Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Alethea collapsed on the bed, running her hands over her face as if doing so could push the tension out of her body.
She could just about hear Balthasar and Nakir’s low-toned discussion, but she was too tired to figure out what they were talking about.
She only opened her eyes again when she heard the door open and close.
Balthasar had left—though why, she hadn’t heard.
She sat up to see Nakir leaning against the back of an armchair with eyes closed, his face pressed in frustration.
She wanted to ask if he was all right, but it felt like a foolish question.
All she could do was watch the way he drew in long, steady breath after long, steady breath until he lifted his head to her.
His lips twitched like he wanted to smile but it wouldn’t quite come.
“You should get some rest,” he told her, and she wanted to agree, but she couldn’t force herself to move.
“Everyone is safe?” she asked quietly, crossing her arms when she realized her hands were still trembling.
“Yes. Everyone is safe... You are safe,” he promised.
She sighed, trying to release the tension that had gathered between her shoulders. She didn’t miss the way his gaze followed her hands hungrily as she kneaded her own muscles.
She crossed the room before she’d decided to, touching his face, tilting it toward the light. His pupils looked normal again. His color was good. She exhaled slowly.
“You frightened me,” she admitted.
“I know.” His hands covered hers. “I’m all right, Thea.”
She wanted to believe him. She’d been watching him all evening for signs of the nightshade. The sweat on his brow, his pupils, the careful way he’d been holding himself.
With a shaky breath, she stepped away from him, putting a little distance between them, as if the space might help her think straight.
“Sober yet?” he asked dryly, and she winced but managed a soft chuckle.
“I rather think so, unfortunately. Ambrosia was an... interesting experience.”
“Shall I fetch you more?” he teased. A beat passed before he admitted, a touch more seriously, “It was impossible to resist you at the Revel.”
Alethea leaned against one of the four posters of the grand bed. “Resist me?”
Nakir groaned, standing up straighter but keeping his hands on the back of the armchair. She tried not to notice the way they gripped the fabric—or the way watching them sent a heat right to her middle.
“Do you think it’s easy not to touch you every moment I’m near you?
Do you think it’s easy not to kiss you when you...
when you look at me like you did tonight?
You replace my entire universe with a glance, Thea.
” Each word was spoken in exasperation, pain etched into his features.
“I have a thousand reasons to resist the constant temptation to be near you, to touch you, or worse. First and foremost is that when we’re done, I will be King of Lenorea, and you will be far, far away with enough gold to do whatever the hell you want.
I made you a promise that I would honor our bargain. ”
Each and every one of his words made total sense to her, so why was she moving toward him? He stood straighter as she met him behind the armchair, watching her nervously.
“I know you will honor our bargain,” she told him, soft yet resolute.
“I don’t know how to want you without wanting all of you,” Nakir confessed, daring to caress a featherlight trail down her shoulder.
Every part of her yearned for more, even without the ambrosia coursing through her, just like the moment they kissed upon striking their first deal.
“Have it,” she told him, fully aware of how reckless she was being.
He took her hand and placed the back of it against his cheek reverently, but otherwise, he kept a hair’s breadth between them. “There are things I haven’t told you,” he said, but she shook her head.
“I don’t care.”
“You might, if you knew. I care.”
“Then tell me,” she commanded.
Nakir’s eyes smoldered at her words, and he gently released her hand, his touch lingering for a moment before he carefully led her to take a seat on the edge of the bed.
Then, with deliberate grace, he kneeled before her, his eyes never leaving hers.
She peered down at him from this angle, sensing he’d placed himself below her for a reason.
It was a quiet plea; an unspoken worry that she might reject him or view him differently.
“When I realized I’d lost my magic, all I could think of was how to get back what I had lost. My mentor had an Oracle with him when he resurrected me, and that Oracle told me I would never regain my magic...
but that one day, I may regain my kingdom.
The prophecy stated, ‘Only with the power of the Truth-Teller will you finally take back what is yours, the Kingdom of Lenorea.’”
“Me,” Alethea stated plainly as the pieces clicked together. “I’m the Truth-Teller.” Her breath caught, eyes widening in astonishment.
