Nymiria’s lips went flat, her tone bland as she spoke. “I got arrested.”
“That’s stating the obvious. Perhaps I should ask why, instead.”
“Perhaps you should.”
Aziel glanced around the cell. Though he seemed stern and rather angry with her current circumstances, there was a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “As always, you never cease to amaze me. What did you get arrested for?”
“The guards should have told you by now. It was quite the spectacle.”
They had, in fact. They’d told him the entire hilarious story of a small woman pouncing on the back of a barkeep and punching him in the head. Not just once, but three times. The third blow had knocked the old oaf unconscious. His body hitting the ground made more of a mess than the tiny, wild-haired woman that was sitting in front of him now. But he preferred to hear her side of the story, seeing that Nymiria did not throw punches for seemingly no reason.
“How are your knuckles?”
She looked down at them, frowned, and gave a slight shrug. “Swollen, but I think I’ll survive. What with being a goddess and all.”
“A lot of confidence coming from someone sitting in a cell.” Aziel muttered, doing his best to stifle his laugh.
Heaving a sigh, Nymiria pulled herself away from the stone wall. “See it as me giving them a bit of a confidence boost. I could have broken these shackles the moment they put them on me. Or, better yet, I could have made a bigger show of myself and used my Grace in front of everyone. But what kind of citizen would I be if I did not abide by the laws of the land?”
Aziel observed her for a moment with a single raised brow, his mouth curling at one corner as he stepped closer to the bars separating them. “If you were a law abiding citizen, moonflower, you wouldn’t be sitting there with swollen knuckles looking like you were tied to a tree in a wind storm. You’d be in the palace, meeting me for your lesson.”
“Would you rather I not defend myself?”
“Of course I want you to defend yourself,” he contested. “Hell, I have half the mind to find the bastard and slit his fucking throat for what he said about you, but that is neither here, nor there.” She watched as he reached into his pocket and procured something with a dull metallic sheen. “You came to me under the guise that you wanted to learn how to be a goddess and this is not how that should look. You also requested that the people here know you as Nymiria first, The Anam second. And if this is the Nymiria you wish to show them, well… they might not have much faith in you when you reveal to them your truth.”
And there it was. Exactly what she’d been waiting to hear.
It would be the same as before, wouldn’t it?
She may not have noticed the droop in her shoulders, nor the light that instantly left her eyes the moment those hateful words left his mouth, but Aziel did. And, fuck, if he didn’t regret it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—“
“You did,” she interjected. “You meant it and it’s fine.”
He drew in a breath. “Nymiria, this is not how I wanted this to go.”
“I feel the same.”
“Then why must you make this difficult? If this is not how you wished for this to go, why are you insistent upon fighting me at everything I say?” He wasn’t chastising her. It wasn’t him lecturing her for the way she’d been acting, he was genuinely trying to understand. Aziel didn’t have much pride left, but he was not above dropping to his knees and begging for her to speak to him.
So he did.
Nymiria had all but turned herself away from him, but the moment he began lowering himself into the dirt outside of her cell, her head snapped in his direction and her eyes went wide, her mouth fell open in shock.
“What the hell are you doing?” She jolted to her feet and rushed to the bars, gripping the collar of his tunic. She tried lifting him back to his feet, but to no avail. He was stubbornly rooted in place. “Get up, this isn’t funny.”
Aziel looked up at her, hands folding in his lap as she continued tugging at his clothes. “You could rip all my clothes from my body trying to get me to move, but I will not until you tell me why you are doing this to yourself.”
Oh, the gall. This man had breezed into her life and practically commanded her to reveal every pitiful and pathetic piece of her existence and he still had the nerve to request that of her? She let out the most obscene word in her vocabulary before jerking her body away from his.
“I’m not doing anything to myself. The only thing I am trying to do is learn who I am. I don’t know who Nymiria is outside of what everyone requested her to be, Aziel.” She couldn’t look at him. She wanted to drive her fist into a wall and looking at him would only soften her. But she wanted to be angry. She wanted to feel her anger and let it take over instead of pretending and forcing a smile. “I want to know who I really am.”
Silence filled the dungeon when she fell to the center of her cell, legs drawn to her chest and her head nestled against both knees. Aziel’s chest ached. It was not his pain to bear, but he understood what she meant. He could feel her heartbreak as if it was his own. And, gods, he wished he could take it away. He wished he could tell her just how beautiful she was, how brilliant she was—he wanted to tell her all of those wonderful things about who he saw sitting in front of him, but he knew what she’d do.
As always, Nymiria would run.
“Is this who you think you are?” He whispered.
Nymiria’s eyes burned with tears. She was so close to snapping at him and telling him to leave her alone, knowing that he would do anything she asked. She knew she had that control over him and it was a dangerous thing, really. Having that much power. But just as she held power over him, his abilities were just the same. One look could ruin her. One touch would be catastrophic.
