Page 147 of Blade of the Nightking

“Don’t look at me,” I said, stiffening. “I’d never seen one before either.”

“Veylan?” Rìan asked without looking.

A shadow detached itself from the wall behind him. Veylan had returned.

“This thing again,” Veylan stepped forward to peer over Rìan's shoulder, unusually thoughtful. He'd taken it from me in Thistra. “I did find the symbol peculiar. It must be meaningful if the Bone-Wrought carved it.”

I blinked. “What?”

Rìan looked at me evenly. “There’s magic in this bone. Didn’t you feel it when you held it?”

The warmth whenever I touched it. The hum beneath my skin. That strange sense of recognition.

He read the answer on my face and sat back. “The Bone-Wrought made this piece.”

My mouth opened. Then closed again. I stared at the knife lying between us. The eight-pointed star suddenly looked far more ominous.

“You said it was a gift.” Rìan’s deep voice pulled me back.

I nodded slowly. “To my father. From the Carroway family.”

“Perhaps your shadows should find the original owner,” he said to Veylan over his shoulder. “If this knife is connected to the wells, he may know something useful.”

I gave a humorless huff. “That may prove difficult,” I said. They both looked at me. “My father took his head.”

Rìan’s brows lifted slightly. Veylan looked disturbingly impressed.

“Lon Carroway was Infected.” I explained. “He couldn’t be saved. His wife was pregnant and she gave my father the knife as payment afterward. She said it was a family heirloom, but I doubt she knew much more than that.”

“She offered a family heirloom after you killed her husband,” Rìan said slowly, as though trying to understand the shape of it.

“Perhaps he was unpleasant,” Veylan murmured under his breath.

I shot him a look. “It was payment for a job well done. We stopped the sickness before it spread to his wife and the child she carried.”

Neither of them said anything.

“We took one life,” I pressed, folding my arms, “but saved two. Beyond the Veil, that was considered priceless.”

At the mention of the Veil, something in Rìan shifted. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that the Veil had never been some simple barrier between worlds. It had once been a person.

Him.

He pushed back from the table. He stood in silence for a moment, his gaze sweeping slowly across the chamber, over the many cells lining the walls.

Only then did I notice he was barefoot.

Something in my chest stuttered. Standing there in loose trousers, his dark hair mussed and the faintest shadow of stubble darkening his jaw, he looked less like the feared Dark Prince and more like a man who’d simply been interrupted in the middle of the night. The sight was strangely intimate.

The Dark Prince wasn't supposed to look... normal.

I looked away quickly, not wanting him to catch me staring.

Without a word, he crossed the chamber toward one of the recessed rooms. Circular niches crowded the cell from floor to ceiling, each one fitted with tightly rolled scrolls. He paused before them, scanning the rows. After a moment, he selected one and unrolled it partially, eyes moving quickly over whatever had been inked there.

He rolled it closed again and slid it back into place before reaching for the next one. This time, he carried it to the table and spread it carefully across the cracked wooden surface, weighing down each corner with a smooth stone.

I leaned forward, instantly transfixed.