The strange whirring sensation in my chest alerted me to Nyktos’ return. I still didn’t understand that feeling or why it even existed, but I opened my eyes and slipped the dagger into my boot seconds before he entered the throne room. He’d wiped the blood from his face, but there were still cuts across his cheek and throat. They no longer bled that strange bluish-red, but the wounds hadn’t sealed like the one had when I stabbed him.

 He wasn’t alone. Nektas walked beside him, shirtless as he’d been earlier in the day…or night? I had no idea how much time had passed. Saion was also with him, his steps slowing as Nyktos stalked forward.

As I slid off the dais and stood on surprisingly steady legs, all I saw was how coldly he’d brought that sword down on the draken. Those flat, frozen, silver eyes were now fixed on me.

“We didn’t know what to do with her,” Ector admitted, breaking the tense silence. “I suggested returning her to her bedchamber.”

“I thought the cell would be a more fitting place,” Rhain commented from the other side of the dais as Nektas halted in the center of the aisle. “However, she’s been sitting here this whole time waving the dagger you got her around, and since you appear to want her alive, that’s why we’re here.”

The corners of my lips turned down. I had not been waving the dagger around.

Nyktos stopped several feet from me. “Were you injured at all?” he clipped out.

I shook my head. “But you’ve been—” I sucked in a startled breath as Nyktos suddenly stood in front of me, having moved faster than I could track. Before I could even twitch, he hooked an arm under my right thigh and lifted my leg. Surprise shot through me, and I started to tip sideways. He curved his other arm around my waist, steadying me. I had no idea what he was doing, but I couldn’t move or think as I stared into his flat eyes.

“Uh,” Rhain murmured.

Without saying a word or breaking eye contact, he slid his hand down my thigh. A sharp swirl of tingles followed the glide of his palm and my breath caught. He smirked as his cool fingers drifted over my now-exposed knee. What was he—?

His gaze held mine as he reached down, curling those fingers around the hilt of my dagger. He slid it free. “Don’t really want another dagger in my chest.”

“Oh. Okay,” Rhain said. “That makes sense now.”

Nyktos let go, and I stumbled against the edge of the dais. Air punched out of my lungs as he moved away from me. “I wasn’t planning to.”

“Really?” He tucked the dagger into his waistband at his back. “Isn’t that exactly what you were planning?”

I snapped my mouth shut because what could I really say to that? His smirk deepening, he stared down at me, and it took everything in me not to try and defend the indefensible. “Was it Kolis who sent the dakkais and the draken?”

“Yes,” he answered.

My gaze dropped to the tear in his shirt. Was the wound still bleeding? That warm pulse in my chest nudged at me. “So, he knows I’m here.”

“He knows something is here,” he corrected. “He does not know the source, and that’s how I plan to keep it.”

There was a stupid skip in my chest. “Because you believe your father did something else besides putting the ember of life in my bloodline.”

His lips thinned. “I know he must have had a reason that goes beyond keeping the ember of life alive. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have put it in a mortal’s body. And until I figure out why he did what he did, Kolis will not get his hands on you.”

A deeper, fiery sting lanced across my chest as I squeezed my hands together. I forced my voice to steady. “And until then?”

“We will see.”

Meaning, if he discovered that the ember of life was simply just that, he could very well decide to end me. Though, I didn’t think he would. He wouldn’t do that to the mortal realm if there were even a slight chance that Aios was right. “That’s not what I meant.”

He raised a brow. “It’s not?”

“Will Kolis send others here to discover the source?” I asked.

“We’ll most likely have a short reprieve,” he told me.

The draken’s taunting words resurfaced. “And you? What will he do to you for hiding the source of this power?”

His features sharpened. “That’s none of your concern.”

“Bullshit.”

Nyktos’ eyes flared wide as eather slid into his irises. “Come again?”

“You said it was none of my concern. I said that’s bullshit,” I repeated, and the Primal’s head tilted to the side. Behind him, Nektas quietly moved forward. “How many people died tonight?”

The Primal didn’t respond.

“How many?” I insisted.

“At least twenty,” Saion answered from near the front of the chamber, his voice echoing. “We’re still waiting to hear if any in Lethe passed.”

I shuddered. Twenty. And that didn’t include those who were injured.

“Don’t pretend as if you care about the people here,” Nyktos snarled, taking a step toward me.

Every muscle in me stiffened as anger unfurled. “I am not pretending. I don’t want to see people die because of me.”

His chin dipped. “Only me. Right?”

A bitter, acidic taste and burn pooled in my mouth and unfurled in my chest as my hands flexed.

Eather pulsed in Nyktos’ eyes. “Is that shame I feel from you?” He laughed, the sound nothing like the ones I’d heard from him before. “Or are you that good of an actress? I think you are.” His gaze swept over me, his lip curling. “And I also think you forgot to list acting alongside making bad choices as one of your many…talents.”

I sucked in air that burned my throat. What he was referencing didn’t pass me by. He was talking about him and me on the balcony. The stab of his words cut deep enough that I forgot I wasn’t alone.

“And now you feign hurt?” Nyktos shook his head as that lip curled again. The disgust there…it bore down on me. “That is beneath even you.”

My jaw unhinged. “Stop reading my fucking emotions!” I shouted, and Saion peeled away from the wall, his eyes growing wide. “Especially if you aren’t even going to believe what you’re reading, you jackass!”

Nyktos stilled. Everything about him ceased.

And that probably should’ve been warning enough that I may have finally pushed too hard. But I was beyond…I was simply beyond everything. “Do you really think I wanted to do this to you? To anyone? It was the only way we believed we could save our people. It was all I’d been taught. For my entire life. It’s all I’ve ever known.” My voice cracked, and I drew in another sharp, too-tight breath. “I would say I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t believe me. I don’t blame you for that, but don’t you dare insinuate that what I’ve done with you was purely an act or that what I’m feeling is fake when I’ve spent my entire godsdamn life not being allowed to want or even feel anything for myself! Not when I spent the last three years hating myself for the relief I felt when you didn’t take me because it meant I didn’t have to do what was expected of me.”

Nyktos stared at me.

Silence drenched the room, and I realized that I was shaking. My entire body. I’d never spoken those words out loud. Never. My heart thundered as a knot expanded and grew in my throat, threatening to choke me. “I know what I am. I’ve always known. I am one of the worse sort. A monster,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “But don’t you ever tell me how I feel.”

Nyktos didn’t even blink.

The draken drifted closer to Nyktos, his red-eyed stare shifting from me to the Primal. Nektas leaned in, speaking too low for me to hear. Attention remaining fixed on me, Nyktos’ chest rose with a swift, deep breath.

A long moment passed, and then he finally looked away from me to focus on Nektas. “You should be on the wall just in case I was wrong about the reprieve.”

Nektas shook his head. “Others are there. They are standing guard.”