My heart turned over heavily, but I believed in what I’d said. “What makes you think you’re not good?”
“I have…done things, Sera.”
“Like killing out of necessity or by force?”
Nyktos said nothing as his unflinching stare settled on me.
“Or is it because you started to enjoy killing those who’d summoned you out of a desire to harm another?” I continued. “None of that changes that you’re inherently good, Nyktos.”
The line of his jaw tensed. “And how would you know? What life experiences could give you that sort of insight when you’re a mostly mortal who is only on the cusp of living twenty-one years?”
I arched a brow. “I know because I’m sitting here alive when many, including everyone from your guards to gods and mortals alike, would’ve killed me when they learned of what I’d planned.”
His gaze sharpened on me.
“And, yes, those embers in me are important enough to keep me alive, but those embers don’t mean you have to be kind. You could’ve thrown me in a dungeon.”
“That’s still an option,” he remarked, pouring wine into his glass and then mine.
“If you were going to do that, you would’ve by now instead of fearing you’re trying to control me. All you’ve proven is what I’m saying.” I picked up the refilled glass, toasting him.
He put the bottle aside. “All you’ve proven is what I’ve told you before. That one decent and kind bone I have in me belongs to you.”
A worrying degree of satisfaction rushed through me, as did the urge to demand that he prove that. That the decent and kind bone really belonged to me and only me.
“But do not mistake my handling of you as a reflection of who and what I am,” he added, taking a drink.
“Your…handling of me isn’t the only reason I know you’re good,” I countered. “You didn’t want to enjoy those killings, and you stepped away before it could change you. I know because you feel the marks those deaths left behind, and you carry them on your skin. I know because despite not having the ability to love, you are still kind and care deeply—more than most.”
He smirked, looking away. “You don’t know what you think you do.” “I know because I’m not good.”
Nyktos’s gaze shot to mine. “You think you’re not good because of what you planned?”
I let out a dry laugh. “Yeah, that is just a drop in a very deep, messed- up bucket full of many more drops.”
The eather brightened in his eyes. “And what are those other drops?” “You’ll find out if your plan doesn’t work. You’ll get to see my soul
upon my death. It’s not black. It’s red, drenched in the blood of those I’ve killed. Lives I’ve taken that haven’t left behind the marks you speak of.” The embers in my chest vibrated. “I don’t feel them. Not like you do. Sure, I may experience some remorse, but it never lasts. I felt the same as I did when I shoved that whip down Tavius’s throat—”
“And you shouldn’t have a second of remorse,” Nyktos snarled, flashing his fangs.
“But I felt the same when I carved the Lords of Vodina Isles’ hearts from their chests, and their only real crime was angering my mother.” I lifted my brows at him. “Nor did I really feel anything when I killed the man in Croft’s Cross who was likely pimping his children. Not that anyone should feel bad for killing that bastard, but I didn’t make it clean and quick. The rest of them—and there are maybe…eighteen the last I counted?” I said, thinking of the guards Tavius had likely sent. It had been fourteen before that. “All I felt for them was pity and annoyance. And my stepfather? It may not have been my hand that took his life, but it was my actions, and I have barely thought about it. To be honest, I think the only reason I felt anything is because of the embers of life. If they weren’t there, I probably wouldn’t have felt anything.” Shame scalded the back of my throat as I raised the glass to myself then and proceeded to finish off the
wine. “So, I know what good is because I know what the opposite is in a real, up-close-and-personal kind of way.”
Nyktos was silent as he eyed me, and it slowly dawned on me that, perhaps, I could’ve kept all of that to myself. But what did it matter? I had no reason to pretend to be anything but what I was. Still, I almost wished I’d kept my mouth shut because he was the one person who hadn’t made me feel like the monster I’d just revealed myself to be.
“And yet,” he said finally, in that soft, midnight way of his, “you were willing to endanger yourself to protect many you’ve never met. More than once. You were willing to sacrifice yourself for the Shadowlands.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s not the same thing.” “It’s not?”
“No.” I rose then, no longer able to sit. “I’m tired. I think I’m ready for bed—”
“There is no such thing as a good Primal.” “What?”
“The essence that courses through our veins is what made the realms, creating the air that is breathed, the land that is sowed, and the rain that falls from the skies to fill the oceans. It’s powerful and ancient. Unbiased. It’s absolute. And in the beginning, when there were just the Ancient Primals, the Fates, and the dragons, Primals were neither good nor bad. They just were. Purely impartial. A perfect balance because they felt nothing, neither love nor hate.”
