Page 159 of Blade of the Nightking

Icould barely open my eyes.

They were swollen from crying, crusted with dried tears. My eyelids felt like sandpaper, my mouth tasted like ash.

For a long moment, I lay there blinking up at the ceiling, trying to clear the blur from my vision. My chest felt hollow and yet so heavy I didn’t understand how my body could still draw breath. I curled onto my side, pulling the blankets tighter around myself. I willed sleep to take me again, to let me sink back into that peaceful darkness where there was no grief, no memory of black water dragging my friend beneath the surface.

The bond pulled.

I sat up. Pushed back the covers. My feet touched the tile.

I moved almost as though I were in a trance, following that tug I hated so much and yet somehow knew so well by now—that invisible thread leading me exactly where I already knew it would.

I crossed the apartments, my steps slowing as my gaze landed on the dining table. On Levinica’s chair. The same chair she’d sat in not even a full day ago, laughing with me, smiling and teasing…

She’d never sit there again.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and forced myself to look away, letting the bond guide my feet as it pulled me down the darkened hallway toward the one bedroom in the suite that had remained sealed and untouched for three hundred years.

The Dark Prince’s bedroom.

I wasn’t surprised to see the door open. I wasn’t even curious about it. I just stepped inside.

The first light of dawn touched the room, illuminating the dust motes drifting through the stillness. Not the brilliant hues I'd grown accustomed to in the Dusklands, but something pale and sickly. Washed out and muted, as though even the rising sun couldn't bring itself to shine today.

As though it mourned her too.

Rìan sat at the foot of the massive four-poster bed, facing the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sea. His face was a mask of stillness, his cheekbones casting long shadows across his jaw. His hair had been washed and brushed back. He wore a simple black tunic that seemed to swallow the light. His boots had been cleaned and polished. Not a single grain of sand remained.

His hand moved in one long, slow stroke, and with a small jolt of surprise, I realized Titter Mouse was sitting in his lap. The kitten who’d despised him on sight from the moment they met now sat perfectly still beneath his touch, eyes half-lidded as Rìan's hand passed gently over his fur. His palm was large enough to cover nearly all of him, but Titter Mouse didn't purr. Didn't arch into him or nudge for more. He was simply quiet. Still.

I could feel it somehow—that small creature's sorrow. The bone-deep understanding that his mistress had left him behind.

Rìan didn’t turn his head toward me when he spoke. “What is it?” His voice was hoarse, the only sign that anything from the night before remained.

I curled my hands into fists at my sides. He might have been my enemy, but he was still a brother. He’d lost his sister.

“I’m sorry.”

Nothing. Not even the smallest trace of emotion.

He lifted Titter Mouse from his lap and set him down onto the floor. The kitten curled into a ball at his feet.

I cleared my throat, my own voice raspy from screaming. “She was a good person,” I continued, and I meant every word. “She was kind and generous and patient… I’m grateful she took it upon herself to teach me to read.”

He was so still. Almost unnaturally.

“She was my friend, and⁠—”

He barked a humourless laugh at that, the coldness of it stopping me. “Friend?”

The way he said it made my face heat, but I persisted. “Yes. My friend. And I’ll miss her.”

He turned his face toward me then, and the look in his eyes made every word die in my throat. Loathing etched harsh lines into his face.

“How fortunate for her, then.” His full mouth curved, but there was only cruelty in it. “To have such a loyal friend standing here now, in my chambers, mourning her.” His gaze dragged over me. “The mate of the very male who destroyed her.”

The words struck like a slap.

“Tell me, Eidra, when you run back to him, will you tell him how she died? Will you tell him she finally succumbed to the madness he planted inside her?”