Page 267 of Blade of the Nightking

The sliver of magic buried inside his mind would never be released unless we saw this through. Unless I broke this bond. Whatever else Aedric had done, whatever truths still waited for me when he woke, I had done this to him. I had broken his mind, and I couldn't leave him trapped inside it.

But it was more than that now.

I needed the truth.

Not Levinica's truth. Not Rìan's. His. I needed to look Aedric in the eyes and hear what he had done from his own mouth. I needed to know whether he could give me that much, at least, or whether every good thing I’d once believed about him had been another lie.

And I couldn't have those answers while a piece of Rìan’s magic held his mind captive.

Still, standing on the threshold of finally setting him free, some traitorous part of me balked. A trapped, desperate beast clawed against my ribs, constricting my chest until every breath came shallow and strained.

Rìan searched my face, his features drawn with grim resolve, as though he already knew how this would end and had resigned himself to it. Yet his eyes held something softer. Something unbearably complicated.

He held out his hand, palm up.

An offering.

An inevitability.

Something pulled painfully inside me.

With a shaking hand, I drew the bone knife from its sheath.

I took Rìan's hand in mine. It dwarfed my own, his fingers long and elegant despite the rough calluses marking his palm. He gave a single, curt nod. Go on.

In one smooth motion, I sliced. Blood welled instantly, bright against his skin, but he didn't so much as flinch. His gaze never left my face. Patient. Waiting.

Quickly, I turned the blade and drew its blood-tinged edge across my own palm. I barely felt it.

Before I could even think, he took my hand in his. His fingers closed around mine, strong yet impossibly gentle, as though he were holding something precious and breakable. Blood laced hotly between our joined hands, slipping over our wrists to patter softly into the sand at our feet. His thumb brushed across the back of my knuckles, so lightly I almost thought I'd imagined it.

Together, we lifted our clasped hands over the open mouth of the second well. The first drop of our mingled blood slipped between our fingers and disappeared into the depths.

It happened quickly.

I felt it just as I had the first time—an immense pressure rising from below, as though something colossal had begun to stir beneath us. An unseen force fused our hands together, blood slipping between them now in crimson ribbons, feeding the ancient magic lurking within the Gate.

Shadows belched upward from the mouth of the well, rising like smoke from a chimney, darker than night itself. They erupted around us in a violent wind that lashed my hair across my face and swallowed the chamber in a single breath. The walls vanished. The eight-pointed star. The well.

The metallic shriek of it drove through my skull, reverberating deep in my bones.

Then, suddenly, everything fell silent. We stood beneath a starless sky, nothing left in all the world except Rìan and me, our blood-slicked hands still outstretched. The only sound was our ragged breathing as we waited. And waited.

A strong hand skimmed slowly up my bare thigh.

I gasped.

It wasn't real. It couldn’t be. I knew I was clothed. I could still see the sleeves covering my arms, feel my trousers secure around my waist. Yet the phantom touch traced across my skin, warm and impossibly intimate, as though my clothes weren’t there at all. Fingertips glided higher until they settled at the crest of my thigh, coaxing my legs apart with gentle insistence.

I looked up at Rìan, panic clawing through me, and froze.

His outline wavered before my eyes. A second figure shimmered faintly beneath it, ghostlike and insubstantial. A bare chest. Broad shoulders. It was only a fleeting overlay, there one moment and gone the next. And yet the touch…

A mouth found the curve of my neck. Soft lips brushed upward beneath my ear with exquisite tenderness, and desire crashed over me suddenly in a dizzying wave, washing away all reason and thought.

Across from me, Rìan had gone utterly still. His silver-flecked stare remained fixed on mine, but it had lost its focus, his eyes seeming to look beyond me, through me, into something only he could see. His breathing roughened.

My hand remained locked in his above the well, yet another part of me felt my fingers threading through thick, impossibly soft hair, my hands cradling a face I couldn’t quite see even as it drew closer.