Page 42 of Blade of the Nightking

"My Lord," he drawled, dipping his head in a perfunctory show of respect. "I do hope I'm not interrupting⁠—"

"You're not," Aedric clipped. His hand closed firmly around my arm, drawing me away from Hamish's side. I resisted the sudden urge to pull away.

Sairus noticed. His hawk-like gaze landed on Aedric's possessive grip before sliding to Hamish, where it rested for a long, assessing moment. One corner of his mouth lifted almost imperceptibly.

With a quiet sniff, he smoothed an invisible crease from his sleeve and folded his hands neatly before him. "I have news, my Lord. News I wished to deliver personally."

"Out with it then. I haven't got all day."

Sairus's lips thinned at the dismissal. "Our scouts caught a dog sniffing around our borders."

Aedric scoffed. “A dog? You came all the way up to my chambers for a dog?”

“Ah,” Sairus said pleasantly, lifting a finger, “but this is no ordinary dog.” He savored the moment. “This one seems to have defected from the Court of Dusk the moment it caught the scent of its Dark Prince’s return on the wind. A certain… Shaedr-Kyn you know rather well.”

I frowned at the unfamiliar word.

But Aedric went very still. “Where is he?”

“In the dungeons,” Sairus said, gesturing vaguely down the corridor. He turned his attention to me, and a slow, oily smirk slid across his face. “I understand he's a close friend of yours, Elowen. Though, as we all know, certain friendships have a way of becoming... poisoned.”

His smile widened.

I gasped, my hand flying to my mouth.

No. No, it couldn’t be.

But the cold, set hardness in Aedric’s face told me everything.

They’d captured Veylan.

CHAPTER 9

We moved deeper and deeper through the passageways.

I was no longer certain we were even inside the fortress of Dheren. The walls had given way to packed earth, sloping downward at an angle that made my stomach clench. Dirt pressed in on all sides, held back only by rough-hewn struts.

The silence was broken only by the faint scratching within the walls, and the occasional muffled sob or low moan. Prisoners.

We were forced into single file. The males, too tall for the space, dipped their heads as they moved, shoulders brushing dirt on either side. Other passages branched off into darkness as we passed them, a sprawling maze beneath the ground. The thought came unbidden that we were no better than vermin, tunneling beneath the world.

Panic gripped me. A thin, broken sound slipped from my throat, and my feet locked in place.

I couldn’t do this. The thought of being buried alive, trapped so far beneath the earth, pressed down on my chest. A steady, reassuring hand settled against my upper back, urging gently. Hamish.

It didn’t help. My legs wouldn’t move.

The line ahead of me stopped. Aedric shifted carefully in the narrow space and reached back, his hand finding mine.

“Not much farther,” he said. “I promise.”

I grabbed hold of him, fingers threading tightly with his, and forced myself forward. Hamish’s touch withdrew.

Finally, we stopped short.

The passage simply ended, dirt pressed flat and final before us. I peered around Aedric to see. The flames the guards carried threw light across a wall of dirt. Symbols had been etched into it, the grooves filled with a glistening redness that made my stomach twist uncomfortably. I prayed it wasn’t blood, even though I already suspected it was. And it was fresh.

From ahead, Sairus spoke without turning.