Nikias stared down at her. She continued anyway, “Didn’t you learn your lesson last time? Haven’t you embarrassed yourself enough?”
“Aimilia—”
She sat up a little in his arms, still covered in blood. No one else was around. The Sordes had all fled and his men were nowhere to be seen. It was just them.
“When will you finally give up on this foolish endeavor and accept the truth? I don’t love you. I will never love you.” She reached up and brushed her fingertips over his cheek. “No one will ever love you.”
“Stop. That’s not true?—”
She reached for his chiton, breaking the clasp and exposing the scar over his heart. She traced her fingertips over the rune Hypatia had burned into him.
Inamatus.
Unlovable.
“It is.” Aimilia looked back up at him, fingers resting on the burning scar. “You know it is. You’re unlovable. Haven’t you proven that? Who has ever loved you?”
Nikias’ silence was his answer, but the woman in his lap wasn’t satisfied.
“Your father? With all those hidden black eyes you take because you’re really just a pathetic, weak little boy pretendinglike the moment he dies you’ll finally be strong enough to lead a country when you’re not even strong enough to stop a dying old man from hitting you? Your mother? You think she loves you when all she loves is your use for her? Has she ever defended you? What about those little bruises in the shape of her fingertips?
“Gavril? The brother you always failed to protect? The one who always turned to me first? The one who was willing to kill you when you finally showed the monster you really are?”
Aimilia’s grin turned wicked and savage, mirroring the demon’s the second she’d Seen this truth in that tent while he was at her mercy.
“Faustina? The wife who had to marry you or be disowned because you made your obsession obvious to all? The wife who tried to abandon you, but stopped only because she caught Gavril running away the same night she was? The one who let herself die to free herself from you?” Aimilia reached up, brushing her fingertips over his cheeks as she cradled his face. “If even the kindest Runai I’ve ever met couldn’t love you even with your name on her wrist and your utter devotion to her, who ever could?”
Nikias’ tongue was marble in his mouth. Even if he could move it, what could he say?
She was right.
She was right about it all.
“Certainly not me.” Aimilia tilted his jaw up to look at her as she sat up straighter. “Not after I’ve spent my life loving your brother who is your superior in every way even when he breaks my heart.”
Nikias closed his eyes, but then her nails dug into his jaw and he was forced to look at her.
“You’ll never be him.” She clicked her tongue, the blood on her neck still glistening. “I wonder how you ever managed to love Faustina at all. Or how she ever loved you in return.”
Aimilia’s words from the day he’d had Marcella exposed as a traitor in league with Hypatia had torn through him that day and haunted him ever since, the wound never healing.
“Because she didn’t, did she?” Aimilia whispered, dropping one hand to press the pads of her fingers to the scar. “She knew what you were. I know what you are. Do you really think you stand a chance?”
No.
For so long he’d been so certain he didn’t.
He’d been resigned to watching her spend her life with Gavril, but then Gavril returned with Marcella. But he was still all Aimilia wanted, and Nikias had resolved to ensure she would have what she wanted, so he’d gotten in her ear and if it meant he made Hypatia’s lookalike suffer, he couldn’t deny his vengeful heart that satisfaction. Because if he could not have Aimilia, he could at least give her what she wanted and make someone pay for Faustina’s death. But trying to give Aimilia what she wanted, he ran himself into the ground and destroyed what little good opinion she’d had left of his character.
But then she’d saved his life, and he thought maybe, just maybe there was hope.
Was he deluding himself now like he had then? Was he reading into Aimilia’s words and deeds a devotion that didn’t exist?
That could never exist?
She pulled back out of his arms, removing her hand from the scar. Her red hair spilled over her shoulders, blending into the blood and the fabric. “Let me go.”
Could he?
