“Humans,” I clarified, the word tasting strange. “Your history. What you know of yourselves.”
She drew in a breath and tried to compose herself, folding her hands in her lap. “There isn’t much. We’ve been around for about forty thousand years, give or take. That’s what most of the evidence suggests.”
I let out a sharp, derisive sound that was half-snort, half-laugh. “Forty thousand years?” I repeated, allowing my disbelief to curdle into scorn. “That is the measure of your existence?”
Her jaw tightened. “Yes. That’s the measure we’ve foundso far." She stretched the last two words, glaring at me, daring me to challenge her. "Not all of us live forever, you know. Some of us have to piece things together with the fragments we’re given.”
“Pathetic,” I muttered, shaking my head.
Her eyes flashed with temper. “Look, I’m an archaeologist?—”
“Archeowhat?” I cut in, the syllables clipped, foreign on my tongue.
Her lips pressed into a line, and color rose into her cheeks, almost like my aura spreading and changing. Interesting. And definitely alluring.
“Archaeologist." She repeated, "I study the past. Idig up ruins, bones, and artifacts, and try to understand where we came from. That’s what I do.”
I scoffed at her words. “You don’t even know where you came from?”
Her mouth opened, ready to snap back, but I let my aura spread before she could speak. Gold pulsed once, then bled to red, streaks of black flickering like cracks across the surface. Her eyes darted to it, her pulse stumbling in her throat.
“Forty thousand years,” I repeated, letting the number curl on my tongue like a joke only I understood. “And you lost your history?” Her shoulders tightened, but she didn’t look away. “Arkhevari have battled across Nox Eternum for eons uncounted. We have carved our story into the marrow of creation. And you—” I leaned closer, allowed my voice to drop to a hiss, “you scrape fragments from the ground and try topiece togetherwhat little you remember, as though forty thousand years were not the blink of an eye.”
Her jaw worked, her lips pressed tight, but her eyes burned hotter.
I scoffed again, pushed myself off the wall to circle where she sat, forcing her to turn her head to follow my movement until her breath hitched. “You do not even know where you came from. Your beginning is dust; your history scattered like bones in the dirt. I stopped just behind her, close enough that I felt the tremor in her frame. “Pathetic.”
And yet—damn me—the fire thatwas sparking in her blood, the way her hands curled into fists instead of yielding, stirred something in me I could not ignore.
“Interesting,” I murmured, half to myself. “Your kind claws through dirt like vermin, searching for scraps, and still, you know nothing of your own beginning. You dig bones from the soil, chase shadows of truth, and call it wisdom.”
Her spine straightened, her chin lifted in defiance, though I caught the flicker of unease in her eyes. Fragile. Infuriating. Intriguing.
The firepit hissed behind me, the blue flames guttering as though echoing my mood. “And still,” I kept going, letting the word hang heavy, “you stand before me, my Aelyth, while a thousand greater races have burned to ash.”
My aura flared again, gold, red, black, twisting in the air between us like a storm barely leashed.
The Veythari reappeared, gliding forward with a silver tray balanced easily in his long hands. A crystal vessel of water rested upon it, droplets sliding down the sides like condensation on ice.
“Praetor,” the servant murmured, bowing low.
I gave a curt nod, and he crossed the chamber to set the glass within Ella’s reach. She hesitated only a moment before snatching it up, her throat working as she drank deep. Her shoulders eased, but the defiance in her gaze didn’t dim. If anything, it sharpened. She set the glass down hard enough that it rang against the table, then turned that fire on me. “So what makes you sogreat?” she demanded, her voice raw with fury. “Who are you to lecture me? To sneer at my people like we’re dirt beneath your boots? You’re the one living in a black hole, fighting monsters in the dark. That doesn’t make you a god. It just makes you trapped.”
The words lashed at me, hotter than her earlier outburst, sharper than her fear. I felt my aura pulse in answer, the colors twisting tighter around me. Rage. Amusement. Something dangerously close to admiration.
This fragile creature—this mortal with her broken world and her pitiful history—dared to look me in the eye and call me less than I was.
And damn me, a part of me wanted to laugh.
Another part wanted to crush her.
Both parts wanted her closer.
Okay,maybe antagonizing a being who could snap me in half with two fingers wasn’t my best move. Whatever he was—god, demon, angel, alien—pissing him off seemed like a fast track to an early grave.
But damn if he didn’t get under my skin.
Forty thousand years is nothing, he’d said.Nothing. My jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth might crack. Who the hell did he think he was?
