“What does it matter now? Is that what all of this exam nonsense is about? Your wounded ego?” Aimilia laughed. “Doyou want me to go ahead and write a list of Runai who will be happy to shower you in unearned complements to feed your vanity? Why are you so obsessed with having my good opinion?”
“Believe me, if I cared about protecting my ego, I wouldn’t be asking.” Nikias snorted before shaking his head. He locked eyes with her and his voice softened. “Please, tell me.”
She held his gaze while he held his breath, waiting on the edge of a precipice for her answer. He could drown in the brown and green depths of her hazel eyes.
“I don’t—” Aimilia took a sharp breath as she looked away, blinking before saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know what would change my opinion of you. There might not be anything that can. Even if there was, I couldn’t tell you. It wouldn’t be authentic. I’d know you were only doing it because you can’t seem to let go of the fact that I don’t like you.”
“I see your point.” Unfortunately. Nikias folded his arms over his chest. He shouldn’t have hoped he could get a straightforward answer. He was going to have to create a new strategy without it.
Aimilia sighed and then took a step forward, but froze when he didn’t move out of her way. She was close enough that he could feel her exhale brush his cheek. She opened her mouth, but he was faster.
“But you don’t hate me the way you claim to.” The gamble came out of his mouth before he could weigh the risk.
Her eyes widened and her voice came out harsh and choked. “Pardon?”
There was no turning back now. If she wasn’t going to give him a clear answer, he had no choice but to force her to confront her bewildering inconsistencies and the fact that her feelings couldn’t be as simple as she made them seem.
“Everything you said before—when you refused me—you made yourself clear about why you hate me, but that doesn’t make sense with your own actions.”
Aimilia went alabaster white and stepped back. “My actions?”
“I’ll forget everything else. I’ll accept you didn’t care if I lived or died when you and Marcella intervened in the duel. All the time we spent together afterwards, you were only tolerating me. That nothing I’ve done, not even when I’ve tried to comfort you?—”
Aimilia’s expression twisted and she hissed, “Thatneverhappened!”
Nikias’ memories begged to differ, but he wasn’t going to try to argue that point right now. He wouldn’t be surprised if Aimilia had managed to erase each time from her memory through sheer willpower.
Nikias curled his fingers into his cloak. “My point is, I’ll set all of that aside and take your word. But even then, it does not account for the contradiction between what you said the other night and what you’ve done. I remember when you brought my cloak back. Those weren’t actions or words of someone who hates me with an irreversible passion. On some level, you care about me, which means there must be a way for me to show you I’m not all the things you think I am.”
“All the things Ithinkyou are?” Aimilia shook her head, and a few stands fell loose from her braided crown, brushing her cheek. “Those are all the things you have proven you are. I’m not just talking about your failures to protect Gavril as children. I’m talking about the man you were when Gavril came back with Marcella as his wife. You are vicious, vengeful, and the cruelest man I have ever met. You’re a liar. A manipulator. You don’t listen to anyone but yourself.”
Nikias could not and would not deny the accusations. They were at some point in his life all true.
But not anymore.
Nikias didn’t want to be that man ever again, but would Aimilia ever see him as he was or just the ghost of the monster he’d been?
Aimilia continued, “You know I have never believed you should be king. I still wish your parents weren’t so horrid and prideful that it blinds them to Gavril’s superior ability to be king, but I know you get it honestly.”
Nikias heart slammed against his ribs, each beat making the scar over it dig in deeper and deeper.
He had to know…
“Do you still wish I’d gone in first that day?”
Even though they were outside, his words sucked all the warmth out of the air.
Aimilia stared him down.
He might as well have been surrounded by pure white marble. Their words from that fateful day in that hallway by the throne room lingered in the space between them. The day he might have condemned himself forever in her eyes.
Then she spoke.
“Do you?”
He was no longer standing in that marble hall, but lying in the dirt, a broken arm clutched to his chest as he stared at his most unwilling savior. Only this time he would not fool himself into thinking she’d done it for him. The only feeling that had motivated her that day had been the love she had for his brother, even when he’d broken her heart time and time again.
But even so… she’d given him something to live for that day, and Nikias would not trade that for the world.
