Page 106 of Blade of the Nightking

I'd almost forgotten the line between us, taut and unmistakable. One neither of us would ever cross.

Levinica leaned back in her chair and smoothed a wrinkle from her skirt.

“You have a good heart,” she said finally. “There is hope for you.”

“So do you,” I replied quietly.

She exhaled softly through her nose. “A good heart is one thing. But a ruler needs a strong heart.” Her hand drifted to the shape of the pendant beneath the collar of her dress. “And mine is broken.”

“Noctharis—”

“Was great once,” she finished for me, almost wistfully, turning her head toward the windows overlooking Half Moon Bay. Dark boats drifted across the water. “And perhaps it shall be again, now that he’s returned.”

My mouth went dry. “And the rest of Elantis?” I dared to ask.

“I believe he’ll finish what he started.”

A chill slid down my spine. For one terrible instant, all I could see was Solmire burning—blue fire, screams rising through the smoke-choked streets, bodies turned to ash.

Was that what awaited the rest of Elantis?

Was the grief of a wronged mother enough to set the world ablaze?

She sighed and rose from her chair, and I stood as well.

“I believe in you too, Elowen,” she said gently. “I think you will do good in this world.” Her gaze held mine. “And I think, when the time comes, you will do what is necessary. Which is perhaps more important.”

The door opened behind her. Two ladies-in-waiting immediately straightened in the corridor beyond, clearly having waited there the entire afternoon for their mistress.

“I shall tell him you made progress today,” Levinica said cheerfully. “He will be pleased.”

As though pleasing the lord of hell was something I desired.

Still, I lowered myself into a curtsy, the sore muscles in my thighs protesting as I bent my knees.

“Shall I return tomorrow?” There was something almost hopeful in her expression.

“Yes, please,” I said. “I would like that very much.”

She inclined her head gracefully, the corners of her eyes crinkling with warmth.

CHAPTER 22

Over the next two weeks, reading became an obsession.

Once I learned the alphabet, Levinica moved me onto simple children’s books filled with bright illustrations and thick block-text that helped me begin piecing sounds and words together. It was painfully slow work, laboring over each syllable until my head ached from concentration.

But I loved it.

Each word was a puzzle clicking into place, each letter another piece until suddenly an entire sentence existed where moments before there had only been meaningless symbols. There was something beautiful in the way sounds could be captured in ink and preserved upon a page long after the writer was gone. To read another person’s words was to sit quietly inside their mind for a little while—to follow the shape of their thoughts exactly as they’d once existed, reaching across moments or centuries to touch someone they would never meet. It was an entirely different kind of magic.

When I’d said as much to Levinica, she’d smiled at me with such open delight that I’d found myself grinning back hard enough that my cheeks hurt.

All that knowledge. I was greedy for it.

With every page I deciphered, I found myself looking more and more toward the battered tomes lining the shelves of the suite. I was getting closer to them now—to the worlds hidden inside those pages after a lifetime spent barred from such things.

But for all my progress, I was still only beginning. With Levinica’s help, I managed my first children’s story—thick board pages clumsy beneath my fingers—about a sleepy bear getting ready for winter.