Nyktos stared up at me. “Eons passed that way, seeing the birth of many new Primals, including my father. And during that time, Primals didn’t die. They simply entered Arcadia when they were ready. The idea of fighting one another hadn’t even occurred to them, let alone killing each other. Procreation occurred for the sake of creation. And, eventually, gods were born. Then mortals. And for a time, there were no wars and no unnecessary deaths in either realm. There were disagreements in the mortal realm, skirmishes and the like, but the Primals always intervened, calming hot tempers and easing the pain of whatever loss had occurred. Then the first Primal fell, and that changed everything.”
“Fell?”
“In love,” he said, a wry grin appearing. “You see, each time the Primals and gods interacted with the mortals, they became more curious, until they were enthralled with the wide range of emotions that the mortals
experienced—something that neither my father nor Nektas created. Mortals were the first to feel, from the moment they took their first breath—and until their last. And that was something that just occurred in them naturally. But Primals were meant to be beyond such…mortal needs and wants.”
I slowly sat back down. “Why?”
“Because emotions can sway one’s decisions, no matter how unbiased anyone believes they are. If they can feel, they can be coerced by emotion.” He met my eyes.
“Then a Primal fell in love, and it troubled the Fates. They worried that love, held within a Primal’s heart, could become a weapon. They intervened, hoping to dissuade other Primals from doing the same by making what they loved the ultimate weapon to be used against them.”
“By becoming their weakness,” I whispered. “I never knew why love could weaken Primals.” I shook my head. “How are the Arae that powerful to create something like that?”
“Because they are the essence—the eather—that created the very first Primals,” he explained. “My father once told me that they didn’t even have mortal form for the longest time. They were simply in everything, everywhere.”
I blinked slowly, unable to even understand how Holland, who was very much flesh and blood, could be something that existed in the wind and the rain. “Well, what the Arae did doesn’t seem to have been all that effective.”
Nyktos chuckled. “No, it wasn’t. One Primal falling was like a domino effect. Other Primals fell in love and, eventually, even some of the Arae began to feel emotion,” he told me, and I thought of Holland and the goddess Penellaphe. “But falling in love meant the Primals also began to experience other emotions. Pleasure. Displeasure. Want. Jealousy. Envy. Hatred. And what the Arae feared became a reality because they knew that what had once only belonged to the mortals couldn’t exist within the kind of power a Primal held. Emotions began to guide the Primals’ actions, and that once-unbiased balance of power became as unpredictable as it was absolute and bled into the mortal realm. The very natures of the Primals changed. Now, goodness does not exist in Primals—not the kind weighed upon a mortal’s death.”
He set his glass aside. “From the moment a Primal is born or is Ascended, the new nature of the Primal essence starts to change us. And the
older we grow, and the more powerful that essence becomes, the harder it is to remember what the source of those emotions was and to be anything other than the very mortal flesh that contains power,” he said. “And that essence—the Primal essence that allows us to influence mortals to flourish or decay, love or hate, create life and cause death—is never just good or bad. It’s only absolute. Unpredictable. Raw.” His eyes lifted from his glass to me. “You’ve carried those embers from birth, Sera, and they are a part of you. Because of them, you are neither good nor bad, not by the mortal standards you understand.”
I drew in a shaky breath. “Are you saying that how I…I feel is because of those embers?”
“Yes,” he told me. “But you are still mortal, Sera, and that part of you is
good.”
“It—”
“It is,” Nyktos cut in. “You wouldn’t feel the sourness of shame if it wasn’t. Or the bitterness of agony when you spoke of killing. You wouldn’t even care if you were deserving. You would just take. You wouldn’t be brave. You would only be strong.”
“I—” I choked on my words. Could there be truth in what he said? I blinked back sudden dampness as I focused on the empty plate in front of me. I did feel shame and agony—even confusion over the coldness of my actions. I squeezed my eyes shut and took several moments before I trusted myself to speak. “But you are good by mortal standards.”
“Only because I try to be.”
“That’s all mortals do—well, most of them anyway,” I said, opening my eyes. “They try to be good, and you try harder than most mortals do.”
“Maybe,” he murmured.
As I sat there, letting his words sink in, I thought of something. “Why didn’t the Arae make the Primals do what you did? Have the kardia removed?”
“The Arae believe in free will. And, yes, being that they are Fates, that is as ironic as it could possibly be,” he said. “But they should’ve done it.”
If they had, it would have saved a lot of lives and stopped a lot of heartache, but… “Do you really think they should have?”
“Depends on the day. Right now, no.” He leaned forward. “You’re finished with your supper?”
I nodded.
“Will you join me in my chambers, then?”
