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If only it felt that way. I was flayed open.

I’ddone this.

“Is it working?” I asked no one in particular, my voice strained.

“No damage,” Lukas responded tightly, his chest rising and falling with tired breaths.

I sent a silent prayer of thanks to my ancestors. “Are you sure?”

“Check for yourself, but I stopped it before it could flood the apartments.”

I nodded, breaking Lukas’s stare to look down at the floor. Guilt swam through my veins with an ugly temper.

The air around us started to match my mood, darkening as the cloud Adrian was building grew.

It looked so ominous, so threatening. No one inside needed to see that.

“Get that cloud out of here,” Lukas said, stepping a stride closer to me even though he spoke to Adrian.

In a rather impressive show of power, Adrian pushed the cloud toward the gardens behind the palace with a gust of wind from one hand while still converting water into smoky mist with the other.

“I’m sorry,” I sputtered. “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t even consciously do it, it just—”

“We will deal with the specifics later,” Lukas said, cutting off my ramblings with a harsh wave of his hand. “You fixed it in the end.”

Yeah, I fixed a problem I caused.

Streaks of light appeared then disappeared in my peripheral vision. When the tips of Lukas’s dress shoes came within inches of mine, I looked up to see thathewas the one who eclipsed the moonlight fluttering in the water.

The clouds had disappeared and were probably casting the gardens in more water than they needed, but it was better that than someone’s apartment.

Light had returned to the balcony, everywhere other than the shadow Lukas’s massive form casted over me. I knew I should be taking a step back, but I couldn’t move under the weight of his stare.

His eyes had dropped to a deeper blue from the strain and his body was as tense as it was while trying to control the water. His eyes seemed to be the only part of his body that was moving. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

He just stared at me, searching my face for something. My instinct was to think he was checking to see if I was okay. But now I was half convinced that he was looking for permission to blame me.

“If you sayI told you so,” I all but growled, “I’m going to kill you.”

Whatever Lukas was about to say died when his jaw flexed. “Fine, I won’t. On an unrelated note, now we know it's not my fault.”

My back straightened, bringing us an inch closer together. “Your sense of humor is normally impressive.”

I let him fill in the rest of that statement.

The thread between us snapped taut as Lukas took a deep breath. “I believe that was called a deflection. Isn’t it, smart girl?”

The old tease took my sanity and buried it on the ocean floor, far out of reach. I stepped firmly into Lukas’s personal space, our chests scraping together with each breath. “You’re fucking rich acting like this is all on me.”

Lukas’s head cocked to the side. “Oh, I’m sorry, did I miss the part where I was the one to abandon this court?”

I didn’t miss his use ofcourt. Always about duty with him.

And Zeus help me, Lukas knew how to get under my skin like no other. What was once a childhood irritation had turned into an addiction, making me chase the high.

I moved my hands up to his chest to shove him away when we were cut off by Adrian’s booming voice.

Well, that was one way for Zeus to help.