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I did what now?He probably deserved it.
I shake my head.
Nathaniel lets out a small laugh.
“You know? That kind of makes sense. You were exceptionally smooth last night while talking to the barmaid. She was putty in your hands all evening. And even as a viator, she was way out of your league. It had to have been liquid courage,” he says.
I have never been called smooth in my life. I’ve been too hung up on the loss of my flower ten years ago to ever learn how to flirt with women.
“Could you tell me what happened? Everything is fuzzy. I woke up with a horrible headache and needed to get a potion from the apothecary to ease it,” I ask, hoping Nathaniel continues his agreeable mood.
Luckily, Nathaniel feels talkative and tells me about the events from last night, ending with him hauling Jonathan out of The Blue Stag before I could kill him for his actions. I was right, though. He deserved to be punched. Sadly, it’s not surprising that he put his hands on a woman who didn’t consent to it. I’m thankful I was there to step in before he did anything worse.
Entertaining as it is, the story doesn’t jog my memory, and now I have to come up with a punishment for Jonathan. This is shaping up to be a disaster of a day.
“Thanks for filling in the blanks. Now I need to figure out what happened after you left me alone with the barmaid,” I say, getting frustrated by this situation.
Nathaniel wiggles his eyebrows at me.
“We both know what happened after I left, memory or not,” he says, shoving me playfully.
I smile weakly. While I hope we ended the night tangled in each other’s bodies, I don’t want to assume something happened if it didn’t.
“Come on. Let’s get to training. Maybe the movement will help clear my head and my memories will come back,” I say, motioning for Nathaniel to follow so we can get the day started.
Nathaniel and I head to an open sparring ring. I allow myself one more thought about the barmaid before getting lost in my role as captain of the guard for the rest of the day.
Chapter 7
Lily
Midnight and I race across Fati, quickly putting distance between us and the Lux Kingdom. The wind stings my face as Midnight pushes hard to get us home in record-breaking time.
We ride through the forests along the foothills of the fractured mountain range. The smell of pine and aspen washes over me as we go. Stopping briefly when the sun is at its peak, we rest near the once-mighty river that bends with the rolling landscape.
As I sip cool, crisp water, I take in the scenery around us, trying to imagine what the realm would look like if the gods had never fought and cleaved the land apart. Gods so overcome by their own desires for power that they couldn’t see the damage they were doing until it was too late.
The gods and mortals are not so different at their core: both willing to destroy anything that stands between them and the power they believe is rightfully theirs. As much as it hurts, I’m glad I was able to make Theo forget. Leopold can never know of my slip-up.
In a moment of weakness, I risked everything I’ve been trying to avoid for years. I put Theo in harm’s way. But the chance to finally be with him was too hard to pass up. I should have just been content watching from the shadows and ensuring that Leopold was still holding up our deal.
You want to make a deal, Oren? Fine, I will make one under these conditions: as long as there is life in my body and air in my lungs, you will not harm Theo or anyone else I love. Never again. And Leopold? That includes Juniper. You will protect them at all costs, as if it were me watching over them. Only then do we have a deal.
I tighten my grip on Midnight’s reins as the memory invades my mind, and I fight to shove it deep down. The darkness swirls at my core with the reminder of the night it was unleashed. Thalos’ black, vacant eyes slicing into my soul as his voice echoed in my mind. The darkness invading every part of my being. Ripping into my muscle and bone—tearing it apart and knitting it back together with its own essence woven between each fiber.
