Nikator must have mistaken her hesitation—hersilence—as rejection, because she could feel the faint veil of his emotions flicker away for a moment, revealing pain through the bond, before he stonewalled it. The grief was almost too much, and she reached forward to touch his hand, to tell him exactly what she wanted, but his next words—delivered so coldly—stalled her.
“You must leave.”
She must have heard wrong. “What do you meanleave?”
“From my life.” He continued to stare at her, drinking in her image, and there was only a harsh winter’s storm brewing in those sapphire blue eyes. “Far away so I must never see you, think of you, or dream of you. Until the distance and time between us grows so long that I forget what you look like. What you smell like. What you feel like.” He released a ragged breath, and each second between them shattered her already cracked heart. A tear rolled down her cheek and he simply stared at it. “So that our memories together are nothing but ancient musings of my past self. Until even those fade away and I forget all about you.”
She couldn’t breathe as she gaped at him. Pain shredded through her chest, spearing her heart like an arrow, and thentearing it apart with malevolent clawed hands. More tears rolled down her cheeks but she made no sound, no move to wipe them away. Only stared at him, his words echoing in her mind.
He wanted to forget her. To leave her. To never touch her.
“You mean it?” She hated the inflection in her voice—the hopeful swell that was clear that she wanted him to deny it.
He swallowed hard, throat bobbing. The area around his eyes tightened. “I do.”
Her lips parted, but nothing came out.
“Everything we shared?” she managed to whisper after a haunting moment of silence. “You … you wish to forget it all? As if it never existed?”
“You are a mistake I’ve made one too many times.”
A mistake.
The knife in her heart twisted. “Nikator, please?—”
Her half-sob sounded pathetic to even her own ears.
He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of her.
He didn’t want anything to do with her. Maybe she deserved it, maybe she didn’t. All she knew was that her heart couldn’t take the strain anymore. She didn’t want to feel like this anymore. She didn’t want him to hate her as he did.
He thought she was a mistake.
37
Biyu couldn’t trusthis words, or more like she didn’t want to believe them. She pressed her palms over her knees and leaned forward, her unbound hair swishing over her shoulders and trailing over the floor. “Tell me you don’t want me,” she whispered.
His brows furrowed; confusion, she imagined. He’d thought she would simply leave, broken hearted, unable to fathom the weight of his rejection. But she dug her nails into her kneecaps and glared at him.
Nikator opened his mouth to answer—likely to tell her exactly that.
But she beat him to it. “I see the way you look at me,” she whispered. She didn’t know where she got the strength to speak. Poor little Biyu, frightened little Biyu, always scared always anxious Biyu—she was gone. In her place was a different version; a stronger one, forged with the love they shared, with the bond between them. “I see the way you wish you could touch me again. I know it too well; it’s the same way I crave you. The same way I love you. So tell me, Nikator. Tell me you don’t want me. I need you to say it.”
He propped himself up on his elbow, hissing in pain, eyes flashing. “Princess, stop this,” he snarled.
She didn’t understand the rage that rippled through their bond; it vanished just as quickly. Hidden away in those elusive thoughts of his.
“Tell me you don’t want me,” she repeated, louder.
He clenched his jaw, hesitated. “I don’t want you.”
“Liar,” she snapped. “Tell me.”
Another pause. “I don’t want you.”
She clung to his reluctance, the way rage colored his eyes in a brighter shade of sapphire. Like the brightest part of a raging flame. He didn’t like her probing at him like this.
“You lie just as much as I do.” She raised her chin and peered down at him with what she hoped was a look of disdain; her anger was the only thing keeping the seams of her being from unraveling, tearing open and spilling over him. Not that he would care. In this moment, he looked like he wanted to shove a knife through her heart. He wanted to hurt her. Maybe as much as she had hurt him.
