Page 180 of Blade of the Nightking

My throat burned. Who was this person, standing across from me, holding my hand? This wasn’t the Dark Prince… It couldn’t be.

His lips were slightly parted, his chest rising and falling unevenly, and for perhaps the first time since I’d known him he looked utterly unguarded, exposed.

I didn't want to see him like this. Didn't want to see the heart-wrenching grief etched into the lines of his face. I didn’t want to see the terrible kindness he'd shown Levinica in her last moments—because that kindness demanded something of me in return. It demanded that I acknowledge there was more to him than the monster, more than the villain from the stories, more than the ruthless prince whose cruelty was unmatched, and I found myself shrinking from that realization even as it settled inexorably into place.

I wasn't ready for that.

Gods, I wasn't ready…

The contradiction of it lodged like a splinter beneath my skin.

His eyes searched my face, a faint furrow gathered between his brows at whatever he found there. I realized then that I was crying.

His free hand lifted.

The movement was so slight, so unconscious, that for a heartbeat I wasn't certain he was even aware he'd done it. I could only watch as his fingers rose between us, his gaze following the path of a tear as it slipped slowly down my cheek.

I flinched.

The reaction snapped him back to himself. He froze. His hand stopped mere inches from my skin, suspended between us in the deafening silence.

For a moment neither of us moved. Even the black curls drifting from the well slowed around us, coiling through the silence in slow, watchful spirals, as though the magic itself had stilled to observe whatever fragile, impossible thing had almost passed between us.

Something shuttered behind his eyes. His fingers slowly curled inward and his hand fell back to his side.

And as though the well had been waiting for precisely this moment, the inky magic surged upward around us once more, blanketing stone and light and temple alike as the world lurched so violently that my stomach dropped.

Shapes emerged. The smell of burning pitch and smoke stung my nose as screams and shouted orders rang through the air.

No.

Recognition slammed into me.

Not this. Not here.

Terror flooded my veins. This memory.

And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I drew the bowstring until my shoulder screamed in protest, my breath puffing in the frigid winter air. Below me, the Infected poured from the darkness beyond the walls, silhouettes lurching from the treeline like nightmares given form.

I loosed.

The creature leaping toward a Plague-Hunter dropped bonelessly into the snow.

Another arrow was already in my hand. Then another. And another.

The familiar rhythm seized me as arrows flew from my fingers almost without thought, each one finding its mark somewhere within the tide of Infected. An arrow buried itself in an eye. Another speared through a throat. I didn’t miss.

I never missed.

My gaze found him instinctively amidst the chaos below, found the familiar shape of him through the smoke and snow, the worn cloak whipping around his legs as his iron blade slashed again and again.

No.

Not this.

Not with him watching.