“What do you mean he rewired your brain?” Nikolett’s gaze hardened, and she was back to being a dangerous empress. “Eric, did he hurt you?”
Her clear willingness to do unspeakable things to someone who’d hurt him was simultaneously sexy and heartwarming.
“No. Well. Making me talk about my feelings hurt.”
Nikolett snorted.
“But without him, I wouldn’t have figured out Zombie Nikolett.”
She blinked. Blinked again.
“Eric, if I die, please don’t fuck my corpse.”
“What? No! I have a lot of kinks but that’s not one of them.”
He didn’t miss her inhale at the word kinks.
He really, really wanted to follow that thread. To start listing kinks while watching her face so he could catalogue which ones they shared. Once he had internet access, he’d get a checklist for them to go over.
But that was the easy path, and she deserved more. She deserved the version of him brave enough to face, and explain, his own demons.
“You know my first trinity, my wives, died.”
Her expression shifted to wary and she nodded.
“They died. I survived. It was my duty to protect them—my wives, both as a knight and as their husband. For Josephine, as her brother and as the fleet admiral.”
He watched Nikolett swallow her comment or protest, and instead remain quiet so he could keep talking.
“Therapy helped me understand that every time I thought about the people I loved who died, I was reliving it. Not remembering it.”
Eric wished he could remember all the technical pieces of it that Elijah had explained, but he couldn’t. And though interesting, they didn’t really matter.
“He helped me rewire my brain so they became memories, not trauma I was reliving.”
Nikolett’s expression had softened into surprise.
“I had no real present, and no future, because how I thought about my past poisoned everything.” Eric met and held her gaze. “I was scared to love you. I was a coward, just as you said.”
Nikolett’s lower lip trembled as the muscles at the corner of her mouth fluttered. She was going to cry. He didn’t know if that was a bad sign or a good sign.
“I had nightmares of finding you dead. Not just dead but murdered. Tortured.”
For a horrible moment, he saw an overlay of her mutilated corpse atop the very real, very live version of her.
“I imagined you died hoping, believing I’d find you in time. I’d save you. But I didn’t. I failed you the same way I failed everyone else.”
“Eric, it’s not your responsibility?—”
She cut herself off when he laughed softly, the sound carrying the darkness of his thoughts, but not fully weighted down by them.
“This is where Zombie Nikolett comes into play.”
Her expression shifted from the verge of tears to suspicion, and his grin widened.
“I realize how fucking pissed you would be if I blamed myself for your death.”
Nikolett’s eyes widened with surprise, and then a considering look marked her face before she nodded once in agreement.
