“Oh, I’m sorry,” I shot back, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Forty thousand years of clawing our way out of caves, building cities, surviving plagues, inventing fire, art, music, medicine—learning to fly, for God’s sake—just doesn’t count? We’ve been through hell and back in theblink of an eye, and you think it’spathetic? Yeah, well, I’d love to see how your people would’ve handled an ice age or the Black Death with nothing but sharp rocks and opposable thumbs.”
I could have gone on—oh, Iwantedto go on—but his expression shifted.
Almost pity. Almost condescension.
“You misunderstand,” he said, in a steady tone, the kind of voice that vibrated in my bones. “Your kind has crawled through shadows, yes. But it was the Arkhevari who lit the stars you looked up at. We seeded the worlds. Populated the void. The echoes of us are in every empire you’ve ever dreamed of.”
My throat went dry. Whatever sarcastic retort I’d had lined up shriveled before it could leave my tongue.Populated the universe? Lit the stars?
I stared at him, suddenly very aware of just how far out of my depth I was.
He must have seen it in my face, because his mouth curved into something not quite a smile. “Enough for tonight. You need rest.”
The words hit me like a bucket of cold water. Rest. Like he was tucking me in. Like I was a child who had thrown a tantrum and now needed a bed.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. “I don’t need you telling me when to?—”
“Yes, you do,” he cut in, final, absolute.
I opened my mouth to argue, but he was already moving, his long stride forcing me to scramble to keep up or be left alone in this ginormous palace of his.
“Come,” he ordered, not even glancing back.
The halls curved in impossible ways, archways that seemed to ripple like liquid before solidifying again, wallsalive with faint veins of light that pulsed in time with a heartbeat I couldn’t hear. The air smelled faintly metallic, threaded with spice I couldn’t name. He stopped before a tall door etched with shifting sigils, their lines sliding across the surface like constellations rearranging themselves. With a brush of his hand, the symbols flared gold, and the door peeled open without a sound.
My jaw nearly dropped.
The chamber inside was bigger than my old apartment building, the ceiling so high it disappeared into darkness. A bed dominated the center—if you could call it a bed. It floated a few feet off the ground, its surface glowing faintly, draped in something that shimmered like woven starlight. Around it, translucent curtains hung from nothing, drifting like mist but holding shape, iridescent colors flickering through them as if they were alive.
Instead of lamps, hovering globes of liquid light drifted lazily through the space, rising and falling as if breathing. A low table stretched along one wall, carved from something that looked like obsidian and set with vessels that gleamed like molten crystal.
And the floor… the floor was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Black glass that reflected the whole room back at me, broken by swirls of gold that moved like ink in water, curling with every step I took.
“This will do,” Zapharos said flatly, as though he’d just led me into some broom closet instead of a room fit for a queen.
I stood frozen, staring around me. “This is… a room?”
“A chamber for rest,” he corrected, folding his arms. “Your chamber. You will stay here.”
I swallowed, turning back toward him. His aura cast long shadows against the shimmering curtains, his golden light flickered with threads of red, the black still lingering faintly at the edges. His eyes were too dark, too intense, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe.
He was beautiful. Incredibly, impossibly beautiful—like one of those Greek gods I’d studied in museums and textbooks. No, it was more than that. The statues were cold, lifeless marble. He was warmth and fire, terrifying and alive in ways that made the air between us vibrate.
Even when he was being a condescending ass, he carried charisma like a weapon, an aura that pulled me toward him as surely as gravity. I told myself it had to be some alien trick, some chemical or psychic lure meant to draw me closer. But deep down, I didn’t believe it. Deep down, it felt real.
I couldn’t look away. For a long, suspended moment, we simply stared at each other, caught in something I couldn’t name. Then his hand lifted, his fingers brushed my cheek, warm against my skin, and a shiver raced down my spine. He leaned closer, his lips parted, and he whispered that word again. “Aelyth.”
The sound of it curled around me like a spell. My breath hitched, and when I spoke, my voice came out soft, breathless even to my own ears. “What does that mean?”
For the first time, something flickered in his eyes, something unguarded. His thumbtraced my cheekbone, and he answered in a voice low and rough, as though the word itself carried weight even he couldn’t quite bear.
“It means balance,” he murmured. “It means… the other half of what I am, what I was forged without. What I was never meant to find again.”
His hand lingered, but his jaw tightened, as a shadow swept across his features. “It means you.”
The word hit me like a blow.
Me.
