Page 190 of Blade of the Nightking

I looked away first, dropping my gaze to my hands. My face felt inexplicably warm.

Did I have a fever?

I lifted a hand to my forehead. The cuts across my palms were gone.

My gaze snapped back to his. "You healed me?"

For a moment he said nothing, his lips pressing into a thin line as his attention returned to the rabbit in front of him. The knife resumed its steady motion.

"No," he said at last. "Your magic healed you."

I stared at him blankly. Since when did my magic do anything it was supposed to? It rarely responded when I reached for it, and when it did, it acted entirely on its own terms.

"The Eidrae possessed considerable healing abilities." He hesitated, then cleared his throat. "And your magic... responds to mine."

My cheeks burned. “It does not.”

He paused, the hand holding the knife dropping loosely over his knee as he lifted his gaze to mine. The silver in his eyes brightened, and then I felt it—a careful thread of power unspooling from him. It stopped just short of my skin. Close enough to leave it tingling.

Immediately my magic responded. It stirred deep within me before rushing to meet his in a sweeping tide, slipping beneath my skin with startling eagerness until faint light shimmered along my arms and throat.

"Stop that," I snapped.

His magic withdrew at once, vanishing back beneath his skin so quickly it might never have been there at all.

Mine did not. It remained close to the surface, restless and agitated at the loss, and with it came an uncomfortable awareness of every inch of my own skin.

I hated it. Hated the way my magic reacted to his. Hated the way some traitorous part of me had anticipated its touch. With it this close, squirming just beneath the surface, I tried to seize hold of it, but it thinned like smoke, refusing once again to answer to the person it belonged to. I huffed in frustration.

"You needed to heal," Rìan said at last, turning the knife over in his hands. "Your magic simply needed… encouragement."

I balked.

Rìan tracked my expression. His face darkened. "I didn't touch you, if that's what you're thinking."

My shoulders sagged with relief. That was exactly what I’d been thinking.

I remembered the first time Aedric had pulled my magic forward, remembered the feeling of his power pushing into mine and brushing against my soul as he forced the sleeping parts of me awake. At the time it had felt like a violation, like an assault upon something deeply private. I hadn't understood our bond then, hadn't accepted him as my mate, and the experience had left me furious and wounded, like he’d reached across a boundary he had no right to cross.

“What were my injuries?” I asked quickly. Anything to change the subject.

He didn't look up from his work. “Broken rib. Concussion. The cuts in your hands.”

“Thanks for those,” I muttered, remembering the merciless slice of the knife through my skin, the way he'd seized my hand and forced our joined palms over the well. Yet when the memories had come, his grip had tightened around mine, holding me steady as the horror threatened to pull me under.

Those deaths… Both entirely my fault.

When I looked up, Rìan was already watching me, something unfathomable in his expression.

"I'm sorry about your father."

The words hit me with such force that I simply stared. He was offering me condolences? I couldn't have been more shocked if he’d reached through the fire and slapped me across the face. That, at least, would have been in character for the Dark Prince.

"Thank you," I managed.

I didn't know what else to say. He’d seen the worst of me. The worst thing I’d ever done. I almost preferred an unwanted touch from his magic than to bare myself like that to my enemy.

The thought made me wince. There was something deeply unnerving about what we'd shared at the first Gate of Othyr—I knew something about him no one else did, and he now knew the same of me.