Page 154 of Blade of the Nightking

Couldn’t hide what I knew.

The pendant swung from her throat. Back and forth. Back and forth.

She looked upon me—and saw all of it.

Slowly, her crushing grip loosened. Her hand slipped from mine, and she straightened.

It wasn't merely the devastation in her face that tore me apart, nor the way she seemed to collapse inward like a dying star.

It was that the madness never came.

It didn't offer her the one mercy it ever had—the confusion of being unable to separate what was real from what was imagined. Not this time.

She remained painfully, horrifyingly lucid. No distant glaze in her eyes. No retreat into that distant place where memory and delusion blurred together, sparing her the cruelest edges of reality.

Nothing came to soften the blow.

Nothing stood between Levinica and the full brutality of knowing.

Her face twisted—hurt first, then anger, and beneath that something so profoundly broken it seemed to drain all the air between us. Her chin quivered, her eyes shining too brightly.

“Come, Titter Mouse,” she whispered.

The cat rose immediately. She walked from the room like a ghost, her son's severed ear clenched tightly in her fist. The door closed softly behind her.

For the first time in three hundred years, Levinica understood her son was never coming home.

CHAPTER 32

Ishould’ve gone to Rìan immediately.

Levinica’s discovery about the maps changed everything. The wells. The gates. The quest we would need to undertake if we had any hope of severing the hateful bond between us. I should’ve gone to him at once and told him what she’d pieced together.

But above all of that, I should’ve gone to him because of Dannis. Because I finally understood. About Neeken. About the terrible truth that had somehow been sitting inside me all along while I’d remained too blind to see it.

I should’ve told him Levinica knew too—that she’d touched me and seen the truth for herself.

But something stopped me. Shame. Guilt. Shock.

Shock that the clues had been there all along and I'd somehow failed to piece them together. That Aedric had hidden the truth in plain sight, even from me. That I hadn't realized the terrified little boy from those memories had become the dark-haired Fae male I'd briefly met in the forest after Aedric saved me from Thistra.

Neeken.

Gods.

How had I not seen it?

And Aedric… He’d lied.

… Hadn’t he?

But even as the thought came, I knew it wasn't entirely true. I'd asked him whether he'd killed Dannis, and he'd said no. Technically, maddeningly, infuriatingly, he'd told the truth—or at least the kind of fractured truth Aedric always dealt in, offering only the smallest sliver of understanding while the rest remained buried beneath the surface.

I lost all track of time pacing the apartments. By nightfall, I’d nearly worn grooves into the carpet. The skin beside one nail stung where I'd picked until it bled.

I should’ve gone after her.

I should've done what a good friend—a true friend—would have done. Sat with her quietly if she wished it. Let her rage if she needed to. Let her cry in my arms.