Page 18 of Blade of the Nightking

Tears burned my eyes, my throat tightening at the sight of him. He was still pale, but fire blazed in the deep blues of his gaze, his face so severe he looked every inch the High Lord. He didn’t rise—I could sense the strain in him, the lingering weakness after everything he’d endured – but he showed none of it. Even seated on the pallet, he looked like a king on his throne.

The older male’s jaw worked beneath his beard, his face mottling with barely contained fury. “My Lord,” he ground out, inclining his head with all the stiffness of a man forcing himself to bend.

“Sairus.” Aedric didn’t even blink. “Hamish relayed his orders to you—my orders—and yet you believed you had the authority to override them?”

Sairus’s lips thinned, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

“Precaution, my Lord.” He glanced around before his gaze landed on me—amber-bright, as though banked fire glowed behind them. I dropped my eyes, trying to hide the shiver that crawled through me under that stare. “The people came here to be protected. How would they feel to know they escaped the jaws of one beast only to be swallowed by another?”

Aedric surged to his feet—and swayed, blinking hard as though he’d risen too fast. One hand shot out to brace against Hamish’s shoulder, his cousin standing solid as an oak before him. The faint curl at the corner of Sairus’s mouth was unmistakable: quiet satisfaction at the sight of his lord faltering. Loathing rushed through me.

“War Room. Now.” Aedric commanded, a growl between his teeth, as he pushed off Hamish.

He turned to me then, and froze. His eyes caught mine, and for just a heartbeat, I saw it. Something raw and staggering, as though he still carried the memory of smoke and screaming, of my broken body crumpled in his arms. The certainty that I was dying. That he had already begun, somewhere deep inside himself, to grieve me.

And now—I was standing. Breathing. Alive. The relief in his gaze was so devastating it nearly brought me to my knees.

But outwardly, Aedric gave nothing away. Before Sairus, before his Court, he remained every inch the composed High Lord. Only the frantic flutter of the pulse at his throat betrayed him, visible just above the collar of his blood-stained shirt.

My blood, I realized.

He offered me his arm. “El?”

I clutched his red-streaked sleeve, his arm flexing solidly beneath my touch. I was grateful for something to hold onto, because my legs felt as though they might fail me at any moment.

As he guided me past Sairus’s guards, I caught a glimpse of their faces despite myself. The skin along their cheekbones and foreheads looked faintly pebbled, almost embossed, as though something beneath the flesh had pressed outward and hardened there. Their expressions were flat, unreadable. I looked away at once, uneasy.

Aedric led me through the crowd, the others falling in close behind us. If he still felt unsteady, he gave no sign of it. He walked straight-backed, chin lifted, but his attention skimmed the chamber as we passed, settling again and again on the wounded.

The devastation in his eyes was unmistakable, the same terrible grief I’d seen when Solmire burned and he’d fallen to his knees, helpless to save it. His body trembled with restraint, as though something inside him were crumbling to dust.

He met my gaze, looking all the world like a drowning man clinging to a raft.

“You healed yourself,” he murmured, just loud enough for me to hear.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“How?” He guided me toward a door at the far side of the room.

I shook my head. How could I explain what I barely understood? One moment I was dying, powerless to watch as Rìan struck him down, and the next…

Rìan had left a thread of power inside me like a lifeline. All I had done—all I could do—was seize it. I swallowed, remembering how good it felt flooding into my core, my veins, my very bones. Exhilarating, overwhelming—too much. And then he’d ripped it away, and my rage had risen up to devour the aching left in its absence.

With a sweep of his wrist, the door swung open, revealing a stark chamber beyond. A long table dominated the center of the room, hewn from volcanic stone polished to such a dark sheen it looked less like furniture and more like a tear in the world itself, drinking in every trace of light and color around it.

Aedric took the seat at the head. The chair to his left scraped back on its own, and I lowered myself into it. Calantha slid into the chair to his right, Sairus claiming the seat beside her. Hamish and one of Sairus’s guards took their places at the door like sentries, the others standing watch on the other side. The moment the door shut, the crying and moaning halted abruptly, sealing us in a muted hush.

Aedric’s gaze turned briefly inward as he gathered himself. No one spoke. We all waited.

When he finally lifted his head, it was me he spoke to.

“What happened?”

My voice barely rose above a whisper, yet it seemed unnaturally loud in the silence. “Rìan attacked.”

The energy in the room shifted instantly. Sairus swore low beneath his breath. My hands clasped tightly in my lap, fingers knotting together hard enough that my bones cracked.

“The Infected that found us…” I swallowed. “They weren’t real, Aedric.”