever love him.

But Kolis didn’t want to hear that.

It wasn’t what he needed from me.

I watched the bubbles in the water fizz as I racked my brain for what I knew about Kolis. It wasn’t much, but I did know why he’d frightened Sotoria so badly that she fell from a cliff in her attempt to escape him.