Chapter 50
NIKIAS
“Nikias, what was the point of all this if you won’t let me actually prove what I’m capable of? Forget it, you’ve ruined it regardless. Why couldn’t you just let me go on my own?”
“How could I let you go without me? I’m not trying to ruin this. I’m just trying to—No. I’m sorry. Go ahead, take the front. It’s your mission. I’ll be at the back. If you need me, I’m just a shout away.”
There was so much blood.
The stone floor of the strange Sordes temple was more red than gray as Nikias raced across it, Runai fighting all around him.
There was a wicked, sharp laugh in the air, but Nikias didn’t care.
All he cared about was the blonde woman, sprawled out on the stone ahead of him, his name on her wrist and his heart forever in her hands.
It had been too quiet, that’s what had him running in in the first place, but then the scream that had torn through the eerie silence moments later echoed in his head even as she was silent and still now.
“Faustina!” His voice tore through the air, but it was drowned out by the shouts and cries of the Runai and the Sordes. “Faustina!”
But she didn’t respond.
Her eyes were open and she had one hand pressed against her stomach, and Nikias wanted the red all around her to be her commander’s cloak, but it was too dark. It was moving and growing larger with each second.
Nikias ran for what felt like years, the distance between him and his beloved never closing until finally he crashed to his knees in the pool of blood. “Faustina? Hold on, it’ll be alright. Where are you hurt?”
Faustina’s eyes focused on him as he hovered over her, eyes trying to find the source of the blood. “N—Nik—”
He reached up and cradled her face in his hands. “I’m right here, amata. I’m here. I’ve got you. Everything is going to be alright.”
It wouldn’t.
He couldn’t find the source of the wound, and he was a terrible healer. Where was their troop’s healer?
Vitae kept flying around them, the battle still raging on.
His hands were coated in her blood. He couldn’t find the wound.
There were too many. Which one mattered the most?
Faustina screamed again as he searched for the worst of them, and he cried out his apologies until he finally lifted her into his arms. He took her cloak, pressing it to the wound on her throat, trying to apply pressure without choking her as he held her.
Her neck was bleeding the most, but the deep gash in her side wasn’t helping matters, not to mention the angle her leg was twisted in a way that no bone could naturally be.
One of her hands found his cloak, curling into the fabric at his shoulder as he cradled her close. “It’s—” Faustina coughed up blood. “—no use.”
That couldn’t be true.
“No! Just—hold on? Faustina, I know you can fight. You need to keep fighting!” Nikias looked back over her and blanched again. “You need to hold on. A real healer is going to be here any second.”
Faustina took rattling, desperate breaths against him.
“Listen to me, amata. I promise you, if you can just hold on little longer, everything will be alright—no, better! I’ll be better! A healer is going to fix you and then we’re going to go back to Areator, and it’s going to be different this time, I promise.”
He couldn’t see her clearly anymore as his eyes were flooding with water. His voice was cracking beneath each of her laboring breaths.
Faustina just stared up at him.
“You just need to stay alive. Faustina?”
Still she said nothing. Her skin kept turning whiter and whiter as the ground around them became redder.
He looked up at the battle around them; his men were pushing the filth back. He screamed, “Healer! I need a healer!”
But he spotted the healer on the ground, clutching a wound of his own.
A Sordes woman was walking away from him, black curls spilling over her shoulders and a satisfied smirk on her face.
Her eyes landed on him, holding Faustina.
Her lips parted, her eyes widened, and then she kept walking toward them.
Faustina caught sight of her and a whimper left her throat.
The Sordes woman opened her mouth and spoke in their language, “Don’t bother. Your heretic can’t save her now. Her fate was sealed the second I Saw her.”
She was the one responsible for this?
What on earth was she talking about, fate?
Then she tilted her head. “This was as far as I Saw, though.”
Saw? What was she talking about?
“What will you do now?”
Nikias’ bloodstained hands flew through the air along with his vicious scream, and the dazed look left the demon’s eyes as she lifted one hand to cast. Her shield shattered, and Nikias already had another rune flying toward her.
She threw herself out of the way, and the rune meant to cut her in half only caught her side, but she let out a horrific half-scream, half-laugh as she grabbed her now bleeding side.
Another Sordes grabbed her and started hurrying away as she fell into a horrific fit of laughter, and Nikias could not pursue with Faustina still in his lap.
He looked back down at his wife, and she was fading even faster.
Nikias had to do something.
Even if he wasn’t a good healer, if he didn’t, she was going to be gone in a matter of seconds. He lifted his hands again, them shaking as he summoned his vitae.
Faustina held her own throat now and whispered, “Let—me—go.”
He couldn’t. If he saved her, maybe this time he could get it right. If he saved her, maybe it would be enough.
