Page 136 of Blade of the Nightking

Outside, the storm had passed, though lightning still forked across the distant skies of the mainland. Even the rain had eased, no longer hurling itself at the fortress. Eventually the glow beneath my skin dimmed, and vanished.

After the smoothest, cleanest escape I'd managed yet, he simply turned his back to me and pulled on his boots without a word. Relief loosened the knot in my chest, but not by much. My nerves were still frayed raw as I pulled on my own boots and hurried toward the door, not bothering to look back to see if he'd disappeared as he had last time.

My hand had just closed around the handle when his voice stopped me.

“How did you know it would work?”

I didn’t need to ask what he meant. Levinica. The kitten.

I paused, turning just enough to see him. “I didn’t know for certain, but…” I hesitated, searching for the right words. “I thought it might be good for her. Something she could touch without consequence. Something that would⁠—”

“Need her,” he finished.

I nodded.

The feeling that settled between us was strange—tentative, uncertain, something I couldn't quite name. It took me a moment to understand what it was.

Understanding. A truce, of sorts.

We both cared for Levinica. Neither of us wanted her to suffer. And despite everything he was—my enemy, Aedric's enemy, the enemy of Elantis—in that moment, he was only her brother. And I was only her friend.

For once, it wasn't the bond that tethered us. It was her.

He cleared his throat. "Thank you."

The words nearly made me stumble. I stared at him, blinking, and whatever crossed my face seemed to sour him. His nose wrinkled, and shadows stirred at the edges of the room, coiling inward until they wrapped around him in a tight, spinning cocoon.

“Did you just⁠—”

“Don’t get used to it.”

And then he was gone.

CHAPTER 28

Idrifted back to the apartments in a daze, my body still tingling in all the places where he’d touched me.

I needed to disappear into a bath with a book and enough hot water to scrub the feel of him from my bones.

A thin, dark-haired figure looked up at me from the dining table. I stopped short, suddenly winded for an entirely different reason.

“Levinica,” I breathed.

She gave me a shaky smile from her too-pale face. She looked just as gaunt and colorless as the last time I’d seen her, and I wondered if they struggled to make her eat whenever the madness took hold, or if the sheer depth of her magic simply consumed her from the inside out.

But her eyes were clear. Tired, yes. Shadowed. But there was still a spark in them I recognized.

My friend.

Those same eyes swept over me now, widening with concern. “Oh my goodness.”

I looked down at my rumpled clothes, patting self-consciously at my disheveled hair. I hadn't realized what a state his lesson had left me in.

“Don't worry.” I tugged at my shirt. “I went easy on him.”

Her face lit with a real smile then, laughter spilling out of her so suddenly and brightly that I found myself laughing too, the tightness in my chest loosening all at once.

My amusement died quickly when Segolayne sneered from the opposite wall. “Doesn’t look like you’re improving much.” She’d been standing so still I hadn’t even noticed her. The pink scar cutting across her face stood out starkly against her skin.