“There has to be better seating.”
“I’m fine just here.” He glanced at me. “But you should still try to get some rest. Reaver will be fine.”
I nodded.
“But you’re not going to rest.”
I half-shrugged.
“I could use compulsion, you know.” His fingers rubbed apatch of taut skin above his heart. “And make you do the sensible thing and rest.”
“But you won’t.”
“I won’t.” He sighed. “Morning will be here soon enough, and the day will be long.”
The coronation. Finally. Tomorrow would be long, as would the day after when we left for Irelone, but my mind wasn’t ready to relax. I couldn’t shake the feeling that a whole lot about Veses—and himandVeses—didn’t make sense. There was something I needed to know—had to understand. “You told her I was your Consort in title only.”
A shadow of emotion danced over his features, gone before I could decipher it. “I did.”
The breath I took hurt, and that should’ve served as a warning—one I didn’t heed. “Why?” I whispered. “You wanted the other Primals to believe that we shared some sort of attraction to one another, but you didn’t want her to think that?”
“She’s different,” he said, turning his head away as he dragged a hand over his face.
I tensed and then forced myself to relax as I glanced down at Reaver. “How so? Better yet, how did you even begin to explain why you’d take a Consort in title only?”
Nyktos didn’t answer for several long moments as he stared at the bare stone walls. “It’s complicated, Sera.”
“I’m sure I can understand.”
“But it’s something that I cannot explain.”
The veneer cracked even further. “You mean it’s something youwillnot explain.”
Nyktos’s eyes closed as he dropped his hand to his bent knee.
I waited. When he said no more, it took a lot for me to keep the whirlwind of emotion rattling around inside me contained. “Do you care for her?”
“Fates.” He laughed flatly, shaking his head. “I pity her. I loathe her. That’s all I feel for her.”
His answer left me even more confused. “And what do you feel for me?”
Nyktos was silent and then tipped his head back to look at me. Eather pulsed intensely behind his pupils. “I feel too manythings. Curiosity and excitement that remind me of what I think yearning must feel like. Need.Want,” he said roughly, his voice low. “Amusement at times. Sometimes, even anger. But alwaysawe. I am always in awe of you. I could keep going, but most of all, what I feel is the closest thing to peace I’ve ever experienced.”
The messy knot of dark hair slid a little as the once-Chosen, now seamstress, tilted her head. “Don’t move,” Erlina ordered softly.
“Good luck with that,” Bele commented.
Erlina laughed quietly.
I sent the goddess a narrow-eyed glare from where I stood on a stool in my bedchamber. Someone had cleaned up the mess Veses had left behind before I returned, but I swore I could stillfeelher here. Smell her. Roses. My lip curled.
“By the way,” Bele added from where she was sprawled across the settee, her head resting on one arm and her legs propped on the other. She wasn’t even looking at me as she flipped a dagger in her hand for the umpteenth time, something she’d been doing since Aios had finished styling my hair and left. “I heard Jadis threw a massive fit when Nektas was leaving her and Reaver in the mountains and she realized that she wouldn’t be at the coronation.”
My brows lifted. “Really?”
“Yep.”
Hearing that made me a little sad. I would’ve loved to have the younger draken there. But even with Kolis’s permission, that didn’t mean things wouldn’t go south. And after what’d happened to Reaver, no one wanted to risk the younglings.