My heart immediately sped up at what awaited in the next several minutes. Something did. I knew this because it felt as if something shifted between us. That there had been a change. There had to be because I didn’t argue with him or myself. I rose and went into the bathing chamber to take care of my personal needs and brush my teeth. I was inexplicably nervous as I walked out and saw him waiting by the adjoining door, the bottle of wine from supper in his hand.
My heart started tripping all over the place for some silly reason as he closed the door behind me and followed me into his chamber. It was only then that I remembered I wore nothing but the tiny piece of undergarment under the robe.
Oh, dear.
Nyktos offered me the bottle of wine as he eased past. I shook my head, deciding that I’d had more than enough. I sat on the edge of the bed, fingers fiddling with the tiny buttons on the robe as he excused himself and disappeared into the bathing chamber. All I managed to do while he was gone was scoot back a foot or so and tuck my legs under the hem of the robe. Then Nyktos returned.
Shirtless. The buttons of his leathers undone.
Neither of those two things helped with the nervousness I felt as I watched him walk toward me, the hair against his cheek and the bronze flesh of his neck and upper chest damp.
He sat before me. “May I?”
Stomach joining the flipping and flopping of my heart, I nodded.
Like the night before, he tucked the braid between his thumb and pointer finger and slowly, almost methodically, ran his fingers down it. I bit the inside of my lip as the back of his hand grazed the swell of my breast. I could barely feel his touch through the thicker robe, but a shiver still skated through me.
Nyktos unwound the hair band, slipping it onto his wrist. Then he set about undoing the braid and didn’t speak until he’d finished. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, thick lashes lowering as he drew the length of my hair over my shoulder. “About the demands you made.”
“I wouldn’t say they were demands.” I watched him draw his fingers through my hair.
“What would you call them?”
“Gentle requests.”
Nyktos laughed roughly. “Which part was gentle, Sera? The kicking me, or the holding your dagger to my throat?”
“The part where I didn’t hurt you.”
One side of his lips curved up. “There was one demand you didn’t make.”
“Which one was that?”
He spun one of my curls around his finger. “The offer you made in my office.”
My heart immediately began its rapid beating. “That wasn’t part of your demands.”
“But it was.” I took a breath.
“Really?” He unwound the curl, letting it lay against my chest. “I’m positive I wouldn’t have forgotten you bringing that up.”
I dragged my teeth over my lower lip as he picked up another piece of hair. “The offer was a part of my request to be of help.”
Lashes lifted, and quicksilver eyes locked onto mine.
“In whatever way I’m needed,” I reminded him, my blood warming.
His lips parted, revealing a hint of his fangs. “That’s good to know.” His voice was rougher, harder. “So, that offer you made? Pleasure for the sake of pleasure? It still stands?”
A mix of emotions swirled through me as my hands fell to the bed. Sweet anticipation and blade-sharp desire crashed into a wild sort of anticipation that carried just the faintest twinge of something I couldn’t name or place, but I said, “Yes.”
Wisps of eather bled out from behind his pupils, lashing his irises. “Are you sure?”
“I am.” And I was.
A ragged exhale left Nyktos. He lifted his hand, placing just the tips of his fingers against my face. I barely felt the faint energy shock as he sat there, still except for his fingers. He drew them down my cheek. His skin was a little warmer. Not as much as it had been before I’d hit him with eather, but what little blood he’d taken from me this afternoon had impacted him.
“Thirty-six,” he murmured, trailing his fingers along my jawline. His thumb coasted over my bottom lip. “Still thirty-six freckles.”
I started to grin.
“I wanted to make sure I’d counted them correctly.” His fingers spread across my other cheek and then down the side of my throat to the panel of the robe folded across my chest. “You have two more.” His hand slipped over my right breast. He cupped the weight through the robe, drawing a breathy exhale from me. “Right here.” He ran his thumb across the area above my nipple. “Two little freckles right there. I think there’s another on the side.”
My trembling fingers dug into the blanket beneath me. “Do you want to check?”
“I do.”
I leaned back a little, giving him access to the short row of buttons.
Allowing him to take the lead. Wanting him to. Needing that.
And he did.
His fingers danced over the buttons, quickly undoing them. The material loosened at my shoulders. He said nothing as he slid his hand under one panel of the robe. The eather brightened in his eyes as his skin came into contact with my bare flesh. “Sera…” My name was a growl as he pushed the panels apart. The callused pads of his fingers and his palms elicited a sharp spike of pleasure, and I felt the intensity of his gaze as he bared more and more of me to him. The robe slid down my back, catching at my wrists. The tips of my breasts tingled, hardening under his gaze.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his throat working on a swallow. His head tilted. The tips of his fingers grazed the side of my breast. “I was right. There’s another freckle here.”
My skin felt as if it were on fire. “Do you think there are more?” “I know there are.”
