The nymphs converged on us. One was ahead of the others. “Need. Greed. Bleed,” it seethed, leaping.
Stepping forward, I swung the sword straight across as it landed, sweeping the blade through the nymph’s neck. As the creature broke apart, I spun, catching a second nymph. It too exploded.
Two crossed the road at once. “Hate,” one rasped.
“Fate,” another gurgled.
I twisted, kicking the first nymph in the knee. The creature’s leg cracked, splitting up the center. “Ew,” I whispered, driving the sword through the other’s neck and then the first’s as it hobbled toward me.
Glancing at the other side of the road, I saw Nektas methodically cutting through the nymphs. My head whipped as I darted to the side, narrowly avoiding a nymph’s claws.
“Dead. Bled. Red.” The nymph whirled.
“Do they always talk like this?” I yelled as I drew the blade across its neck. There appeared only to be a few left.
Nektas tossed a nymph as he slammed his sword through another. “If you consider rhyming nonsense to be talking, yes.”
The hum of embers in my chest was a whisper in my blood as I swung. A dry hand clawed at the air, inches from my face as I spun. Cursing, I jerked back and turned, thrusting the sword back. The blade struck the nymph’s chest. Dust puffed out, shimmery and thick. I drew the sword up, across its neck—
A horse neighed nervously, causing my heart to plummet. A nymph rushed the horses. “Fear is my spear,” it hissed. “Pain is your gain.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.” I shot after the nymph. “Oh, no, you don’t. You are not going to touch them.”
I clasped the nymph’s shoulder, the skin rough and dry beneath mine, just as it swiped out at Gala. I knew I wouldn’t be fast enough with the sword. The nymph would get its claws in the horse. Fury entrenched itself deep, stirring up the embers. Several things happened at once.
The embers vibrated wildly in my chest, heat flooded my veins, and silvery-white light crowded the corners of my vision as power built, ramping up inside me and charging the air. I gasped as eather sparked across my hand. I jerked back, but it was too late. The essence flowed over the nymph and seeped through the husk of its flesh. Light filled all the hundreds of tiny cracks all over its body, lighting it up from the inside and then from the outside. Eather poured from its open mouth and eyes.
The nymph exploded.
A wave of power blew back, so intense the burst of eather knocked me on my ass when it rolled into me.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, lifting the sword as a shadow fell over me. Nektas stared down at me. “I thought you said eather didn’t do anything to them?”
“It shouldn’t,” he said. “Only the Primal of Life can wield the kind of eather that can kill a nymph.” Nektas jerked his hood back. “It’s the same kind of power that can kill another Primal.”
Nektas said very little the remainder of the journey back to the palace, and that left me a bit uneasy.
I wasn’t a Primal, so I couldn’t understand how I could have the kind of eather in me that could kill another Primal. Or how the embers could be that strong.
And I had hit Nyktos with that eather. I could’ve…
Gods, I couldn’t even let myself finish that line of thought—a sure indicator of how much I’d changed. What I needed to do was work on controlling the embers until Nyktos removed them.
After giving Gala a quick brush down and some alfalfa, I parted ways with Nektas as I entered the palace, promising to go straight to Nyktos. Nektas left to return to Jadis, who was in the mountains I’d yet to see.
Figuring Nyktos must be in his office, I headed there and entered the hall. Within a few seconds, I grinned at the sensation of the embers wiggling in my chest. I stepped into the alcove, noting that the door was ajar as I pushed one side open—
I stopped, his name shriveling and dying on my lips before it could even become a whisper. I couldn’t understand what I saw. It was as if my mind couldn’t process what my eyes were telling me.
That it was Nyktos seated on the settee, one hand lax on the cushion beside him, the other clenching the arm in a white-knuckled grip. His body taut, head thrust back, and eyes closed, the striking lines of his face tense, and his skin paler than it should be.
Or that he wasn’t alone.
Nowhere close to that.
Someone was in his lap. A female—a thin, willowy female wearing a shimmery, violet gown was in his lap. Straddling him. Golden-blond ringlets fell against his chest and shielded her face as she clutched his shoulders, pale fingers digging into the dark shirt—as she moved against him. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew who it was.
Veses.
The Primal of Rites and Prosperity was in Nyktos’s lap. Touching him. Riding him. Feeding from his throat.
Chapter 29
My heart sped up and then slowed as my body flashed hot before turning icy. I felt utterly nothing as I stood there, staring at Nyktos. At Veses. At them. I tried to make sense of what I was seeing—why he was with anyone, let alone her, the one he’d called the worst sort.
It didn’t make sense.
It couldn’t.
Maybe I’d hit my head fighting the nymphs and was hallucinating because that seemed more plausible than this. Than her feeding from Nyktos. Than them together.
Because I’d told him that I wanted to be his Consort.
He’d called me liessa—someone he found beautiful. Someone he found powerful.
Someone who would become his Queen.
Then she moaned, the sound husky and sensual. The arm of the settee creaked under Nyktos’s tightening grasp, and the noise—the sounds—knocked me out of the shocked numbness.
My mind. My body. Every part of me processed what I was seeing. Emotions came in a rising tide, swamping me, and they were intense and sudden as Nyktos’s head jerked sluggishly. I shuddered under the hot, stifling weight of…of hurt. Raw, tangy agony drenched every pore. Suffocating, crushing hurt carved through muscles and bone. The crack in my chest shook as my skin prickled with heat.
With something else.
Veses’ golden head lifted at the sound of air wheezing from my parted lips. Two deep, angry puncture wounds marred the side of Nyktos’s throat. Thick, shiny hair slid back over one slender shoulder as the Primal looked at me. The pouty, blood-red mouth stood out grotesquely against the delicateness of her beauty. Surprise flickered over her features, then luminous silver eyes widened and then locked with mine as her pink tongue darted over her lower lip. She licked at the blood there. Nyktos’s blood.
Bitter bile crowded my throat. I choked on it, still rooted in place, unable to move as Veses looked me over. Sized me up. The twist of her lip told me she found what she saw lacking, and, gods, I felt that all the way to the bone as I stared at her. At them. Two beautiful, powerful Primals. Together.
Veses’ eyebrow rose. That scathing curl transformed into a painfully beautiful smile. “So, this is her?” she asked, speaking in that throaty voice I remembered before she giggled.
Nyktos’s head turned slowly. His eyes fluttered open, and that—that was all I could take.
There was no thought behind my actions. It was instinct. I stumbled back a step, bumping into the door. Heart thumping once more, I spun around.