At any other time, I would’ve laughed because Kyn did appear as if he were seconds from doing just that.
Nyktos turned, his iron-hued eyes meeting mine as Attes all but shoved his brother into a nearby chair. He took my hand with a small nod, guiding me back to where we’d been seated.
“Not her.”
I went stiff.
The skin tightened at the corners of Nyktos’s mouth as his nostrils flared. Wisps of eather spread out from behind his pupils.
“I want to see her,” Kolis added. “Get a good look at who has captured mynephew’s…attention.”
The hollows of Nyktos’s cheeks deepened as the veins beneath his eyes began to fill with a faint glow of eather, and I knew something bad was about to happen. My senses tingled with the knowledge. And I didn’t think I was the only one who felt the violent storm brewing within Nyktos. Attes had turned from his slouched brother, angling his body toward Nyktos’s.
I didn’t give myself time to think. I quickly stepped to the side, revealing myself fully. Nyktos’s swift inhale fell like iceagainst my skin, but I didn’t tremble as I stood there, hands at my sides. I didn’t panic as I watched that churning mass of golden light swirl around Kolis’s legs. I breathed.
“There she is,” Kolis drawled, and then he was right in front of me, having shadowstepped.
Muscles tensed all along my spine as I fought the urge to recoil from the eather that drifted over the hem of my skirt. I stared at his chest—his bare chest, keeping my gaze lowered as one would in the presence of such a Primal. There were…shimmers of gold in his bronze flesh, a pattern of sweeps and swirls.
“Lift your eyes to mine,” he whispered. Coaxed. Urged.
Muscles obeyed even as my stomach and chest hollowed. A compulsion. It was acompulsion—an unnecessary one that was nothing more than a show of power. Of force, to remind everyone in the room exactly who he was. I lifted my eyes just as he’d compelled.
The breath I took snagged in my throat as I saw Kolis. Not from a distance. Not how he was depicted in paintings or stone. There was no mistaking the similarities between him and Nyktos. Yet, somehow, even with their shared features, the differences were striking.
Nyktos’s beauty was harsh and icy, a silvery sculpture of hard angles and unyielding lines comealivein an almost terrifying manner. His beautydemandedthat you look upon him and be filled with the urge to try to capture his features with charcoal or clay.
But those features, the strong curve of his jaw, the high, arched cheekbones, and the lush, wide mouth…things that were so wild and unfettered on Nyktos, were utter perfection on Kolis—golden andwarm. His beauty beguiled you. Welcomed you to look closer, to stare and be comforted. Coaxed you to come near.
They were the same yet opposites, one whose beauty had been designed to be infinite in its finality, to strike fear in your heart. And the other whose beauty was nothing more than a pretense. A façade. A trap.
Silvery eyes flecked with wisps of gold tracked over my features slowly, intensely. My skin began to prickle and crawl, but I showed nothing because Ifeltnothing as I stood before thebeast that had started all of this.
The one I had spent my life training to kill.
“I’ve been told your name is Sera?” Kolis asked as I glanced up, taking note of his crown—a series of swords made of diamonds and gold, the center ending in the shape of a sun and its rays. “Is it short for anything?”
Uncertainty rose. I didn’t know if I should tell the truth, but I thought that fewer lies meant less possibilities of being caught in one. Even a small lie could cause closer inspection. “Seraphena, Your Majesty.”
“Seraphena,” he repeated, curling his lips inward. “A name that burns. Interesting. I’ve also been told you’re a godling.” The shimmery swirls moved up his throat and over his jaw, bleeding through his flesh until they formed a crackling, winged mask like those painted on the others’ faces. “She does not feel like one.”
“She is a godling,” Nyktos answered. “Father is a god. Mother is mortal.”
Gold hair brushed his cheek and shoulder as he tilted his head. The crown remained straight. “There is too much eather in her for that to be the case.”
“Perhaps you’re sensing my blood. She has quite a bit of that in her,” Nyktos said. Normally, that smug tone would’ve grated on each and every one of my nerves.
But I understood the mission here.
“I see. I also see you’ve been charmed. Clever, Nephew,” Kolis noted, an amused look playing across his lips as he continued staring at me. “Your hair is…captivating,” the false King murmured, and I remembered what Gemma and Aios had said about his favorites. They were all either fair or red-haired. He lifted his hand—
Nyktos was like a strike of lightning, capturing Kolis’s wrist before even a single finger could touch a strand of my hair.
My heart lurched.
Kolis slowly turned his head to Nyktos. None of the guards moved as the false King looked down to where Nyktos’s hand clasped his wrist and then back to Nyktos’s eyes.
“I do not wish for her to be touched.” Nyktos’s voice deepened. “She is mine.”