Page 223 of Blade of the Nightking

I stumbled out onto the other side and into the Court of Tides, just as a thought slammed into me with enough force to gut me entirely.

The bone knife.

In the chaos of the fire and the soldiers and Calantha, I’d left it behind.

I spun around so quickly the floors tilted beneath me.

The mirror still stood intact, its surface shivering gently as Rìan stepped through after me. Beyond the glass, I could still see the room we’d fled, but it looked markedly different now than it had only moments before.

Elyndra's magic had failed.

The frozen world we’d left behind had begun moving once more. Flames crawled freely across the carpets, climbing through the doorway and into the chamber.

A strangled sound escaped me as I threw myself back toward the mirror, but Rìan moved faster. Without a word, he drew one of his iron daggers and drove it into the centre of the rippling surface.

The blade struck with a deafening crack.

Fractures exploded outward from the point of impact, racing across the enchanted glass in a web of shimmering lines before the entire mirror shattered. Glass spilled across the floor.

For a brief instant, firelight danced across the scattered shards, each one a tiny window into the burning hellscape we'd left behind. Then, one by one, the reflections sputtered and died.

I sank to my knees amidst the broken glass, staring numbly at the ruined remains of the portal as the full magnitude of my mistake settled over me.

The bone knife had been the key to everything.

To the prophecy.

To the wells.

To breaking the bond.

To Aedric.

And I’d left it behind.

A shadow fell across me, and something landed heavily in my lap. Blinking, I looked down. The familiar bone hilt stared back at me. For a moment, all I could do was gape at the carved eight-pointed star.

Slowly, disbelievingly, I lifted my head.

Rìan stood over me, soot streaking his sweat-damp face, his chest still rising and falling from our sprint through the burning brothel. Exhaustion and fury warred openly across his features, but neither could eclipse the wild intensity burning in his eyes.

"Don't ever let this fucking thing out of your sight again."

CHAPTER 47

Rìan tore the silks from the ceiling in a blur of motion before seizing my arm and dragging me closer.

“What—”

“Shut up,” he snapped.

He started draping the silks around me, winding them over my shoulders and around my body again and again. He pulled one over my head like a hood and his hand grazed my neck as he shoved my hair beneath it. There was no softness to the motion, only stiff-jawed focus, his face so shuttered that I didn’t dare speak again. Something in his expression warned me not to. I caught the scent of burning and my hair felt coarse against my nape. The ends had been singed.

He stepped back to inspect his work before tugging part of the veil across the lower half of my face.

He was making me look like one of Elyndra’s whores.

He snatched up another length of silk and scrubbed the soot from his face before crossing to the door. He pressed an ear against the wood, listening. After a moment, he eased it open just enough to peer into the corridor, then jerked his head for me to follow.