It couldn’t.
Maybe I’d hit my head fighting the nymphs and was hallucinating because that seemed more plausible than this. Than her feeding from Nyktos. Than themtogether.
Because I’d told him that I wanted to be his Consort.
He’d called meliessa—someone he found beautiful. Someone he found powerful.
Someone who would become his Queen.
Then she moaned, the sound husky and sensual. The arm of the settee creaked under Nyktos’s tightening grasp, and the noise—thesounds—knocked me out of the shocked numbness.
My mind. My body. Every part of me processed what I was seeing. Emotions came in a rising tide, swamping me, and they were intense and sudden as Nyktos’s head jerked sluggishly. I shuddered under the hot, stifling weight of…ofhurt. Raw, tangyagony drenched every pore. Suffocating, crushinghurtcarved through muscles and bone. The crack in my chest shook as my skin prickled with heat.
With something else.
Veses’ golden head lifted at the sound of air wheezing from my parted lips. Two deep, angry puncture wounds marred the side of Nyktos’s throat. Thick, shiny hair slid back over one slender shoulder as the Primal looked at me. The pouty, blood-red mouth stood out grotesquely against the delicateness of her beauty. Surprise flickered over her features, then luminous silver eyes widened and then locked with mine as her pink tongue darted over her lower lip. She licked at the blood there.Nyktos’sblood.
Bitter bile crowded my throat. I choked on it, still rooted in place, unable to move as Veses looked me over. Sized me up. The twist of her lip told me she found what she saw lacking, and, gods, Ifeltthat all the way to the bone as I stared at her. At them. Two beautiful, powerful Primals. Together.
Veses’ eyebrow rose. That scathing curl transformed into a painfully beautiful smile. “So, this is her?” she asked, speaking in that throaty voice I remembered before she giggled.
Nyktos’s head turned slowly. His eyes fluttered open, and that—that was all I could take.
There was no thought behind my actions. It was instinct. I stumbled back a step, bumping into the door. Heart thumping once more, I spun around.
Veses laughed.
And that blade-sharp laugh followed me as I walked from the office. It clung to my skin because I’d never felt so naïve, so foolish. That laugh stayed with me as the crack in my chest shuddered violently. But it was Nyktos’s words that haunted me as I broke into a run.
She’s very important to me.
I ran blindly, my throat constricting.
You are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.
I threw open the door as the embers in my chest pulsated, joining the throbbing agony.
You were never a ghost to me.
Some unknown need drove me down the narrow, musty stairwell.
Liessa.
My boots slipped on the steps. I went down on my ass, the flare of dull pain nothing compared to the sorrow crushing me from the inside. I’d never felt anything like it before as I scrambled to my feet and kept going. Not even when my family left for the country estates, and I had been too young to understand why they’d left me behind. Not even the stinging slap my mother delivered the night of my seventeenth birthday had hurt this badly. Wasn’t as deep. Didn’t steal every too-short breath.
I hit the gap between the last step and the floor with a grunt, but I didn’t slow. I raced past the cells, trying to outrun what I saw. Outpace Nyktos’s words.
You are brave and strong.
The bars lining the cells were a blur as I passed them, reaching the end of the first hall. I went left as pressure clamped down on my chest.
You will be a Consort more than worthy of their swords and shields.
The shadowstone walls crowded me as I tried to escape myself.
My stupid heart.
My foolish ideas of him—of Nyktos. Of what I could mean to him. Of what he meant to me. There was no running away from them as I fell against the door at the end of the hall. Each breath I took hurt as I pressed my forehead against the wood, squeezing my eyes shut against the welling dampness. But it was too late. My cheeks were damp, even though I didn’t cry. I didn’t allow myself that.