“Of course not.” His fingers twitched. “What’s wrong? Do you miss Areator?”
Aimilia stomped out the flicker of desire in her to have that hand pull her into Nikias’ arms. She didn’t want that. She wasn’t supposed to want that. She was supposed to have forgotten that had even happened.
“Some. But more than that, I miss Gavril and Marcella. For all that I’ve seen them lately, we might as well be on opposite sides of the world, and soon enough we probably will be.”
Nikias looked down at his clasped hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Your father is the one who wants Gavril exiled.” The unspoken reality hung between them that they both knew he was really apologizing for. If he married, Gavril could return.
But the only woman he’d proposed to recently was right beside him.
As much as Aimilia wanted Gavril and Marcella in Areator, she didn’t love them enough to marry Nikias in order to make that happen.
“Not to mention, I don’t know that it would matter much. I mean, let’s be realistic. Gavril and Marcella are married and soon enough they’ll start having children. Maybe there’s still a little part of me that’s hurting that it’s not me,” Aimilia whispered, the words coming out before she could even comprehend the fact that she was admitting this to Nikias of all people.
His eyes widened ever so slightly, and she held her hand out, shaking her head. “Don’t mistake me, I’m not still in love with him. I don’t want him, or anything like that. But no matter how happy I am for him and how much I see Marcella is the right woman for him that I never could be, now I’m standing off to the side, and I’m cheering, but there’s still this little needle in my heart I can’t dislodge.”
Why did she need Nikias to know she wasn’t in love with Gavril even a little?
He was staring at his hands, his expression imperceptible. What awful things was he thinking now?
Maybe now he wouldn’t think she was worth all this effort.
“I don’t know. I’m not making any sense. I want them to be happy. I just…” Her hand fell to her lap, the sound echoing in the air. Then, in the quiet followed her voice, as small and desolate as she felt in that moment. “I want to be happy too.”
“I… I think I know what you’re talking about.” Nikias looked up. “I think you’re making perfect sense.”
Aimilia could only stare at him for a moment. Then she laughed. “Can you explain it to me then?”
Nikias’ lips parted slightly before he took a deep breath. “Even when you’re no longer in love with someone and you’ve let them go, letting go of the future you once believed you would have with them is harder to release. You have to mourn them separately. Especially…” His gaze fell again, this time to his chest before he shifted in his seat and stared at the scars on his leftwrist, all that was left of his first marriage. He took a deep breath and looked back out at the sunset. “When you loved someone with everything in you, and they couldn’t return it.”
Was this really the same man who mourned his wife so deeply he was willing to wade through an ocean of blood to get revenge?
Nikias didn’t know how not to be in love with Faustina. How could he be so insightful about something he could never do?
But instead of scoffing, Aimilia pressed her hand to her heart. “I was painfully transparent. That’s the last time I ever wear my heart on my sleeve.”
Nikias looked at her again, and this time his hand came to rest on her knee. Her breath caught in her throat at the warm weight. “Has he ever apologized for his part of this?”
Aimilia couldn’t take her eyes off the back of his hand as she breathed out, “I… Sort of… I don’t really recall what all he was apologizing for.”
She couldn’t even recall what she should be saying, his skin against hers was all her mind could focus on. His hand was calloused like all Runai’s were from years of casting, and it seemed to curl just right around her leg. Her heartbeat sped up faster and faster the longer she spent looking at it.
His thumb shifted back and forth across her skin. She wanted to lean into it. She wanted to get rid of the small amount of distance between them. She wanted him to use that hand to pull her into him and to flatten it against her back as he held her so tightly there was nowhere left of her that wasn’t enveloped by him. Shewanted?—
Aimilia jerked to her feet, dislodging his hand as she stumbled with her back to the tree as she said, “It’s all in the past anyway. I just need to get over myself.”
She needed to clear her head. None of these feelings made any sense.
She was sad and lonely, and Nikias always seemed to show up when she was sad and lonely and she was conflating her desire to have someone as being the same as wanting to have him.
Nikias rose to his feet, a familiar tone coming over his voice, but Aimilia couldn’t place it. “You don’t owe him any excuses.”
Aimilia took another step back. “And I’m not his mess you have to clean up. You?—”
But then Aimilia’s foot snagged on a root, and faster than she could blink, Nikias had one arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her flush against him as he gripped a tree branch above them to steady them.
She looked up into his eyes as his voice lowered. “Believe me, the last thing I want to be doing right now is talking about my brother.”
