Cynna pushed back and looked up at him. “What does the Council have to do with you?”
“Argonauts have fathered children with females other than their soul mates for thousands of years. Rarely does one appear with the markings, but every Argonaut is duty bound to raise any offspring marked by the gods. Atalanta knew this, so after we were born, she sent us to Argolea. Demetrius’s markings were unique to his father’s line. Mine were less conclusive. As we were twins, his father was required to take us both in, but he knew from the start that I was different. And he despised me for it. He was a mean son of a bitch. Had a wicked temper. If you ever wondered why Demetrius is so sullen a lot of the time, I can tell you it’s not because Atalanta was his mother. It’s because of that bastard.”
“What happened?” Cynna asked, her brow drawn low, her gaze holding Nick’s as she straddled his lap.
“Nothing, really. He basically steered clear of me. Took his frustrations out on Demetrius whenever he felt like it. That caused a lot of tension between me and my brother at a very early age. Demetrius thought I was the favored son. The older we got, the darker his mood became. It was wrong of me to sit back and do nothing to help him, but I was just a kid, and at the time, I was thankful his father wasn’t pounding on me the way he was pounding on him.”
“No one could blame you for that,” she said softly.
Nick huffed, thinking about the brother he’d never seen eye to eye with. “Demetrius did. In a lot of ways, that animosity is at the root of our differences. Anyway, what he failed to see were the times his father would get this look in his eye and start to come after me, then change his mind and quickly turn away. I didn’t understand what that was about for a long time. Truthfully, I don’t think I really understood until I discovered Krónos was my real father. But he knew. Demetrius’s father was part witch. He sensed the power inside me, just as Delia did, and it scared him shitless. That’s why, when I was about ten, he finally turned me over to the Council to be cleansed.”
“Skata,” Cynna whispered, her gaze flicking over his bare shoulders. “The cleansing ritual.”
“Yep.” Being Argolean, she clearly knew what that entailed. A ritualistic whipping to banish sin from the body. The Argolean Council’s greatest gift to its people. “Usually reserved for unfaithful females but in this case inflicted on a ten-year-old boy who had no clue what he’d done wrong.” He pointed at the jagged scar on the side of his face. “I moved when I wasn’t supposed to.”
“Oh, Nick.” Pity filled her eyes. A pity he didn’t need or want.
His jaw hardened. “I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel sorry for me. I’m telling you so you’ll understand why I hate this place as much as you. When the cleansing ritual didn’t work, the Council grew scared. Someone with dormant gifts like mine, living in this land? That would forever be a challenge to their power. They wanted to kill me but didn’t know my true lineage and were afraid doing so might cause some kind of retaliation from the gods. So they banished me instead. Sent a ten-year-old boy off to fend for himself in the wilds of the human world. If I died on my own, well then, that wasn’t their problem, was it? But I didn’t die. I learned how to survive, how to hunt, how to protect myself. And when I came across other refugees, other Argoleans who’d been banished or who’d chosen to leave this so-called utopia on their own, I taught them and their children how to survive too.”
“Gods.” She relaxed back into him, laying her head on his shoulder, resting her hand on his chest, right over his heart. “That’s terrible. They’re monsters. Every last one of them.”
He brushed his hand down her naked spine, feeling pretty much the same way about the Council himself, hating that she knew and understood. “My given name is Nikomedes. I know you’ve heard others call me Niko. I don’t usually answer to it because all it does is remind me of the Council and my days here.”
“Nikomedes,” she whispered. “Victory of the people.” She pushed up and looked him in the eyes again. “You have a great name, Nick. One with depth of meaning. The Council knew that even when you were a boy. Look at you now. You’re here. Look at your people. They live.”
He still wasn’t sure how that had happened, but he knew they weren’t alive because of him. He’d been shocked when he’d seen so many familiar faces in the settlement when he’d gone after Cynna, then utterly thankful they’d been there. But his need to get to Cynna had been so strong, he’d barely spared them a glance. And that need now to keep her with him was even stronger, pushing aside every other thought, even those for the people she foolishly thought he’d saved.
He leaned forward and framed her face with his hands. “I need you, Cynna.”