Extraits

I was stunned speechless.

Then Nyktos turned.

“Let me down!” I screamed, my braid slipping forward and smacking the side of my face.

“Nope.”

“Put me down!” I went to kick my legs, but his other arm folded over the backs of my knees, trapping them. “Nyktos, I swear to the gods—”

“You shouldn’t swear to the gods. It’s blasphemous.”

“The next time you put a dagger to anyone’s throat,” he said, his breath coasting over my cheek as he guided Odin toward the palace, “you’d better mean it.”

I stiffened. “Even if it’s yours?”

Nyktos’s arm folded over my waist, tugging me against his chest. “Especially if it’s mine.”

“You’re naked,” I whispered.

“Does that bother you?” Nektas asked.

“Maybe?”

Nyktos turned his head to me. “Perhaps you shouldn’t continue staring then.”

“How can I not?” I mumbled.

Nektas smirked as he waved a hand. There was a brief, faint burst of light, and then only his upper body was exposed. Loose, linen pants covered the rest. “Better?”

“I guess…” I blinked. Was I hallucinating?

“I wasn’t asking you.” Nektas turned a pointed stare on Nyktos.

“Fuck your rules,” I spat, tremors skating through me.

“And my sanity right along with them,” he bit out.

“I would if I were you, so—wait. Can you even hate since you can’t love?”

“Hate and love are not two sides of the same coin. One comes from the soul, and the other from the mind,” he said. “Hate is a product of atrocities committed against someone or is birthed from what they have done to themselves and their hellish entitlements. There couldn’t be two more different emotions.”

Despite the temperature of the room returning to normal, a chill broke out across my skin as I thought of what could come. “What will happen if Kolis enters the Shadowlands?”

“Kolis can be unpredictable, but he’s no fool,” Nyktos said. “If he can enter the Shadowlands and comes to the coronation, he won’t try something in front of the other Primals and gods. He believes he’s the fair and rightful King of Gods, and he likes to keep up the façade, even though the Primals know better.”

“But if he—” I started.

“I won’t let him lay a finger on you,” Nyktos swore, his eyes flashing.

A messy knot of emotion seeped out, full of fear, need, shame, loneliness, sorrow, and a thousand other things I’d never been allowed to feel. Slices carved from me by all the times I’d been excluded by my family, treated like an unwanted guest, and seen as nothing more than a curse. Wounds made by my mother’s disappointment left to fester each time she looked at me as if she wished she never had to do so again. I was just a vessel full of deep scars left behind from the first life I’d taken and all the times after that, leaving the wrong kind of mark behind. I was nothing more than bruises on a blank canvas because I didn’t feel it. I didn’t mourn those losses. I didn’t care because no one else cared beyond what I could do for them. 

It would’ve been wise of me to show some fear. Unfortunately, I wasn’t wise often enough.