Page 248 of Blade of the Nightking

I couldn’t quite stop my mouth from curving.

"Truth," I said softly.

He frowned ever so slightly, something almost apprehensive crossing his features. Finally, he inclined his head.

Permission to ask.

I arched a sly brow. "Are you feeling quite well?"

For the briefest instant, he simply looked at me. Then, with a long-suffering sigh, he caught me gently by the shoulders and turned me back around.

"Fucking Ambrosia," he muttered, resuming his task.

I bit the inside of my cheek, fighting the smile threatening to escape.

He eased another button free. A long moment passed.

"Yes," he admitted at last.

The grin I'd been trying so hard to suppress won.

"It's not so bad, is it?" I murmured, more to myself than to him. "Feeling good for a change."

The thought escaped before I even realized I’d been thinking it. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt this light—this unguarded. The last time I'd simply enjoyed existing. Maybe never.

He sighed. "It's definitely a change."

I looked at him, startled. I hadn’t expected him to answer.

His head was bent, a dark lock of hair falling into his eyes as my dress slowly parted beneath his touch. His face remained utterly unreadable.

I'd had almost no glimpse into his inner life. No idea what he was thinking. What he was feeling. Even after Levinica's death, he'd remained impenetrable. It had taken the first Gate forcing me into his memory to understand the depth of his grief—and how fiercely he'd loved his sister.

At the thought of Levinica, sorrow welled up suddenly, threatening to pull me under.

He looked up at once, searching my face, as though he'd felt it. Had he felt it? My blood rushed at the possibility, but then he bent back to his work, his fingers now halfway down my back.

The faint furrow returned to his brow, his expression drifting somewhere far away. The softness I'd glimpsed only moments before vanished like mist, and with it went the man who had so carefully unfastened my gown. In his place stood the sharp-edged villain who’d emerged from the Veil.

The contrast was absurd. The feared Dark Prince, breaker of kingdoms and monsters alike, quietly wrestling with the interminable line of buttons on my dress.

So controlled. So patient. So impossibly… restrained.

I'd mistaken that restraint for a lack of feeling, assuming there was nothing beneath the surface simply because he never allowed it to show. I'd convinced myself his composure meant emptiness, when perhaps it had always been the opposite—that everything lay buried beneath it, held so tightly in check that I'd mistaken silence for absence.

The Ambrosia hadn't changed him. It had simply loosened the grip he kept on himself, revealing, if only for a few precious moments, the male hidden beneath a lifetime of unyielding discipline.

If this was who he was beneath it all, then what had happened to him? What wound had festered so deeply that revenge had become more important than everything else?

I'd accepted that monsters simply existed, never stopping to ask what had made them.

"Rìan," I said gently.

He grunted, but didn't look up.

"Truth," I prompted.

His eyes closed briefly, as though he regretted ever telling me he'd never lie to me. When he opened them again, he gave a curt nod.