Page 108 of Blade of the Nightking

“You cannot be timid with a dagger.” She snapped her teeth at me, the motion stopping just short of my nose.

How I loathed her.

And every day after those three brutal hours of training at daybreak, I’d drag myself back to the beautiful apartments that had once belonged to the Dark Prince himself, limping past the burned shell of the library where I was fairly certain he resided now.

I could feel his awareness brush against mine whenever I passed it, a faint prickle at the edge of my senses. But he never came out. And he never called me inside.

The couch dipped beside me as Segolayne sat down.

“What are you doing?” I whipped my head toward her.

She kicked her boots onto the low table and laced her fingers behind her head. “What does it look like?”

Loathed. Her.

Relief flooded me at the familiar click of the door opening moments later, followed by Levinica’s light footsteps entering the apartment. I turned toward her immediately, and she offered me a warm, genuine smile that I found myself helplessly returning.

I joined her at our usual places at the dining table, the book I’d been working through tucked beneath my arm. She beckoned to a servant behind her, who carried in another stack of children’s books and deposited them carefully between us.

“How was your morning?” Levinica asked, her gaze lingering pointedly on the bruises circling my upper arm in the unmistakable shape of Segolayne’s fingers.

She never openly commented on the training, but by now I knew her expressions well enough to recognize her disapproval.

“Fine,” I lied. Segolayne had spent most of the morning drilling dagger work into me. She’d gleefully pronounced me “dead” at least a dozen times after disarming me again and again, each bout ending with my own blade pressed to my throat.

Levinica’s gaze drifted toward the book beneath my arm. “You’ve been reading?”

Not practicing. Not studying.

Reading.

She never used language that reminded me how little I actually knew—how slowly I still stumbled through sentences, how often I lost my place or failed to grasp the sounds. She spoke as though I already knew as much as she did. As though, in that regard at least, we were equals.

It made something inside my chest swell and glow.

Levinica was a bright light somehow—gentle and warm despite the darkness forever threatening to drag her beneath it.

“Yes,” I said cheerily, handing her the book. “Tales of the Titter Mouse.”

“Ah,” she said solemnly, as though I’d presented her with a great literary masterpiece. She ran her fingers over the cover, where a tiny black cat peered out of a mouse hole. “An excellent choice.”

“I especially liked the part where Harbuckle thinks he’s dealing with a mouse and tries to lure the kitten out with a wedge of cheese.”

Levinica burst into laughter so suddenly that the servant beside her startled outright, his wide eyes betraying the fact that he likely hadn’t heard such a sound from her in a very long time.

She thanked him softly and waved him away before turning back to me, her raven eyes bright with amusement.

“Harbuckle, you say?”

Suddenly uncertain, I hurriedly flipped open the book and ran my finger down the page in search of the name. “I was certain it said Harbuckle,” I muttered. “Perhaps I sounded it out incorrectly…”

She laid a thin hand gently over mine, the silk of her glove soft against my skin. “You read it perfectly. I thought for certain that one would confuse you.”

Relief flooded through me, followed quickly by another surge of ridiculous pride.

“It did at first,” I admitted. “I sounded it out at least five times before deciding it was right. I even wrote it down separately to compare the letters.”

Her laughter rang out again, light as birdsong.