“What are you doing?” she mumbled, not disliking the action.
“Holding you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t wish for you to be angry at me.”
“And you think that holding me will absolve my anger?”
He thought about it for a moment, and she frowned. “I’m not that easy to please,” she said.
“How about we make a deal?”
Her curiosity piqued and she tilted her face up to stare at him. “What kind of deal?”
“Since I can’t tell you the details about my mission, how about you ask any other question you want and I’ll tell you the answer? Anything you’re curious about—ask away.”
There were several things she was interested in knowing—the Peccata, for one; how he had met His Majesty; why he was so loyal to him; how he had grown up, and various others. But she felt those were too personal to ask. It would breach a corner of vulnerability that she wasn’t sure she wanted to tread into—especially considering how she was going to betray him. It would only hurt more.
She traced the burn scar spanning over his chest. He watched her with a hint of curiosity and something more—amusement, perhaps?
Biyu tapped the scarring. “How did you receive this scar?”
Nikator’s body went completely still and he stared at her strangely. She felt like she had asked the wrong question, but she couldn’t understand why. She shifted in his lap, turning to look at him better.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Forget I asked.”
His stare intensified. Something flickered over his eyes and she couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. Finally, he said, “You must still be very angry at me, because why else would you ask that?”
Maybe he had a traumatic experience with the scar which was why he felt so offended by her question? She wasn’t even sure if offended was the right word to describe the way he was looking at her, equal parts bewildered and uncertain. She wasn’t even sure what to say at this point; he had said that she could ask anything.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to probe. I just figured …” She struggled to come up with what to say, especially with the awkwardness filling the space between them. She had made a mistake and she didn’t know how to fix it. “That maybe it would be worth asking. I was just curious. I’m sorry if it’s a touchy subject.”
Nikator canted his head. In the darkness of the room, the shadows played across his face in a way that it was hard to read what he was thinking. His words came out slowly, deliberately. “You don’t remember? You gave me these scars, Biyu.”
The air knocked out of her and she froze as those words echoed in her mind. “W-what?”
“You burned me. On the day the throne was usurped.”
Her gaze tracked over the raised ridges, the darkened reddish-skin of the scar, the painful splotches where the burns had been more intense. Nausea curdled in her belly and her hands trembled.Shehad done that to him? The scar stretched over most of his chest. How badly had it hurt?
Suddenly, it was rushing back to her. The feel of her magic warming her hands. The way he had approached her, his words, and then … a sea of purple flames between them both.
Shehad hurt him.
Her head pounded, blood rushing to her ears and face, hot and overwhelming. Her horror grew more and more, until she was weighed down with the grief of it. She had burned himhorrifically.
“Oh, no,no,” she cried, wide eyes flicking from him to the scars and back again. “Nikator, I—I had no idea. I—I did that to you? No.No. Please tell me it’s not true.Please.”
She couldn’t bear the thought that she had caused him this pain. That she had scarred him this badly. That she had caused so much irreparable damage to him.
She had called him a monster all this time, but he hadn’t hurt her like she had hurt him. Who was really the monster, then? How could she have thought he was a monster, that he was so terrible, when she had inflicted pain on him like this? When she hadscarredhis body?
Nikator grasped her chin gently and tilted her head up. “You really don’t remember?” His thumbs swiped over the hot tears rolling down her cheeks. The sharp blue of his eyes—appearing almost violet in the dim light—softened. “It’s all right, princess. It was a long time ago.”
“But I—” Her face crumpled. She closed her eyes, wetness tracking down her cheeks. She shouldn’t have been crying when she wasn’t even the victim. “How could you bear to look at me,knowing I did that to you? And it doesn’t matter that it was a long time ago; Ihurtyou.”
It changed everything; knowing that she was the one who had caused him pain all those years ago. He had haunted her memories for five years since the throne was usurped, and she had thought that he only saw her as an eyesore because she was the previous emperor’s daughter. But now she could see the truth. She had badly wounded him, and he hadn’t killed her for it. Surprisingly, Drakkon Muyang hadn’t executed her either.
