Page 109 of Blade of the Nightking

Only dimly did I notice Segolayne quietly rising from the couch so as not to disturb us. There was an odd look on her face as she watched Levinica—something thoughtful, almost softened. She crossed to the windows, cracking one open to admit the unusually warm sea breeze, before slipping silently from the room.

Writing was far more difficult than reading. Reading allowed me to recognize meaning already sitting before my eyes, but writing demanded I pull the letters from memory myself. It was what I struggled with most, and so Levinica devoted most of the lesson to correcting my spelling and refining my penmanship.

My handwriting still resembled that of a child—awkward, uneven lines slanting across the page even though the pen itself no longer felt quite so foreign in my hand.

Still, Levinica seemed so delighted by my progress that I found myself basking shamelessly in it.

By the end of her dictation, my hand was aching badly enough that I finally set the pen down and flexed my cramped fingers, rolling my wrist with a grimace. In the final sentence—He went home for supper—I’d somehow mistaken the vowel sound in home badly enough to write howm instead. Levinica pointed it out at once and laughed warmly at the sour look on my face, assuring me it was an easy mistake to make.

She reached for the papers, then paused with a soft click of her tongue. A dark smear of ink stained the fingertip of one of her gloves. She rubbed absently at the mark, only managing to smear the ink further into the silk.

“Why not just take them off?” I asked.

A grim little smile touched her mouth. “It’s better for me to keep them on. Touch brings the visions.” Her gaze lingered on her hands for a long moment.

“How do they work?” I asked curiously, hoping I wasn’t steering us into dangerous territory.

“I can slip into the depths of my own mind and search for traces of truth—past, present, future. About anyone.” She folded her hands neatly atop the table. “When I was younger, the visions were fleeting. But once I underwent the Binding Rite…” Her eyes darkened, suddenly distant and haunted.

Of course she’d undergone the Rite. She was the High Lady of Dusk. And judging by the look on her face, it hadn’t been something she’d wanted. Nor something gentle. Had it been forced upon her?

“The visions became deeper afterward,” she continued softly. “More complicated. The depths of the mind are endless things. And when you’re searching relentlessly through your own… it becomes very easy to lose yourself there.”

Guilt settled heavily inside my stomach despite myself. I hadn’t been responsible for Dannis being taken, but it was impossible to sit across from her and not feel the weight of what had been done to her—to both of them.

“I soon discovered that whenever I touched someone skin to skin while reaching into those depths… I could see things about them.”

“What kind of things?”

She gave a faint shrug. “Memories. Fragments of the future. Truths... They come to me in different ways. Sometimes an image. Sometimes a prophecy.”

Then her expression crumpled.

“After Dannis…” She swallowed hard, shame and anguish twisting her delicate features. “I touched everyone I could. I kept hoping I would find something. An answer. A trace. A single thread leading me to him.” Her fingers tightened together. “But there was nothing. No one knew anything.”

Her voice shook with frustration. “And it drove me…” Mad.

She gave me another thin smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“It didn’t help,” she admitted quietly. “Diving into the lives of strangers only to find nothing. And I realized quickly that no one within my own Court could give me the answers I sought. The only people who might know the truth were Lords and Ladies from other Courts—people I would never be permitted to approach close enough to touch.”

Until Aedric had arrived in Dusk. The one male who’d possessed the very answer she’d spent years searching for.

And I’d destroyed his mind.

A bitter taste flooded my mouth. If Aedric had been capable of answering her in the state I’d left him in, I didn’t doubt for a moment that Levinica would have touched him already. But there was nothing left for her to search through now. Nothing coherent enough to read.

Because of me.

What was she doing here with me after that? Why was she helping me?

She studied her gloved hands, slowly turning them over.

“Damned things,” she muttered.

“You never take them off?”

“When I’m alone,” she sighed, dropping her hands back into her lap. “When there’s no one near me who might accidentally become subject to me wandering through their mind.”