Nakir’s desperation was palpable. “Balthasar and I, we looked... everywhere. We wasted years in search of it,” he confessed, the weight of his past efforts evident in his eyes.
“I searched every library in the Realm. I could never figure out if it was a weapon or some ancient tome or a grimoire. I never imagined it would be a person, an Oracle. I never thought it would be... I never thought it would be you. The things I did in search of it... I’m ashamed of.
I had to let it go before it destroyed me. ”
Alethea’s head spun with his implications. Was their meeting not some chance encounter in the woods then? Was there a larger force at work?
“Say something, Alethea.”
The truth was, Alethea was hanging on by a single thread.
She had little idea what to make of what he’d told her—whether she should be amazed or overwhelmed.
Despite the staggering uncertainty, there was a fire within her; a resolve that refused to be extinguished.
She may be hanging by that single, fragile thread, but she was not ready to let go.
She held his hands tighter. “I... I still offer my services to you, Nakir.” But it was so much more than that. Alethea shook her head, eyes swimming, unable to say anything more than the truth. “Whatever you want from me, it’s yours,” she promised, trembling.
“I don’t deserve it,” he told her, shaking his head.
“Bernadea told me your Oracle name while you were unconscious after the attack on the camp. After all those years I spent searching... when I found you, I thought I had just another spoiled princess on my hands. But when my spymaster told me what he’d uncovered about your mother—what she did to you, how she took from you... I couldn’t force myself to ask.”
“But... your prophecy. I can help you take the kingdom,” she countered, heart pulsing in her throat. “I can use my magic—”
“Fuck the prophecy, Thea! Damn it all to Hell. If that’s what it takes to have the crown, I won’t do it.
” His hands were on her waist as he kneeled before her, eyes tortured.
“I gave up the search a long time ago, and we’ve always been prepared to do this without the Truth-Teller.
I don’t want you for your gift, and I won’t stand by and watch you tear yourself apart to please those around you.
You are not for consumption. You deserve to be free. ”
Her eyes swam as she shook her head, trying to accept his words but finding fear clutching at her chest.
“I want you,” he promised, cupping her face. “Not because you’re an Oracle. Not because of some fucking prophecy. I want you because of your bravery and your heart.”
Silence stretched between them as she tried to gain some control over her spiraling thoughts.
“What do you want?” he questioned.
“I want to help you,” Alethea rasped. “I can help you.” She could fix what she’d broken that day in her father’s bedchambers. All of this had happened as a result of his death—her mother’s corrupt rule, the assassination of Nakir’s parents, even Nakir losing his magic. She could fix this...
“What do you want?” he repeated, his voice a low rumble.
Her eyes widened as his words struck something primal within. Her breath hitched, and she caught herself staring at his perfect lips. The air between them stilled.
“You.”
“Gods, Thea—”
He rose up to kiss her, and the world around them seemed to dissolve into nothingness, leaving only the electricity between them. She gasped, a sharp intake of breath that mingled with the passion coursing through her veins.
Her hands were everywhere, tugging at his jacket and his tunic as she searched for the skin underneath. She moaned at the hard lines of his abdomen, and Nakir worked at the clasps of her dress, only interrupted when she shoved his jacket off his shoulders or pulled his tunic over his head.
In the low light of the fire, Alethea’s eyes adjusted, catching a glint of the pendant still hanging around his neck.
She could also see that the few scars she’d observed before were not only just a few—his chest, abdomen, and arms were covered in scars of all sizes, as if he’d been sliced open by dozens of different blades.
But there was something else too. Spread across his skin, irregular patches of scarring, different in texture from the clean lines of the blade wounds—raised and rough, the skin pulled tight in places.
Burns.
“Nakir,” she breathed, knitting her brows. “What happened?”
She thought she saw him falter for a moment.
She hadn’t considered he might mistake her hesitation for anything other than concern.
As if she could be anything other than floored by the sight of him and his powerful, muscled body.
It was as if he’d been crafted by Aeshma himself as the ultimate tool of strength and retribution.
Nakir may have been born with the ruinous power of Necromancy, but he’d crafted himself into a weapon that was just as deadly.
“I’m hard to kill,” he replied, his voice so low she could barely hear him.