“Ilovedyou. I should hate you in this moment, Biyu. I should hate that you betrayed me. That your revenge was more important than what we had. That you lied to me the entire time. I should resent you for it all, but you know what I feel?” For once, he let down his guard, his face no longer shuttered. She could see the heartbreak written all over him. The sadness reflected in his eyes, the way his shoulders were pulled taut, his wavering voice. “I feel like you’ve stabbed me through the heart. I feel rage like I’ve never felt before. I feel … like a fool.”
She could feel it all through the bond. The pain. The bitterness. The fury.
He’dlovedher.
The admission made her want to break down into tears all over again, because it was past tense. He didn’t love her anymore. But also … he had loved her? When they were together—he loved her? In those moments, there was love between them? It shocked her down to her core that he was capable of feeling that way toward her. But then the moment shattered as she realized she had ruined it all.
“Nikator,” she said, blinking away the tears. “You can feel my emotions through the bond, can’t you? Can’t you feel my sadness? My regret?”
“Over getting caught?” He shook his head. “Princess, of course you’re angry and sad that I’ve caught you.”
“No, that’s not why.” She hated that he refused to believe her, and yet she could understand it too. She hadn’t built a foundation of trust and truth between them; instead, it was all a lie. “Use your magic and see into my mind. Isn’t that what you do to your victims? You take a peek?—”
He reeled back like she had slapped him. “I don’t use that on people I care about.”
“Why not?”
“It’s invasive. It’s … a method of torture.”
“I don’t mind. You can look into my mind. You can see that I’m telling the truth.”
He turned his face away, exhaling deeply. “I can’t, princess.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Only stared at the distance, schooling his expression, and when he looked back at her, she could hardly see the pain and grief. She only saw a man carved with indifference. “Because I am afraid of what I’ll find.”
“Nikator! If you just?—”
“I would rather never know the truth,” he said quietly.
Out of all the things he could have said, that was the last she’d expected from him. He was a ruthless warrior, a blade forged with violence and rage, a man of steel—and yet he was afraid of what was in her mind. What she thought of him. What she’d been planning with him.
It broke something in her to know that she’d had a deeper connection with him than she had thought, and it also frustrated her that he didn’t want to see into her mind and seek out thetruth—that she loved him. That she hadn’t wanted to hurt him. That what they had was real.
Tears of frustration threatened to spill and she bunched her hands over the front of his tunic. “No, you can’t—you can’t do that. That’s not fair! You’re not even giving me a chance to explain myself. Nikator, I?—”
“What does it matter anymore?” He stared down at her coldly.
“It matters to me!” Her hands trembled on him and she wanted to scream, to shout, to cry loudly, to make him understand, but she stopped herself from doing anything reckless. “I want you to know that we had something special!”
He scoffed. “Howspecialis it if you were willing to throw it away so easily?”
“You don’t get to act like that when you’re planning on killing me!”
His lips curled into a snarl. “I’m not going to kill you.”
“You practically are! You’re going to hand me over to the emperor. You’re not stupid; you know what he’ll do to me!”
“And what will he do to you that’s different than what you did last week?”
Biyu flinched back, stumbling away from him—as if the distance could free her from the accusations. It wasn’t fair for him to fling those kinds of charges at her—even if they were true; but they hurt more because he seemed so detached. Like he truly didn’t care what would happen to her once he tossed her to Drakkon Muyang. If he had any love toward her, wouldn’t he have wanted the best for her? At the very least, he wouldn’t have wanted her dead.
Maybe she was hypocritical to think that way. To think that he should care about what happened to her after she’d betrayed him. After she’d broken his heart and ruined their relationship.
“How many ways am I supposed to say I’m sorry?” Her voice came out shrill and she choked on the last few words. Her quaking hands bent into fists and she wanted to hit something. Normally, heated conversations like this made her brain freeze and fog up, but something darker fueled her as she shot back, “I understand that I did something wrong, Nikator, but you’re going to kill me by sending me to him! You don’t think that’s messed up? Everything I did was for my own survival! I was wrong, I admit, but I never once wanted to hurt you and I would never think tokillyou!”
“That’s funny considering how your plan put my life at risk!” he growled. Each word struck her like a whip. “What if any of those assassins had been more skilled than me? What if more of them had teamed up against me? Did you even think about that?” He stepped dangerously close and captured her chin with one calloused hand. He tilted her face up and murmured quietly, with a hint of sadness, “Would you have even cared?”
