Page 53 of Blade of the Nightking

“You will take a contingent to the Stonelands. Choose those strongest in channeling. Assist the Court of Stone in reinforcing their defenses.” His voice cooled. “And observe. Determine which daughter would best serve as an ally… and strengthen her claim.”

“I shall depart immediately,” Sairus said with a shallow bow.

He turned toward the door, pausing only once to glance back, eyes gleaming. “Safe travels, my Lord.”

Aedric gave a short nod. Sairus left.

Aedric turned to Calantha. “Keep him in line.”

“Yes, cousin.” For all her confidence, I caught the flicker of hesitation as she bit her lip. Her father was the only one who ever unsettled her. That alone was enough to make me queasy.

“What about us?” Malec asked, gesturing to himself and Errol.

“Do as you always do,” Aedric said with a dismissive wave. “Fight. Drink. Whore.” A faint smirk touched his mouth. “Listen for dissent—and remove it.”

“We always get the hard ones, don’t we?” Malec grinned, elbowing Errol in the ribs.

“I thought you preferred the hard ones,” Errol shot back.

Laughter rippled through the room.

They were strangers.

They looked the same—the same people I’d laughed with, trusted, lived beside—and yet something had shifted. But it was as though, when the Veil fell, so too had whatever illusion I’d been clinging to. The warmth I’d once seen in them… the kindness… the sense of belonging I’d found in their company… it all felt thinner now. False.

Now, when I looked at them, I saw something else. Something I didn’t like. And I didn’t know if that change was in them—or in me.

It was Dheren. It had to be. The endless dark pressing in on all sides, warping everything it touched, until every pool of shadow became a lurking shape if you looked at it long enough. Darkness had a way of bending things.

More than ever, I wanted out. Out from beneath the earth. Out of this place.

Maybe when this was over—when the bond was broken, when the nightmare finally ended—I would see things differently again. Maybe the world would soften, brighten, and I would remember what it had been like when I first met them, back in Solmire.

When things had been lighter. When I had believed in them.

I found myself yearning for tomorrow to come.

Maybe when I saw the sun again…

I would remember how to laugh.

CHAPTER 11

Another chamber had been prepared for us to skeld the following evening.

The Great Hall remained crowded with refugees who’d escaped Solmire before the city burned. Some had been healed. Many more had not survived their injuries, the damage left by dragonfire too catastrophic to mend.

The hearth in this chamber was smaller than the others, and plainer, though still large enough to accommodate the four of us: Aedric, Hamish, Veylan, and me.

Veylan had been bound in iron. A thick collar encircled his throat, heavy cuffs biting into his wrists as Hamish stood behind him, chains wound tightly through one hand. Veylan slumped where he knelt at Hamish’s feet, shoulders bowed, his breath shallow and uneven. Standing so close, I could smell the faint, sickening char of his flesh beneath the iron. Each breath pulled memory with it. My own skin sizzling beneath those same cuffs. The helplessness. The pain.

“He’s dangerous,” Aedric said coldly when I’d timidly suggested removing the restraints. “Clever. If we give him even the smallest opening, he’ll take it. His shadows could call to Rìan if he’s left unbound.”

But the shadows were gone now. Dragged inward. Buried beneath his skin.

Even the shifting tattoos that marked him had dulled, the restless ink faded to something faint and strangely lifeless. I found I could barely look at them anymore. Not now that I knew mine—like his—marked a bargain struck with the enemy.

At least mine was merciful—appearing only rarely, fading almost as quickly as it came.