I was staring at his mouth again. “Like what?”
Nyktos cleared his throat, shaking his head. “By the way, when you think I’m moving too fast? I’m not actually moving—not in the way you think.”
I frowned. He was clearly changing the subject. “Then in what wayareyou moving?”
“I use eather to will myself where I want to go,” he said, gently pressing the cloth to the skin around the wound. “It’s called shadowstepping.”
I stared at him, my brows raised. “Isn’t that normally called plain old walking?”
Nyktos chuckled. “It’s a bit different than that. When I will myself to move like that, I’m becoming a part of the eather—the air around us. Mortal eyes simply cannot see us do it.”
Curiosity rose. “What does it look like?”
“A glimmer of shadow, moving very rapidly,” he answered. “And the more eather a god carries, the farther they can shadowstep, and the faster they move.”
“Is that what you did when you took me from the Great Hall in Wayfair?”
“Yes. I summoned mist to hide us first. And because you’re mostly mortal, it would have been a very painful experience for you if awake.”
I’d take his word for that, but then I remembered what he had told me about not being able to will himself from my lake. “So youcanwill yourself wherever you want to go…” He smirked. “How far can you…shadowstep?”
He glanced up at me. “As far as I want.”
I blinked slowly. “Then why do you use a horse? Or walk anywhere? If I could do that, I probably wouldn’t walk a foot.”
A faint grin appeared. “Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I need to.”
He’d said some variation of that before when we were at my lake. “I bet there are many things you can do that I have no idea about.”
His grin kicked up farther on one side.
“Will I be able to do that if I Ascend?”
“You will Ascend,” he corrected. “And it will all depend on how much eather you have in you. Based on what you’re already able to do, I imagine you will be able to shadowstep in some capacity. Many gods can. Though they cannot travel the distance a Primal can or cross realms.”
I tried to picture myself shadowstepping out of one space and into the next, and quickly decided that I probably wouldn’t ever walk normally again.
“What were you thinking about?” Nyktos asked after a couple of moments. “Just a few minutes ago when you felt as if you…wanted to murder someone.”
Caught off guard, I blurted out the truth. “Tavius.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw as he continued carefully wiping at the blood around the wound. “Part of me doesn’t want to know what made you think of him.” A lock of hair slipped from the bun he’d tied his hair back in, falling across his cheek. He was quiet as he dipped the cloth into the bowl again. “Did he hurt you before that day?”
I stared at the top of his head as he bent once more, all thoughts of shadowstepping disappearing.
“He did, didn’t he? That bruise I saw on you. It was severaldays old, nearly faded. You said you walked into something, and yet I’ve seen few people as sure-footed as you.” He paused. “Except when around serpents.”
The corner of my lips twitched and then flattened when I thought of the cause of the bruise Nyktos questioned. Tavius had thrown a bowl of dates at me.
“Did he harm you?” Nyktos persisted.
I started to lie but realized I was simply too tired to do so. “He wasn’t kind.”
“And what does that entail?” He dabbed at the wound gently, but I still jerked at the sting of pain. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” My cheeks burned, either from the conversation or his apology. Maybe both. “He could be mean. Growing up, it was mostly verbal. When I wore the veil, he wouldn’t dare. For the most part,” I said, thinking of how he’d tried to touch me the night I’d first been brought to the Shadow Temple to honor the deal.
“And that changed?” Nyktos eyed the wound.