“This is all your fault,” I snapped, yanking my hand away. “Everything.”
And it was, wasn’t it? He had distracted me. He was always distracting me. From what I needed to do. From who I needed to be. Throwing me off my rightful course until I ended up lost and alone. Just by existing. By making me feel. By making me care for him, despite knowing I shouldn’t.
Why couldn’t he have stayed conveniently dead? Or at least far, far away?
Bewilderment crossed Noctis’s face at the sudden change in my mood. “Believe me, if I had known someone would follow me here,I would never have sought you out,” he defended himself. “There was no evidence that Tharion had informed the rest of the Chiasma about my survival. I believe Vultaron looked for him when he didn’t come back and eventually discovered the truth.” Something flickered in his gaze. “You being injured was the last thing I wanted.”
All so very reasonable, although it did not explain how the Chiasma had found him here, or how he and Tharion had stumbled upon each other in the first place. Not that I was all that interested to find out what kind of evil schemes he was no doubt already entangled in once more.
A bitter laugh escaped me. “It’s not surprising, is it? After all, getting me hurt in your ill-advised attempts to make the world bend to your will is nothing new.”
The venom in my voice astonished me. Some dark and malicious beast had awakened inside me, clawing and biting to break free. To hurt him as he had hurt me so many times before. And my leash on it was finally slipping.
Noctis’s eyes blazed with a fierce answering anger. “It wasn’t me who dragged you into this mess,” he growled, his voice low and dangerous. “Left completely alone and defenseless on a desolate farm in the middle of nowhere.” As he leaned over the table, his features contorted with seething rage. “If I did not already wish Aramaz dead for his countless transgressions, I assure you, I would kill him for endangering you alone.”
I held his furious gaze, refusing to back down. “That is not your concern.”
“Not my concern?” He stood abruptly, the chair screeching against the floor. “The fool could have gotten you killed,” he raged, pacing. “How could he put you in such danger?”
“I betrayed him.” My answer was calm. Shying away fromuncomfortable truths helped no one. “I broke the oaths I swore to him and the Light.”
My frank admission made Noctis pause. “Perhaps,” he conceded, shaking his head. “But you upheld those oaths for millennia.”
“I broke some of them the very night I made them, as you well know.”
Reminding us both of the pleasant memories between us might have been even more reckless than reviving the painful ones, I realized, as Noctis’s demeanor changed entirely. His mouth lifted into a roguish smile, and he moved with predatory grace as he made his way back to the table.
“Not that it matters,” I quickly added, before he could dredge up any details of that night so many ages ago. It was enough that I remembered it all too well: his firm hands divesting me of my wedding gown, his lips fervently claiming mine, our half-hearted protests dissolving into desperate kisses, all restraint consumed by the fire of our passion. “In the end, I also betrayed you. A failure even as a traitor.”
Noctis leaned over the table, his hands splayed on the wood. “Yes, you are a devious woman,” he said, catching my chin between his thumb and index finger in such a lightning-quick movement that I could not escape. “I always found that to be one of your most captivating attributes.” My heartbeat quickened as he tilted my face upward, his thumb trailing to the corner of my mouth in a gesture that was both tender and possessive. “Among a few other things.”
The heat curling inside my belly was as familiar as it was unwelcome. It had been years since someone had touched me like this. Since someone had looked at me like Noctis was looking at me now. As if he wanted to devour me whole, only a thin thread of control keeping him back, a thread oh so close to breaking.
“You are feeling better,” I remarked. I should have noticed earlier, when he had shown no sign of weariness while caring for me.
White teeth flashed, his eyes glittering. “The magic helped.”
He didn’t mean the healing magic of my Water stone. No, what had revived him was the Chaos magic he had channeled outside. Chaos was his element, always would be.
The hands that had touched me so reverently were responsible for the near destruction of all of Aron-Lyr. For the deaths of thousands. Did he ever feel remorse for his crimes? Did he even understand the meaning of the word?
His thumb brushed lightly over my bottom lip, sending a shiver through me. Desire flared within me, wild and uncontrollable, and I couldn’t suppress a gasp.
I shouldn’t yearn for him.
But I did.Lyrsave me, I did.
His dark eyes pulled me into their fathomless depths, the space between us seeming insignificantly small suddenly.
“Do you remember when you tried to rip out my heart with your bare hands?” Noctis asked, his smile deepening as if he were recalling a cherished memory rather than a night steeped in blood and despair. His face was so close that I could feel his breath on my skin.
My hand on his chest, sharp claws sunk deep into his flesh. Blood streaming over the pale planes of his body with every fluttering beat of the heart I could feel pulsing against my fingertips. Even more blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as he took a shaky breath. I must have pierced his lung.
“Do it.” His wild, desperate eyes never left mine as he forced out the words. “Free this world. Free us both.”
Our minds collided in a tempest of fury and grief, a dark abyss that threatened to consume us both.
“I’d rather it be you than anyone else.”