“Don’t give up! I love you. You know how much I love you, and I can’t do this without you. You can’t give up; you have to keep fighting! A healer will be here soon. Faustina? Faustina, please! Stay with me, please, amata!”
Each breath of hers came out a horrid choking sound as his vitae lit up the air and he tried to get the healing rune right. It wasn’t working—something was wrong. How was it supposed to go again? Why hadn’t he ever practiced this more?
She removed her hand from her throat as she said, “No…”
No?
Her hand fell to the ground, knuckles brushing the stone.
Nikias’ hands still shook in the air with a mangled, half formed rune as Faustina lifted her gaze to the old temple roof above. Her eyes turned glassy and still. As she gave her last breath, she smiled.
He kept trying to get the rune right, but it was too late.
She was gone.
Nikias looked down again, ready to plead once more, but this time her hair was red, her eyes hazel, and still dead.
Aimilia was dead in his arms too.
Aimilia blinked, but her chest wasn’t moving to take in any air. She looked up at him and said, “What will it take?”
Nikias stared down at her. She continued anyway, “Didn’t you learn your lesson last time? Haven’t you embarrassed yourself enough?”
“Aimilia—”
She sat up a little in his arms, still covered in blood. No one else was around. The Sordes had all fled and his men were nowhere to be seen. It was just them.
“When will you finally give up on this foolish endeavor and accept the truth? I don’t love you. I will never love you.” She reached up and brushed her fingertips over his cheek. “No one will ever love you.”
“Stop. That’s not true—”
She reached for his chiton, breaking the clasp and exposing the scar over his heart. She traced her fingertips over the rune Hypatia had burned into him.
Inamatus.
Unlovable.
“It is.” Aimilia looked back up at him, fingers resting on the burning scar. “You know it is. You’re unlovable. Haven’t you proven that? Who has ever loved you?”
Nikias’ silence was his answer, but the woman in his lap wasn’t satisfied.
“Your father? With all those hidden black eyes you take because you’re really just a pathetic, weak little boy pretending like the moment he dies you’ll finally be strong enough to lead a country when you’re not even strong enough to stop a dying old man from hitting you?
Your mother? You think she loves you when all she loves is your use for her?
Has she ever defended you? What about those little bruises in the shape of her fingertips?
“Gavril? The brother you always failed to protect? The one who always turned to me first? The one who was willing to kill you when you finally showed the monster you really are?”
Aimilia’s grin turned wicked and savage, mirroring the demon’s the second she’d Seen this truth in that tent while he was at her mercy.
“Faustina? The wife who had to marry you or be disowned because you made your obsession obvious to all? The wife who tried to abandon you, but stopped only because she caught Gavril running away the same night she was? The one who let herself die to free herself from you?” Aimilia reached up, brushing her fingertips over his cheeks as she cradled his face.
“If even the kindest Runai I’ve ever met couldn’t love you even with your name on her wrist and your utter devotion to her, who ever could? ”
Nikias’ tongue was marble in his mouth. Even if he could move it, what could he say?
She was right.
She was right about it all.
“Certainly not me.” Aimilia tilted his jaw up to look at her as she sat up straighter. “Not after I’ve spent my life loving your brother who is your superior in every way even when he breaks my heart.”
Nikias closed his eyes, but then her nails dug into his jaw and he was forced to look at her.
“You’ll never be him.” She clicked her tongue, the blood on her neck still glistening. “I wonder how you ever managed to love Faustina at all. Or how she ever loved you in return.”
Aimilia’s words from the day he’d had Marcella exposed as a traitor in league with Hypatia had torn through him that day and haunted him ever since, the wound never healing.
“Because she didn’t, did she?” Aimilia whispered, dropping one hand to press the pads of her fingers to the scar. “She knew what you were. I know what you are. Do you really think you stand a chance?”
No.
For so long he’d been so certain he didn’t.
He’d been resigned to watching her spend her life with Gavril, but then Gavril returned with Marcella.
But he was still all Aimilia wanted, and Nikias had resolved to ensure she would have what she wanted, so he’d gotten in her ear and if it meant he made Hypatia’s lookalike suffer, he couldn’t deny his vengeful heart that satisfaction.
Because if he could not have Aimilia, he could at least give her what she wanted and make someone pay for Faustina’s death.
But trying to give Aimilia what she wanted, he ran himself into the ground and destroyed what little good opinion she’d had left of his character.
But then she’d saved his life, and he thought maybe, just maybe there was hope.
Was he deluding himself now like he had then? Was he reading into Aimilia’s words and deeds a devotion that didn’t exist?
That could never exist?
She pulled back out of his arms, removing her hand from the scar. Her red hair spilled over her shoulders, blending into the blood and the fabric. “Let me go.”
Could he?
If she was right, and Aimilia could never love him, could he finally give up?
Or would he keep running after her until one day she too viewed her death as the chance to finally be free of him?