Total pages in book: 248
Estimated words: 236909 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1185(@200wpm)___ 948(@250wpm)___ 790(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236909 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1185(@200wpm)___ 948(@250wpm)___ 790(@300wpm)
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.
Veses laughed.
And that blade-sharp laugh followed me as I walked from the office. It clung to my skin because I’d never felt so naïve, so foolish. That laugh stayed with me as the crack in my chest shuddered violently. But it was Nyktos’s words that haunted me as I broke into a run.
She’s very important to me.
I ran blindly, my throat constricting.
You are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.
I threw open the door as the embers in my chest pulsated, joining the throbbing agony.
You were never a ghost to me.
Some unknown need drove me down the narrow, musty stairwell.
Liessa.
My boots slipped on the steps. I went down on my ass, the flare of dull pain nothing compared to the sorrow crushing me from the inside. I’d never felt anything like it before as I scrambled to my feet and kept going. Not even when my family left for the country estates, and I had been too young to understand why they’d left me behind. Not even the stinging slap my mother delivered the night of my seventeenth birthday had hurt this badly. Wasn’t as deep. Didn’t steal every too-short breath.