“It’s fine,” I told him. “I can deal with it.”
“I know you can.” A pause. “You can deal with anything.”
I stilled, once again struck off-kilter by his too-soft tone as he continued to eye me closely, enough to make my skin prickle with awareness. I was grateful we had nothing else to discuss. I unclasped my hands, beginning to rise—
“Nektas told me you ran into the nymphs on your return from the Vale.”
“We did.” I remained tense in the chair, like a bird perched on a cliff, prepared to take flight. “I’d forgotten about them.”
“You killed one,” he said. “With eather.”
I nodded.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that.”
“That’s what Nektas said. The embers…I guess they really are that powerful. But that will soon be something I won’t need to worry about.” I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to keep you—”
“I don’t want you to do this.”
Confusion rose once more. “Do what?”
“This.”
I waited for more of an explanation. There was none. “I’m going to need you to elaborate.”
One side of his lips curled up. “You don’t need to become someone you’re not.”
The muscles along my spine clenched. “I’m not.”
“You’re being amicable. Understanding. Reserved. Even polite.” He fired off what most would consider admirable traits.
“It’s not an act.”
“I didn’t suggest that it was.”
I frowned. “Then what exactly are you suggesting, Your Highness? Because I’m confused as to why you would now demand that I be…what? More argumentative? Irrational?”
“As I told you before, I quite enjoyed the more…reckless side of your nature.”
I was still on the outside. Inside, however, I trembled.
“But this?” He lowered his hand to the surface of his desk. “This was how you were raised to be, wasn’t it?”
I sucked in a breath.
“Pliable. Submissive. Quiet.” He paused. “Empty.”
A sharp swirl of tingles swept along the nape of my neck as my eyes locked with his—with a gaze that continued to be intense and…and searching. I gripped the arms of the chair. “You’re trying to read my emotions.”
“Yes,” he confirmed without any hint of shame. “And I feel nothing.”
My mouth dried. “So?”
“There hasn’t been one time that I’ve been in your presence for more than a handful of minutes where I haven’t felt you project an emotion, be it joy, desire, or anger,” he said. “Not from the first moment I saw you in the Dark Elms till I tried to slow your breathing beneath the palace.”
I shook, my calm cracking.
“This isn’t you. You have never been like this with me.” His palm flattened against the desk. “Whether it’s because I’ve annoyed you or something else, you have always been yourself. You have more than earned the right to be yourself. To think what you want, feel what you want. That shouldn’t change.”