Page 235 of Blade of the Nightking

CHAPTER 50

Ipressed my back to the door and stuffed my fist in my mouth to stop from screaming.

Beyond it, the deliberate scrape of whetstone against steel continued, the rhythmic rasp underscoring the thoughts circling through my mind. The greatest of them all lodged like a knife beneath my ribs.

I couldn’t trust Aedric.

The realization left me suspended in a sickening freefall, grasping for something—anything—to stop my descent. Every moment we'd shared replayed through my mind. What had been truth, and what had been deception?

The apothecarist in Solmire had been only the beginning.

He'd lied about my mother. About Dannis. About the slaughter of the Eidrae.

Even the scars marring his own body suddenly seemed suspect. He always hid them as much as he could, and when he'd first shown them to me, he'd framed them as proof of his unwavering devotion to his mate—wounds earned when my mother had savagely rejected him.

But what if that hadn't been the truth either? What if those scars weren't the marks of steadfast love at all? What if they were the evidence of her fighting him? Of her struggling against the male who’d hunted her people to extinction?

I wanted to vomit.

Every revelation laid another brick between us, a wall rising higher and higher. Could it ever be toppled? Could I ever climb it? And when all this was done, when Aedric's mind was finally his own again... would I even want to?

The infernal scrape, scrape of the whetstone went on and on, grating against my every nerve. Each stroke stripped away another illusion, another comforting lie I'd been wrapped in, honing the truth to an edge sharp enough to cut me open.

Rìan knew.

He knew the answers to every question tormenting me—I was certain of it. He'd been about to tell me more before I'd stopped him. Whatever terrible truths remained waited only a few paces away, beyond the thick wooden door separating us. All I had to do was ask.

But I wouldn't.

Those truths weren't Rìan's to tell—they belonged to Aedric. And after everything he'd taken from me, after every choice he'd made on my behalf, every lie he'd wrapped around me in the name of love, he owed me at least that much.

The truth—from his own lips.

I slid down the length of the door. I drew my knees to my chest, and rested my forehead against them.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

I didn't know how long I remained there.

When the scraping stopped, the silence rang louder than the sound ever had.

A few moments later came the muted tread of footsteps, followed by the quiet click of a door somewhere deeper within the suite. Then the rush of running water.

I drew one trembling breath after another, trying not to think. Trying not to remember. Trying not to break.

This entire journey—the Gates of Othyr, the bargain I'd made with Rìan, every step we'd taken together—had been for Aedric.

To free his mind.

To break the bond.

And yet for the first time since that terrible night in Noctharis, I wondered what I was doing—and why the hell I was doing it.

The bronze-collared servant who knocked briskly at my door the next day carried a stunning ivory gown, courtesy of Thalassis, who’d apparently seen fit to provide us with appropriate attire for the evening's event.