Page 61 of Blade of the Nightking

No voices drifted upward. No merchants crowded the market square. No fishermen hauled in their catches. Boats knocked hollowly together at the docks.

What sort of ruin had the Dark Prince left behind? What had he done to leave scars even centuries couldn’t smooth away?

My gaze drifted toward the door Aedric had disappeared through only moments before, and my heart swelled with pride.

He'd helped free this city. That male—my mate—had liberated an entire Court from the rule of a tyrant. And mere moments ago, he’d been kneeling between my legs, wanting to feast on me.

The thought alone rekindled the warmth he'd left behind, leaving me absurdly eager for his return.

CHAPTER 13

Hamish and I ate breakfast together in silence, attended by servants who moved with quiet efficiency, though their hands betrayed them—cups trembling faintly against saucers, fingers unsteady as they poured. No one lingered longer than necessary. Not a single one of them spoke.

And there were so few of them.

Since arriving, I'd seen only Layne, a scattering of guards, and now these servants. That was all. For a castle of this size, it was unnervingly empty. Nearly as empty as Noctharis itself.

It carried the same quiet sadness as the city. Missing crystal pendants left gaps in the great chandelier overhead. Faded gilding clung to the mouldings, and the great hearth had been rebuilt in mismatched stone, its firebox cracked and blackened beyond use. The grandeur was still there. But it felt diminished somehow, as though the castle had suffered a grievous wound long ago and, though mended, had never quite recovered.

“Where are all the people?” I asked, unable to keep the question to myself. The pretty blonde servant girl filling my water glass straightened abruptly and hurried from the chamber.

Across the table, Hamish’s honey-brown eyes lifted from his spoonful of porridge to settle on me.

I cleared my throat. “The city looks empty.”

Something tightened in his expression. “Hiding.”

“Hiding?” I repeated, certain I’d heard him wrong. “From what?”

“From Aedric.” He returned his attention to his bowl, scraping the last of the oats from the sides.

I blinked. Hiding from Aedric? “What for?”

He chewed and swallowed. “Was it not much the same in Thistra?”

He was right. When Aedric had arrived in Thistra, the streets had emptied. No one had dared venture out. No one had dared so much as light a candle with the Lord of Flame in their Court. I remembered standing at my bedroom window, staring out at the darkened canopy below — usually alive with music and lanternlight, swallowed whole by silence.

“Yes,” I murmured at last. “It was.”

He grunted and reached for his goblet. When he noticed I was finished with my meal, he rose to his feet. “Shall we return to your chambers?”

My heart sank. So much for another walk. The walls he'd lowered in Dheren were firmly back in place.

I pushed my bowl away and stood. “Yes.”

He drew himself up to his full height. “Come, then.”

Hamish didn’t take me back the way we’d come. The corridors widened as we went, the ceilings soaring high overhead, arched and open to the light streaming in through the windows, the sound of the waves a pleasant hush in the background. The stone beneath our feet was scuffed and worn, its surface faded by use, as though thousands had passed this way — yet there was no one. We were alone, our footsteps the only ones echoing through the halls.

We turned a corner, and my gaze snagged on an enormous set of double doors at the far end of the corridor. The wood was black as midnight, veined with silver that wandered through the grain in slow, silent currents. As it moved, branches unfurled into constellations, the crest of a wave dissolved into the wing of a bird, a crescent moon bent into the curve of a flower's petal, each image bleeding so seamlessly into the next that I scarcely noticed the moment it became something else.

It was as though the doors were dreaming.

The bond snapped taut.

Sudden. Violent. As though something at the other end had wrenched it with all its strength.

The breath left my lungs in a sudden whoosh. My hand flew to my chest as my body lurched forward of its own accord, only for Hamish to catch my elbow before I could stumble.