Page 181 of Blade of the Nightking

An Infected broke toward him and my arrow took it cleanly through the skull before it could reach him. My father glanced up, finding me immediately atop the wall, and the look he flashed in my direction—the fierce, uncomplicated pride written so plainly across his face—shattered something inside me, splitting my chest wide open all over again.

The formation below broke apart beneath the pressure of the horde, the fighting going frantic, while my quiver grew steadily lighter.

Three arrows…

Two…

My throat tightened.

And then it happened.

My father stumbled, his bad hip seizing beneath him. An Infected launched from the shadows, jaws unhinging and rotten teeth flashing as it aimed for him.

I pulled my last arrow.

I aimed, my fingers numb from the cold, exhaustion creeping in.

No…

This was the moment that replayed in my nightmares, the moment that lurked in the darkest recesses of my mind and festered with time, with each passing day that I was here and he was not.

The distance wasn’t remarkable. The angle uncomplicated. The target exposed, somehow unobstructed by the press of bodies around it.

I exhaled—and loosed. The arrow flew.

And when it sailed harmlessly past and the creature slammed into him a heartbeat later, I felt the wound tear open all over again, fresh and bleeding and every bit as unbearable as it had been that night.

Its teeth sank into the soft flesh between his neck and shoulder. A Plague-Hunter's blade took its head seconds later.

It happened quickly after that.

One moment my father was standing, blood pouring down the front of his leathers, and the next his hand was at his belt, drawing the rusted dagger that had hung at his side for as long as I could remember, a blade I'd never once seen him use.

In one smooth motion, he used it to open his throat.

His blood sprayed through the air in a crimson mist as he collapsed into the snow, staining it red in great spreading blooms.

The scream that tore from my chest was one of horror and failure and grief so enormous it felt as though it might tear me apart from the inside out. Silver light erupted beneath my skin, blazing through my veins and spilling into the world around me as my magic roared awake in answer to my anguish, wild and violent and utterly useless in the face of what I’d done.

I missed. I missed…

His body lay motionless against the snow.

So still. So horribly, impossibly still.

The battlefield dissolved. Midland tore away piece by piece until nothing remained but the cruel agony of loss, as devastating as it had been that night.

That terrible night.

The temple rushed back around me. I swayed, but Rìan's arm circled my waist before I could fall.

The stones swam in and out of focus, the well standing silent behind us while my magic rolled beneath my skin, rising in great crashing waves. Silver-white light spilled from my arms, throat, and face, bright enough to illuminate the ruins around us, yet still I could barely breathe. Despair lodged in my throat so tightly it felt as though it might choke the life from me.

Rìan stood perfectly still, his heavy gaze fixed upon me. There was nowhere left to hide from what he’d witnessed, nowhere left to conceal the ugliest, most shameful wound I carried.

The glow beneath my skin dimmed, fading from a blinding radiance to a distant pulse, steady as starlight lost in an infinite night sky. The darkness began to retreat, the jet-black tendrils curling inward and slipping back into the depths as though the well were drawing a long, slow breath. Only when the last of them had vanished did Rìan seem to remember himself.

His fingers slipped from mine. Abruptly. As though the contact itself had suddenly become unbearable. He took a step backward, then another.