Page 261 of Blade of the Nightking

He held my gaze. "Do you understand me?"

I nodded. I couldn't have looked away if I'd wanted to. His presence wrapped around me without ever touching me, his warmth enfolding me, the familiar scent of leather and wild wind invading my senses, yet he never crossed that final, impossible distance.

Our breaths mingled in the space between us, the silence stretching until it became something excruciating, the bond pulling taut as a drawn bowstring. His jaw flexed as he bit the inside of his cheek, hard enough to make the muscle jump.

Then, with visible effort, he stepped back.

The sudden distance felt colder than it should have. He turned away so abruptly it was almost jarring.

"Get dressed."

I let out a shaky breath, my head swimming.

"Did..." My voice cracked. I swallowed before trying again. "Did you find it?"

He stood with his back to me for a long moment, silent. Finally, he answered. "Yes." The single word sounded strained, as though he'd had to wrench it from his chest.

"Good," I whispered.

He gave the smallest nod, almost to himself.

"I'll be ready in a few minutes." I crossed toward the bedroom.

As I passed him, I felt his gaze settle on me—heavy enough to set my pulse quickening beneath my skin. I fought the overwhelming urge to turn back.

I didn't dare.

I slipped into the bedroom and eased the door shut behind me.

The latch clicked.

The moment it did, every ounce of strength left my body.

I sagged against the wood, pressing my forehead into my trembling hands and struggled to steady my breathing.

CHAPTER 54

The Tidelands was a wasteland above the sea.

The narrow strip of shoreline looked less like land than something the ocean had reluctantly surrendered. White sand gave way to jagged shelves of black stone veined with salt, while shattered coral jutted from the shoreline in bleached, skeletal fingers. At our backs, stagnant marshes stretched toward the horizon, choked with twisted mangroves whose roots disappeared into dark, brackish pools. The air hummed with insects hidden among the reeds, their maddening drone ever-present beneath the rhythmic hush of the waves.

I took shelter beneath the meagre shade of a bent palm while Rìan perched atop a boulder at the water's edge, fully exposed to the blazing sun, dragging his whetstone down the edge of a dagger for what had to be the hundredth time. As though it could possibly grow any sharper. There was something almost meditative about the ritual, as if honing his blades steadied something deeper within him.

He hadn't spoken to me since we'd left Pelaga.

I'd returned his shirt before we skelded from Thalassis's guest apartments, but within minutes of arriving on the shoreline, he'd peeled it off again.

The heat didn't seem to bother him. While my own skin would have blistered beneath the midday sun, he simply sat there, drinking in the light as he worked. A sheen of sweat glimmered over the muscles of his chest and shoulders, and the damp at his nape had begun to curl the dark strands of his hair. His complexion, so unnaturally pale when I'd first met him, seemed to darken by the minute, warm color blooming across his skin.

Time crawled in the oppressive heat.

The sun was beginning to sink toward the horizon, the tide retreating farther with each passing wave. We were waiting for the waters to recede.

Rìan had searched every cave he could reach along the cliff face. This one had remained submerged, but he hadn't needed to see inside. The wrongness radiating from its depths had told him enough. I could feel it even from here.

Shielding my eyes, I peered upward. The rock was painted chalk-white with bird droppings, cormorants packed shoulder to shoulder across the higher ledges where their crude nests lay.

My magic stirred beneath my skin, a warning prickling at the back of my neck.