But that was who I was underneath it all, and Nyktos now knew that, too. There was no more hiding that truth—or any truths.
My lungs started to burn as tiny bursts of light danced across my vision. The breathing exercises weren’t working. A tremor hit my hands, and panic unfurled in my chest. There was no air—
Fingertips touched my cheek.Warmfingertips. My eyes flew open, locking on features so finely pieced together I should’ve known the first time I saw him that he was more than a god. His touch startled me, not only because it was warm instead of shockingly cold as it had been before he took my blood into him, but because I still wasn’t used totouching. I wasn’t sure I ever would be when it had always been so rare that anyone allowed their skin to contact mine.
But he touched me. After everything, Nyktos touchedme.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice low.
My tongue was heavy and useless, having nothing to do with my too-tight chest and everything to do with his concern. I didn’t want it. Not now. It was wrong on so many different levels.
Nyktos stepped in close, lowering his head until his lips were mere inches from mine. A shiver followed his hand as he curled his fingers around the nape of my neck. His thumb gently pressed against my wildly thrumming pulse. He tilted my head as if lining up our mouths for a kiss as he’d done in his office before meeting with Holland and Penellaphe. But that would never happen again. He’d told me that himself.
“Breathe,” Nyktos whispered.
It was as if he’d compelled the very air itself to enter my body, and it tasted of his scent—citrus and fresh air. The darts of lights cleared, and my lungs expanded with breath. The shaking continued in my hands as his thumb swept across my pulse, now racing for entirely different reasons. He stood so close to me that there was no stopping the flood of memories—the feel of his mouth against my throat, and his hands on my bare skin. The pain-tinged pleasure of his bite as he fed from me. Him movinginsideme, creating the kind of pleasure that wouldn’t be forgotten and warmed my blood even now.
I’d been Nyktos’sfirst.
And he…he would be mylast, no matter what happened from this point forward.
Sorrow crept in, cooling my heated blood and settling in my chest with a different, thicker kind of pressure. At least I no longer felt as if I couldn’t catch my breath.
“She has trouble slowing her heart and breathing sometimes,” Holland shared quietly—andunnecessarily.
“I’ve noticed.” Nyktos’s thumb continued those featherlight sweeps while I inwardly cringed. He probably thought…only the gods knew what he thought.
I didn’t want to know.
Face heating, I backed away from Nyktos’s touch, hitting the edge of the dais. His hand hovered in midair for a few seconds, and then his fingers curled inward. He dropped his arm as I turned to the raised platform. I focused on the hauntingly beautiful thrones sculpted from massive chunks of shadowstone. Their backs had been carved into large and widespread wings that touched at the tips, connecting the seats. I wiped damp palms against the patches of dried blood on my breeches.
“You are both positive that no one else knows what she is?” Nyktos asked.
“Besides your father? Embris knows the prophecy,” Penellaphe answered, referencing the Primal God of Wisdom, Loyalty, and Duty as I pulled myself together. I faced them. This was too important for me to miss while having a mini breakdown. “And so does Kolis. Neither knows more than that.”
The eather stirred once more in Nyktos’s eyes at the mention of the Primal Kolis, who every mortal—including myself until recently—believed to be the Primal of Life and the King of Gods. But Kolis was thetruePrimal of Death. The one who’d impaled gods on the Rise surrounding the House of Haides just to remind Nyktos that all life was easily extinguished—or so I assumed. And it was a logical assumption. Nyktos’s father had been the true Primal of Life, and Kolis had stolen Eythos’s embers.
I fought the shudder, thinking over the prophecy Penellaphe had shared. The part about the desperation of golden crowns could be related to my ancestor King Roderick and the deal he’d made that’d started all of this. But prophecies were only possibilities, and they were… “Prophecies are fucking pointless,” I muttered aloud.
Penellaphe turned her head to me, raising a brow.
I grimaced. “I’m sorry. That came out worse than I intended.”
“I’m curious exactly how you intended that statement,” Nyktos wondered. I shot him an arch stare. “But I do not disagree.”
I stopped glaring at him like I wanted to stab him.
“I understand the sentiment,” Penellaphe said with a bemused expression. “Prophecies can often be confusing, even to those who receive them. And, sometimes, only bits and pieces of a prophecy are known by one—the beginning or the end—while the middle is known to another and vice versa. But some visions have come to pass, both in Iliseeum and in the mortal realm. It’s hard to see this since the destruction of the Gods of Divination and the passing of the last of the oracles.”
“Gods of Divination?” I’d heard of the oracles, rare mortals who had lived long before my birth and were able to communicate directly with the gods without having to summon them.
“They were gods able to see what was hidden to others—their truths—both past and future,” Penellaphe explained. “They called Mount Lotho home and served in Embris’s Court. The oracles would speak to them, and they were the only gods truly welcomed by the Arae.”
“Not the only gods welcomed,” Holland corrected softly.
Penellaphe’s rosy blush momentarily distracted me because there was definitely something going on there.
“Penellaphe’s mother was a God of Divination,” Holland continued. “That is why she was able to share a vision. Only those gods and the oracles could receive the visions the Ancients—the first Primals—dreamt.”