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The click of the door sounded like a boom of thunder, pulling my shoulders tight. I couldn’t sit right now, so I just leaned back on the table. Lukas stayed standing.
His eyes passed over me once, lingering on my white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table. His body went rigid, the way it would when preparing for battle.
He was trained to fight. I just never expected that fighting to occur between us.
Lukas was the first to advance. “What happened, Daphne?”
I couldn’t speak. Not yet. That thread between us snapped tight as Lukas crossed his arms and he bent down in search of my eyes. “If someone threatened you or forced you to—”
I shook my head, cutting him off. I had to get up my defenses before he destroyed them. “I left on my own, Luke.”
Lukas jerked back, the blow landing like a slap to the face. “Then,why?”
I breathed in. “I went looking for you after you didn’t come back that night. I thought there must have been something wrong to keep you away from…” Best not to bring up the specifics. “To make you not come back when you promised. I found you and Zale talking in your office and overheard you say that this whole thing was never your choice.” As I spoke, the memory of how fast my stomach had dropped came back in full force. How embarrassed, how livid I was. “That you didn't want this, didn't wantme, and you were only staying because it was too messy. How you'd take what you could get from me.”
Lukas just stared at me, with a blank expression on his face. He let every word hit him like bullets, doing nothing to stop the assault.
Rage sparked across my shoulders, pulling them tight. “I’m not a fucking consolation prize, Luke. I know neither of us chose this, but that night was more to me than just a happy little surprise.”
Lukas stayed silent, the heaving of his chest the only sign that he was even alive.
He might have been content with it, but the silence burned my skin like hellfire. “Luke, say something.”
Lukas shook his head, but it did nothing to dismiss the bitter look on his face. “I’m just trying to come to terms with the fact that you left me for a fuckingyearover a miscommunication.”
“What?” I pushed off the table. “Are you trying to tell me you didn’t say that?”
“No.” Lukas scoffed. “I said it.”
If he could scoff, so could I.
Lukas took a step closer, crowding me. “Do you even know why I had to leave that night?”
“No.” I held my ground, even though the urge to put space between us was scratching at my back.
“I left because my brother found his way back in here and had stumbled into the party drunk off his ass,” Lukas said, the words hitting like venom. “I had to make sure he was passed out before I could come find you. As for what you heard…”
He cut himself off, taking a deep breath. “I didn’t want thispower. But I’d stayeven though my brother didn’tbecause it was the right thing. But I’d take what I could get, meaningyou.I know how that must have sounded, but I meant you as a whole not—not because of what happened. Because if having this power, meant I could finally give you the status you deserved, could finally be worthy of you, then it would all be worth it.”
“Oh.” He’d just laid waste to my defenses, turning them into a desolate battleground.
Lukas turned, like the sight of me was causing him pain. “Ohis fucking right, Daphne. I can’t believe you didn’t come talk to me.”
My anger spiked again. “It’s not that simple, Lukas! Can you imagine what it was like for me to have to hear that? After everything?”
Lukas looked at me over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “Not too dissimilar to coming back to our room and finding you gone, don’t you think?”
“What would you have done?” I pulled on his shoulder, making him face me.
“I would have burst in that room and made you explain what you meant.” Lukas’s voice was oscillating in volume, like his temper was making it rise but he was forcefully steadying it. “To finally address what was going on between us.”
“That’s easy for you to say now.”
Lukas’s jaw set, his concentration barreling into fighting me back. “Fine. But what I do know, because I did it, is that I waited for you. I looked in every corner of this palaceandSounion. The only reason I didn’t think you were fuckingdeadwas that you took everything important to you. Even then, I couldn’t believe that you would just leave until I went to Adrian, and he told me he knew you were alive.”
Adrian hadn’t told me that.
“I’m sorry, okay! But I wasterrified, Luke. When I heard that, it made it clear—to me,” I clarified when he opened his mouth to protest, “that you'd rather lie than admit you didn't want me. It felt like I didn't even know you. I would havewantedyou in every life. My whole life, it was always about the Athena line not wanting me to lead. And I could deal with that. But you were theonething I couldn’t come back from.”
