Page 64 of Blade of the Nightking

She squinted into the dimness, her gaze unfocused. “Dannis?” I stiffened as she drew close enough for me to see her properly.

Her ink-dark hair hung loose and tangled about her face, half undone, and what I’d taken for robes was nothing more than a thin, gauzy nightdress, ill-fitting and carelessly arranged, the pale angles of her body too visible beneath the fabric. Hamish averted his eyes at once, but she seemed utterly unaware of her state.

She stopped a few paces away, confusion pulling her delicate features tight. “Dannis?” she said again, less certain now.

Her eyes were dark and hollow, glazed as though whatever part of her that should have been present had slipped just out of reach. Her face was all sharp lines where there should have been softness, her cheekbones pronounced. Deep furrows marked the corners of her mouth and the space between her brows. At her chest, one hand clutched a necklace so tightly the pendant disappeared entirely within her fist.

Hamish bowed deeply, though his eyes never left her. “Lady Levinica,” he said again.

I attempted a curtsy beside him, unease settling deeper in my chest.

She felt… wrong.

Not entirely here. Not entirely gone. Something in between.

“Have you seen him?” she whispered, and her eyes welled with tears. Hamish didn’t respond, but his shoulders tensed. “Please—where is he?”

I swallowed. “Who?”

She scanned the burned shelves before returning to me. “He loves to read. He loves his uncle’s library. I thought I saw him come in here.” She tucked her pendant back underneath the collar of her nightdress and patted the bulge, a gesture so loving that it was almost disturbing.

“No, my Lady,” I said carefully. Did she not see the library as it was now, but as it had been? Not in ruin, but in all its splendor and former glory? “There’s no one here but us.”

She made a strangled sound in her throat. “Dannis!” she cried, thin and reedy. “Dannis!”

“Let’s go, Elowen.” Hamish reached for me again, but I pulled free of him, taking a step closer to the anxious female before me.

“Who’s Dannis?” I asked.

“Elowen—” Hamish’s warning came low and edged, but I ignored him.

Her eyes snapped back to mine, and the despair in them hit me like a blow. “My son,” she whimpered, the single word breaking apart as it left her lips.

Something inside her gave way. A keening wail tore from her throat, raw enough to make every hair on my arms stand on end. She collapsed to her knees, a cloud of soot billowing up around her, her slight frame folding in on itself as the sound of her grief deepened, her shoulders shaking with it.

Before I could think better of it, I dropped in front of her, the distance between us closing without hesitation.

“It's alright.” My hand lifted of its own accord, hovering uncertainly between us. “We can look for him.”

“Elowen.” Hamish warned. “Do not get any nearer.”

She lifted her head, peering at me through her fingers, her breath hitching.

“My son… gone,” she whispered. “Taken.”

“Taken?”

Her expression twisted, her lips pulling back from her teeth as something darker moved through her. “Fire and flames,” she rasped. “Lord of light—lord of hell.”

Her words struck something loose inside me.

The boy from Rìan's memory. Bloodied. Screaming.

Rìan standing over Aedric, rifling through his memories, hunting for something.

No. Not something. Someone.

Dannis? Had Rìan been looking for Levinica's son?