Page 249 of Blade of the Nightking

"What was it like in the Veil?"

His fingers never faltered, continuing their patient, methodical progress as though he hadn't heard me at all. And yet I felt the answer before he spoke it—in the slight tremor in his hands, the subtle roughening of his breathing, the way his entire focus narrowed onto the column at my back like a drowning man fixed on a distant shore

I regretted asking almost immediately. I slid my fingers absently along the bodice of my dress as the silence lengthened, wishing I could pull the question back and swallow it.

"Dark," he said quietly.

The last button slipped free.

I caught the front of my dress before it could fall, clutching the fabric to my chest, but neither of us moved away. The mirror held us both. Here, in the softened reality of its reflection, I could meet his eyes without ever having to face him.

"It was a prison in every sense of the word. My body ceased to exist. My magic was stretched beyond its limits, woven into the Veil itself until all that remained of me was… consciousness."

I remained utterly still, unwilling to risk whatever fragile thing was unfolding between us. I knew, somehow, that these were truths he’d never laid bare to anyone before.

"It tore at me. Constantly. Every moment." He swallowed. "Time... lost all meaning. A heartbeat could last an eternity, while centuries vanished without measure. There was no sun. No sleep. No dreams." His mouth twisted into a bitter line. "No escape."

His chest rose slowly before he released the breath.

"There was only awareness."

The words settled over the room like ash.

"Until one day… there was you." His eyes caught mine and refused to let go. "A spark in an endless night. So impossibly bright that, at first, I convinced myself I'd imagined you. But you came back, again and again."

I fought the burn gathering at the back of my throat, and refused to look away.

"I reached for you every time, but you couldn't see me, couldn't feel me. All I could do was catch the brilliant thread of your magic whenever it brushed against the Veil—searching for a way back, even as mine searched for a way out."

Leaching. I'd watched the mortal lands wither as their magic slowly bled back into Elantis, never realizing my own had also been reaching for it all along. Reaching for the home it remembered—and finding him.

"I knew what you were the moment I felt your magic." His voice iced over. "Knew you'd somehow evaded the Moiraithe. That I was condemned to hang forever between life and death because you alone had escaped it." Loathing thinned his lips, but I knew it wasn't meant for me. “And worse still, I knew who you must belong to.”

A long breath escaped him, carrying the bitterness away with it. His shoulders slackened, something like defeat settling into their broad line.

"But you were the first thing I'd known in an eternity that wasn't darkness."

His hand hovered for the briefest moment before his fingertips traced the bare skin of my back once more, my dress hanging open beneath them like the wilted petals of a flower.

"My only chance at freedom."

He held my gaze.

"So I took it."

I swallowed, fighting the swell of emotion rising inside me.

"Did you know?" After everything he'd just confessed, the question felt impossibly small as it left my lips. "That we would bond?"

He looked at me with such quiet sorrow that I had to resist the impossible urge to turn around. To touch him.

"I suspected it," he said. "And I used you anyway."

His hand slipped from my back, and the loss of it felt like the last sliver of moonlight disappearing behind a cloud. "Is that enough truth for now?"

"Yes,” I whispered.

He nodded once, almost to himself, and stepped back.