Page 57 of Blade of the Nightking

He turned back toward me. “This,” he said, gesturing around us, “is just fine to you?”

“It’s only a room, Aedric.”

“It’s scarcely better than servants’ quarters!”

He dragged a hand through his hair, leaving the neat arrangement disheveled as he began pacing the length of the sitting area.

Only then did I understand. This wasn’t about the room.

Levinica hadn’t come to greet us—hadn’t even been capable of receiving us. Whatever hope he’d carried here had begun to fray the moment Layne admitted how badly Levinica’s condition had worsened. He was worried—about the vision, about the bond, about whether we’d crossed Elantis only to leave the Dusklands empty-handed.

He stopped abruptly. “I’m going to see Hamish,” he muttered, already turning toward the door. “See what sort of room they gave him.”

I didn’t answer. The door snicked shut behind him.

I stood there for a moment, suddenly uncertain what to do with myself. Alone in this strange place, in a castle that had once belonged to the Dark Prince, my nerves prickled unpleasantly beneath my skin.

Had he ever stood in these rooms?

The thought came unbidden. I pushed it aside and glanced toward the bathing chamber just beyond, already prepared. Steam curled from the surface of the water, the air warm and heavy with a clean, soothing scent. A bath was infinitely more welcome than standing here alone with my thoughts.

Quietly, I undressed and stepped into it.

I sank down, the water closing over my skin, and for a moment I could only sit there, breathing, letting it hold me. The window stood open. Cold air slipped through it, nipping at my damp skin, carrying with it that same pleasant scent of salt and distant flowers.

And now, without glass and stone muffling the sound, I could hear them clearly.

The waves crashed with startling force, far larger than I’d imagined, filling the bathing chamber around me. The thunder of water striking somewhere far below rolled through the night, followed by the long hush afterward, like the breathing of some great unseen beast.

It had to be an ocean.

Father had spoken of the Wildwater sometimes, of his years spent in Greyharbor. Of mudflats jutting from the water like small islands and vast blooms of algae rolling across the surface like a sickness, thick enough in places to look as though one might walk upon them. The smell, too. Rotting fish. Decaying plant life. Days when the wind turned foul enough to make a man heave the contents of his stomach.

Yet even then, when he spoke of it, there had always been something else in his voice—wonder. Always, he returned to the vastness of it. Water stretching farther than the eye could see. Poisoned, perhaps, but marvelous all the same.

I hadn’t been able to imagine it then. Truthfully, I still couldn’t.

Somewhere in the distance, music drifted through the night—the mournful sound of a lone reed instrument weaving softly beneath the endless rush of the sea.

Without warning, something hooked hard beneath my ribs. I jolted upright in the bath, water sloshing hard over the edge. My hand flew to my chest, fingers pressing there as if I could touch whatever thread inside me had tightened so violently.

The bond.

The pull came again—stronger this time, more insistent—dragging at something deep within me, unseen but unmistakable, drawing me toward the door just beyond the bath room as though I’d been caught on a line and was being reeled in.

A presence.

My awareness sharpened.

There was someone just beyond that door.

The air shifted, thickening, the soft warmth of the bath turning stifling as the fine hairs at the back of my neck rose one by one. I stilled, my breath shallow, my gaze fixed on the narrow crack of darkness beneath the door.

No.

My pulse began to hammer, too fast, too loud, pounding in my ears.

No, it couldn’t be⁠—