Page 107 of Blade of the Nightking

When I finished the final page, flushed with pride, Levinica's dark eyes shone faintly. I knew it wasn't because I'd successfully read the book. It was because, long ago, another small voice had spoken those very same words aloud beside her.

She remained endlessly patient, never once mocking me when I lost my place halfway through a sentence or pronounced something incorrectly. And somewhere along the way, our lessons began drifting into conversations that had nothing to do with reading at all. The weather over Half Moon Bay. Interesting things she’d seen in Noctharis. A gull that had stolen an entire sweet bun from one of the kitchens and sent three cooks chasing after it through the courtyard.

Sometimes she laughed so suddenly and brightly at her own stories that it startled me into laughing too.

And the more time we spent together, the longer her madness seemed to stay at bay. There were moments I scarcely recognized her at all—moments where she seemed wholly present, sharp-minded and thoughtful. There was no trace of the desperate female who’d attacked me in the library.

Perhaps we were helping each other. She was guiding me through books and letters and stories, and I was giving her something else to cling to besides grief.

Even on days when my hands shook and thoughts of Aedric made me ache for wine badly enough to taste it at the back of my throat, Levinica’s presence steadied something in me. Being around her gave me strength I thought I’d lost for good.

After that first day, we never again spoke openly of the things dividing us. A silent agreement to keep our conversations light and purposeful, though I knew she was just as aware as I was of everything left unsaid beneath them. Still, despite that careful avoidance, we reached for one another anyway—for companionship, for distraction, for purpose.

Gods knew I was proving utterly useless when it came to helping them discover how to break the bond. I ventured onto the subject only once.

“They’re always in the library,” Levinica said with a small shrug, as though that explained everything. Then she looked up at me through glittering dark eyes. “And someday soon, you will be too.”

The thought filled me with a strange kind of awe. Weeks ago, I hadn’t even recognized the alphabet. And now the idea of sitting beside them, poring over books in search of answers, no longer seemed impossible.

One morning after my lesson with Segolayne, once I’d bathed and dressed, I curled up onto the couch overlooking the sea with a book spread across my lap. Beyond the windows, the bay shimmered in the early afternoon light as I traced my finger beneath each word, painstakingly sounding it out beneath my breath.

“Har…” I frowned at the page. “Har…vest. Harvest.”

A small thrill went through me. I hadn’t gotten it nearly so quickly the first three times I’d read it.

“If you applied even half this effort to our lessons,” Segolayne drawled from the doorway, “you might eventually manage to become a danger to someone besides yourself.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, and she arched a dark brow. “Getting comfortable, are we?”

I rolled my eyes and returned to my reading.

She was right, though. About my training. It wasn’t progressing nearly as quickly as my reading. Mostly because I couldn’t stand her—her taunts, the constant ridicule whenever I made a mistake. Levinica encouraged me, and her teaching made me eager to learn, hungry for every small success. Segolayne, however, treated me like a recruit in a barracks, and instead of feeling capable, I only felt clumsy and inadequate.

Not that I would ever admit that to her.

She taught me basic defensive techniques—although truthfully, she seemed to enjoy the moments she got to hit me. My bruises were proof enough of that.

She taught me how to block strikes, throw a proper punch, and kick without losing my balance. She taught me where to aim if I truly wanted to hurt someone. The throat. The kidneys. The groin. She even explained, in alarming detail, the most effective way to gouge out an opponent's eyes, which I found particularly horrifying.

And then, this past week, she’d grown bored of beating me with her bare hands and introduced weapons instead.

“You’re too weak to do much damage,” she’d informed me bluntly. “And if you’re fighting a male—skilled or not—then the only hand-to-hand you should be doing is praying.” She pressed her hands together in mockery, earning a glare from me. “Still, combat is as much about opportunity and instinct as it is skill, if you know how to read your opponent.” She tossed a dagger from one hand to the other carelessly. “But if I can offer advice? Carry a weapon. Learn how to use it. And keep it close.”

Each training session afterward brought something new: practice swords, blunted knives, short axes, staffs, even a slender spear that nearly toppled me over the first time she shoved it into my hands. She showed me how to hold them, how to move with them.

The swords felt cumbersome in my grip. The axes were awkward and far too heavy.

But I liked the daggers.

“Vicious,” Segolayne said with disturbing enthusiasm. “If you favor daggers, then you’ll need speed. Agility.” A sly smile tugged at her lips. “And less modesty.”

“Modesty?”

“Daggers require you to get up close and personal with someone before you kill them.” Her grin was sharper than the knife she held.

Then she was suddenly upon me.

Her demonstration lasted less than a heartbeat before I found myself flat on my back for the hundredth time, breathless, a dagger pressed lightly to my throat as she pinned me beneath her. She leaned down just enough for me to feel the warmth of her breath against my face.