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I elbowed him sharply, hitting one of his ribs. It sent a zing through me, and I cringed, rubbing at the sore bone.
“Don’t call him that.”
“Why the hell not? That’s what we’ve always called him.” He scrunched his nose. “Don’t tell me you have the Stockholm Syndrome thing.
“Nog!” Clara clapped her hands like she was getting a dog’s attention. “You’re being a dick, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come on.” He threw his hands up. “We spend a lifetime hearing how he’s the worst, how he’s literally out to destroy her, and I’m just supposed to suddenly call him by his name and not think she’s lost her marbles?”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to call him,” I said, folding my arms over my chest. Hearing that name for him now made me feel angry and sad on his behalf. I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t going to stand here and relive that dream. “And you should trust me to know what I’m doing. I know myself. Besides, nothing is happening between us.” Yet. Mostly. Except the kiss. That might not have stopped if we hadn’t been interrupted.
“Lies,” Nog insisted the moment he caught me shifting my eyes away. “I saw you two. You were sitting on his lap?—”
“Okay, that really is practice. Like I told you, someone tried to kill me. The woman he’s interrogating right now? She tried to kill me this morning.”
“Why?” Ben asked.
“I didn’t make a good impression around here. Caius is really loved as king, and I sort of made it known that I didn’t want to be his mate. It didn’t win me any favors. So she thought I was more useful dead.”
Nog snorted. “Go figure you’re almost murdered, not because some twat is jealous, but because you wouldn’t spread your legs. That’s some backwards logic.”
“Right?” I nodded. “Thank you. It’s bad enough he kidnapped Clara and she’s been all Team Caius, but now I got the help trying to kill me too—no offense to you,” I said to the beautiful woman still lurking next to the throne.
“Plenty taken,” she shot back.
I paused and opened, then closed my mouth. “Okay, that’s fair. It was a shitty thing to say. I’m sorry, I’m usually more, well, not eloquent, but I don’t usually put my foot in my mouth like that. I’m pretty sure it’s not even lunch time yet and it’s already been a day.”
Styx inclined her head. “That it has.”
“So you’re fake dating—mating—the king of Tartarus?” Nog asked, crossing his scrawny arms over his chest.
I lifted one shoulder. “Yeah, I guess that’s what it is. Just for the six months, though. When time’s up he said I get to go home, and he’ll close the portal.”
Styx made a noise in the back of her throat, something that had Pol shaking his head once as if to saylater.
Nog’s mouth dropped open. “Excuse my fucking French, butwhat?!?”
Oh, that’s right.
I spent the next ten minutes catching him up. It would have been closer to thirty seconds, but Nog was allergic to being quiet. He interrupted frequently, and repeatedly. By the end I was mildly annoyed with my cousin and wanted to shove him back through the portal with Ben, who was uncharacteristically quiet by comparison.
Not that he’d ever been a chatterbox. Ben knew how to enjoy a comfortable silence, but he wasn’t Caius. That man wielded silence like a weapon with the way it charged the air between us. That never happened with Ben, with any man I’d ever been with, come to think of it.
“Maybe there is more than just attraction to the god king.”
“Fuck off, Eres. We’re not his mate. Things can be hot and heated between two people without being tied to fate, you know.”
She huffed in response. I ignored her.
After summing up the end of the story, I had one final addition. “You can go back and tell my dad that, right?”
Nog was taken aback. “Why me? Why not Clara? She’s the traitor trying to get you together.”
“Hey!” Clara protested. “She never said that.”
“Oh yeah, but she clearly thinks it, and I think she’s right. You have shit taste in men. Obviously, you think the Soulless One is hot?—”
“Nog,” I snapped. “I told you not to call him that.”