“Where?”
His hand skimmed my waist and then skipped to my bent knees. He gently pushed them down, straightening them. Spreading them. His lips parted even more as he saw the scrap of black lace. “I approve.”
My cheeks warmed. “You have Erlina to thank.”
“That, I do.” He ran his hand up my inner thigh, stopping midway. “Three little freckles right here, clustered together.” Both of his hands ran up my thighs to the thin strip of silky lace. “Your freckles are like a constellation.”
I lifted my hips as he drew the lace down over my legs and then pulled the undergarment off. His hands returned to my hips, and I let out a startled
gasp as he tugged me to the edge of the bed. He lowered himself to his knees on the floor. A pulse of pleasure darted through me as his gaze fixed on the throbbing space between my legs.
“That’s another name I’ll need to come up with. What I’ll call this constellation,” he said, threading an arm under my hips as he hooked one of my legs over his shoulder. The position forced me back onto my elbows. “I’m always more creative when I have something sweet on my tongue.”
Air lodged in my throat as Nyktos lowered his head. His breath on the sensitive flesh there caused my hips to jump. My fingers dug into the blanket as he turned his head, dragging his lips along the inside of my thigh. Then over the very center of me.
My head fell back as his tongue traced the plump flesh there, unerringly finding his way to the ultra-sensitive joining of nerves. When his mouth closed over me, I cried out, shaking. He sucked softly, then harder, and the sound he made at the rush of damp arousal vibrated all the way through me. His head shifted, then his tongue was inside me, and he gave another throaty growl. I moved, rocking my hips against the wickedness of his tongue. He tasted me. Licked. Drank from me without drawing my blood, and the throbbing deep inside me intensified. His head turned, and the edge of his fang skated across the turgid flesh. I came apart. Hard. Fast.
I was still coming as his mouth left mine and he rose, his lips glossy and swollen as he shucked off his breeches. I was still shaking, muscles coiling and spinning at the sight of him, thick and hard, jutting out. I was still trembling as he lifted me, hauling me farther back on the bed. And I could barely breathe as his eyes locked on mine and he came toward me, the strands of his hair falling against his cheeks. The shortness of breath wasn’t bad. It wasn’t sparked by panic as he eased me onto my back. I lay there, skin tingling all over as he braced his weight on his strong arms. The catching in my breath and chest felt different.
All of this felt different.
It was that change from earlier. That intangible shift between us. What was occurring was fundamentally different than before. This wasn’t a desire fueled by the need for blood, feeding, or anger. This was pleasure for the sake of pleasure. And it was…
It was a first for us.
And it felt like a first for me altogether. Any experience I had, fled.
Nothing I knew before this moment seemed to count. I couldn’t explain it.
Neither of us moved, even though I was trembling again. I didn’t think he even breathed as he stared down at me, his eyes a storm of whirling eather. Then I moved, clasping his cheeks and bringing his mouth to mine. I kissed him because this was different.
He kissed me back, and I tasted myself on his lips and on his tongue. I was greedy. We were greedy, kissing and kissing until he moved, reaching between us to grip himself. The feel of his cock dragging through my wetness was a tantalizing promise of what was to come, and I didn’t have to wait long. He eased into me, and the feel of him—the pressure and fullness
—dragged a ragged cry from me. Nyktos stopped.
“It’s okay,” I said against his lips. “Don’t stop. Please.” “You never have to beg,” he promised. “Never.”
Then he thrust into me to the hilt, and my cry was lost in his groan. He stilled again, chest to chest with me, his forehead resting against mine. I felt every breath he took and every beat of his heart in those moments. Then he began to move again, slow and steady retreats and even more decadent plunges. I curled my arms around his neck, my legs around his hips. He shuddered as he rocked gently, and I found his mouth again as the crescendo of sensations began to build once more.
We moved together. Our lips. Our tongues. Hands. Hips. Slow, teasing, shorter and shallow thrusts gave way to longer, deeper ones. My legs and arms tightened around him. He moved faster. Harder. The friction of his chest against mine enflamed the fire in my blood and my core, and those embers…they hummed inside me as Nyktos’s skin began to harden against mine. Shadows gathered under his flesh, and as he lifted his head, streaks of eather filled the veins beneath his eyes. His features turned stark as he pounded into me, moving us up the bed as that tension tightened and tightened.
“Oh, gods,” I whispered, clutching the back of his neck. I called his name as the tension broke again, this time far more intense and all- consuming.
Because I heard the word he whispered against my lips in that harsh, raw voice as he shuddered, his hips churning against mine. The one word that caused the pleasure to roll on endlessly.
“Liessa.”
