Page 194 of Blade of the Nightking

“When we meet on the battlefield,” I corrected.

As he turned the rabbit again, his face broke into a grin.

It transformed him so completely that for a heartbeat I could only stare. The corners of his eyes creased, sunlight catching in the silver embers there, while a smile curved his mouth and revealed a flash of even white teeth.

My pulse faltered.

The smile didn't diminish him. It didn't soften the hard lines of his face or lessen the danger that seemed woven into every part of him. Instead it sharpened them, revealing something keen and wolfish that made him look devastatingly alive…

His smile widened, and a dimple appeared in one cheek. My stomach promptly dropped somewhere near my boots.

“You’re a good shot,” he admitted.

At the words, whatever foolish marvel had taken hold of me shattered. My father's face rose unbidden in my mind, and the warmth of the moment receded as quickly as it had come.

The familiar ache returned with brutal swiftness. “Not when it mattered.” My gaze fell.

His grin vanished immediately. For a moment he seemed to search for words. Then: “Mistakes happen.”

My surprise jolted me for a moment. I'd expected him to tell me it wasn't my fault, to offer one of the countless platitudes people recited in the face of grief too large to mend.

But he hadn't done that. He didn’t try to blunt the edge of my guilt with a convenient lie, and somehow the honesty of it eased something inside me, loosening the knot lodged deep inside my heart.

Still, I turned a disbelieving look on him. “That's not very comforting.”

For a moment he looked genuinely bothered by that, as though I'd presented him with a problem he didn't know how to solve. He opened his mouth to respond, then thought better of it.

I huffed a laugh at his hesitation. His scowl deepened immediately.

“I learned something about you too,” I pointed out.

He cast me a wary look. “Oh?”

“You’re lethal with a dagger.” I mimed throwing one.

Some of the tension left him at once. He reached for a twig lying near his boot and stripped the bark from it with what looked suspiciously like satisfaction.

“Although,” I lifted a finger, “you didn't hit the Spinner in the heart.” I tapped my shoulder where the dagger had struck.

His face hardened all at once. “I wasn't aiming for its heart.”

Something in his tone made my smile waver.

“I saw the nest of blood midges in the trees.” He tossed the twig onto the coals. “I hit it exactly where I intended.”

His eyes finally lifted to mine, and the feral rage I found there made my blood run cold. It was the kind of fury that lay beneath thought and reason, straining against the chains that normally kept it at bay. “It needed to suffer before it died.”

I gaped at him. The concussion I was fairly certain hadn't healed properly was scrambling my wits. Because by the way he'd said it, by the anger plain on his face, it was almost as though he'd done it… for me.

Completely absurd.

He plucked the second rabbit from the spit and tore off a piece of meat, shoving it into his mouth.

“Why?” I asked tersely. “Why do you even care?”

The hand I'd healed slowly curled into a fist. A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Pain deserves to be returned in kind.”

I chill slid through me. I knew exactly what he was implying—who he was implying. Immediately, my guard slammed back into place, whatever lapse of judgment that had allowed me to relax around Rìan evaporating beneath the stark reminder of who—and what—he truly was. Aedric’s enemy.