Atrius shifted weakly. He lifted his head, grunted a wordless sound. One hand found its way to my arm—rested there for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure what he was feeling.
His eyes opened, awareness returning to him just as mine slipped away.
His fingers tightened, and with that pressure, the reality of our relationship crashed down around me.
I had betrayed him. He would kill me for it. Any king would do the same.
These truths took root in my heart.
Perhaps I hallucinated the way he said my name.
I opened my mouth to speak as Atrius sat up, but darkness took me before the words could come. They’d be useless, anyway.
48
I awoke in my room once again.
I recognized the location immediately. While before I had known it by its innate familiarity, now I knew it by an indescribable difference—every one of those familiar smells and sensations just a little changed, like the light had shifted in some inexplicable way.
I lay there, not moving. At first, I thought that the last day—had it been only a day? How long had it been?—had been a dream. Surely I had dreamed of betrayals and confessions and broken curses and goddesses—goddesses—standing right before me.
But my hand lifted and touched my cheek, my finger tracing the path a goddess had touched. The skin felt so deceptively normal. And yet… not normal at all.
The threads were tangled, my grip on them awkward. I sat up, re-establishing my hold—
—And came face-to-face with the conqueror.
He was lounging in the armchair in the corner, one heel propped up on the coffee table, a mirror of his pose the first time I had woken up in his presence, months and a lifetime ago. In his hands was a dagger.
The dagger.
“I was starting to think,” he said, “that you wouldn’t ever wake up.”
He looked at the blade, casually twirling it from one hand to the other, not at me.
He would execute me with it. I was sure of it.
“I’m a bit surprised I did,” I said, and if Atrius understood the implication of that sentence, he didn’t react to it at all.
He didn’t say anything at first, still examining the dagger, eyes lowered. I could not help but drink him in—the presence of him that had grown so intimately familiar to me. How could the man who was about to kill me feel so comforting? Why did I want to press his threads to my soul, deep enough I’d take their memory with me when I went?
I traced my awareness over the planes of his lowered, serious face, the tendrils of his hair—the ridged darkness of his horns, on perfect display with the angle.
“You still have those,” I said. “Even though the curse is gone.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “She couldn’t be too kind, apparently.”
No, no one could say that Nyaxia was too kind. But then, no one could say it for any of the gods, I supposed. I had the distinct feeling that the only reason Acaeja had declined to take my head as repayment for the Sightmother’s was, somehow, entirely selfish, even if I didn’t understand why.
Useful, she had called me.
He picked up the blade again, turned it slowly between his fingertips. “So. This was the weapon that was intended to kill me.”
My jaw tightened.
I was prepared for this, I told myself.
I inclined my chin. “Yes.”
I wouldn’t lie. Not anymore.
“I recognize it. You traveled with it for hundreds of miles.”
“Yes.”
“It’s nothing special to look at. But when I wielded it, I could tell that it was magically enhanced.” He flipped it in one smooth movement, grabbing it by the hilt. “Well made. Deadly. Which was fortunate.”
Deadly enough to take off the Sightmother’s head with just a few strokes. Fortunate indeed.
“The Arachessen take their jobs seriously,” I said. “It had to be good enough to kill quickly.”
“Kill a vampire warrior quickly.”
I was prepared for this, I told myself.
I knew it was going to hurt.
I blinked behind my blindfold, ignoring the faint prickling. “Yes.”
I wouldn’t defend myself. Wouldn’t explain. What could I say to him? He had already seen the truth.
From the moment I had disobeyed the Sightmother’s orders, I was ready to die for it. I preferred that it would be by his hand.
He stood up, and I did the same, bracing against a wave of dizziness that greeted me with the movement.
His brow rose, looking me up and down, and I answered his unasked question with, “I prefer to meet death standing up.”