More than one curse escaped me as I dragged him to my bedroom.Noctis had clearly not eaten a decent meal in a long time, but he was still a lot taller than me, and heavy.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” I said, hauling his upper body onto my bed, none too gently. His legs followed after I yanked off his black leather boots and hurled them to the floor with a thud. “Stripped of your magic. And whatever sorry excuse for a soul you once possessed.”
In theory, his soul should have been obliterated by the Abyss, the void he was cast into as punishment. I should know; I had been one of those who judged him, the last time I sat on the golden throne beside my husband Aramaz, the King of Aron-Lyr, the powers of the Allfather flowing through me in divine grace.
Ten years ago.
“I wonder how you survived.” I laughed bitterly. “Truly the most cunning among us, aren’t you?”
My voice had grown faint, the words only reopening my own old wounds. Wounds I had thought scabbed over, if not healed. It seemed the scars still hurt fiercely enough.
I mourned you,I wanted to rage at him.Against all reason, I mourned you. For the second time.Or was it the third? It was hard to keep count.
And now he dared to knock on my door as if nothing had happened? As if it hadn’t been years?
Noctis did not wake up, leaving my burning anger with nowhere to go, churning uselessly inside me.
I should kill him. It would be justice. My hand carrying out the sentence the Ten had pronounced, delivering him to the fate he had somehow escaped. I might be in exile—a traitor to my husband and the Light—but I knew my duty all too well.
Thunder growled outside, each strike of lightning throwing the achingly familiar lines of Noctis’s face into stark relief. The storm was raging directly over the farm.
And in my heart.
Against my will, I leaned closer, my fingers ghosting over his cheek, the roughness of stubble unfamiliar beneath my touch.
So fragile. So disconcertingly Human.
How easy it would be to fetch my spear and end this. One swift, determined thrust to avenge the deaths of thousands of innocents.
Another groan escaped Noctis, his head falling back on my pillow, the pale arc of his throat taunting me with its vulnerability. What had happened to him? How long had he tried to find help, wounded and alone?
I straightened and moved toward the bedroom door. The world had seen enough death. I refused to taint my hands by taking the life of someone who couldn’t defend themselves. Not even the life of the former God of Darkness and Chaos.
Pausing in the doorway, I took one last look at him, sprawled on my bed. Without a healer, it was doubtful he would see another sunrise. Perhaps this was my penance, a burden I would carry for the rest of my mortal days. Our destinies had always been intertwined. It felt inevitable that I would be the one to witness his end.
The door clicked shut.
CHAPTER
2
Rada
Noctis didn’t grant me the mercy of passing away peacefully.
I tried to busy myself with scrubbing away the water and bloodstains from his entrance into my house. The haunting groans from my bedroom competed with the raging storm outside. Each moan sent a jolt through my heart, my hands tightening around the cleaning rag. Undeterred, I scrubbed with renewed determination.
Was that my name amid Noctis’s groaning? My flimsy pretense of indifference cracked like a thin coating of ice on a shallow puddle. Bucket in hand, I fled into the kitchen. Casting an exasperated glance at Bane, who was perched on the counter, I rinsed out my soiled rag.
“I won’t help him,” I told the cat. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think the bastard was doing this on purpose to torment me.”
Bane tilted his furry head, his amber gaze unwavering. My eyes flicked toward the corridor leading to my bedroom.
“I’m just having a look,” I said, dropping the rag into the water-filled bucket with a splash and moving around the counter. “This doesn’t mean I’m helping him.”
The cat’s fluffy black tail twitched with condescending amusement.
Stepping inside my bedroom felt both like a relief and the acceptance of defeat.
