Page 7 of Blade of the Nightking

The words ricocheted through my mind like a stone thrown into a deep cavern.

“I know,” I croaked.

Aedric’s head snapped toward me, a frown cutting across his face. “Know what?”

Hadn’t he just spoken? The thoughts wavered, muddled.

“Dying...”

“Don’t say that.” He said sharply. “I forbid you to say that.”

He looked up toward the sky, now almost fully veiled in gloom. The clouds above had thickened, smothering the coming night.

Shivers tore through me, despite the residual heat still devouring my body. I wheezed, each breath smaller than the last, sounding like air squeezed from a failing bellows. And yet I felt calm now—strangely, impossibly calm. Minutes. That was all I had. I knew it. And Aedric, though he fought it, had begun to know it too.

There was so much I wanted to say. That was my only regret. All the words I’d tried to speak earlier–words that mattered—were trapped now, heavy and useless in my throat. He would never hear them. I just hoped that somehow, deep down, he already knew. Knew what he meant to me. Knew that my heart had kept beating for him long after my body had given up. Knew that I had held on through this agony for his sake.

His grief shifted suddenly, igniting into something manic and explosive. Fury ripped through him with no warning, as unpredictable as flame itself. He threw back his head and roared into the sky. Roared as if the heavens could be shaken into answering. Roared with every ounce of rage and helpless sorrow tearing through him.

He yelled until his voice frayed into silence. Then I heard him sniff hard, heard the rough whisper of fabric as he moved. A moment later, warmth pressed gently along my right side. He’d lain down beside me, our shoulders touching lightly. His fingers found my hand immediately, and curled around it.

He hesitated, as if trying to shape his words before speaking them.

“El—” He drew a long, heavy breath as if gathering himself, then turned toward me. I felt his gaze move over the unburned side of my face, memorizing it, taking in every detail as though committing me to memory for the last time.

“She never escaped,” he said suddenly, the words catching as they left him. “Caer Leahnn. Your mother.”

Above us the heavens were unbearably murky, as though we’d been transported back to the in-between realm of the Moiraithe, the place they had wandered between life and death. What I would have given for a clear night—one where I could see the blinking stars, the swirl of the cosmos. I hadn’t yet learned the constellations on this side of the Veil. The skies were still strange to me here. But stars were stars, no matter the world.

Aedric wet his lips and forced himself onward.

“I told you before—back in the cave, the day we swam there—that Rìan had been seeking her, that she’d fled into the Wildlands to hide.” His hand lifted, hesitated, then brushed a damp curl back from my forehead. “But that… that wasn’t the truth.”

My thoughts were slow and heavy, like wading through a muddy river—yet his words caught me, held me here a moment longer, as though I were a fish snagged on a line. I clung to them instinctively. This was important. I knew it, even through the haze. I had to hold on just a little longer, just long enough to hear what he had to say.

He looked away, fixing on nothing. “I captured her, when… when the other Eidrae were killed.” His eyes closed, as though the memory burned. “She fought me. Your mother was wild, El—like a cornered animal. Snarling. Striking. She wouldn’t listen to reason. Wouldn’t hear that I was trying to protect her.”

He gritted his teeth.

“She wouldn’t forgive me,” he said stiffly. “Not after what I’d… what I’d done.”

He drew in a breath that sounded too shallow, too thin.

“The Full Circle had already convened.” His thumb traced slow, aimless circles on the back of my hand. “The Firstborn were rising against us. The Dark Prince had rallied them together. We were losing. Their magic was stronger—purer than ours. Every projection showed the same outcome. And then Orgilus proposed bargaining with the Moiraithe. A prison realm. A Veil. We all agreed.”

He turned back to me then, eyes dark with memory.

“But I couldn’t let them take her from me.”

His hand rose to the unburned side of my face, fingers trembling as they brushed my cheekbone.

“Hamish,” he said softly. “He was the only one who could touch her without harm. The wards wouldn’t hurt him. Her iron shackles didn’t burn him. So I sent him with her. To the mortal lands.”

He paused before continuing.

“A human lord owed me a favor. His city was safe, out of the way. She was meant to be hidden there until Rìan’s sacrifice was complete.” His breath shuddered. “After the Veil was raised… I meant to reclaim her. I didn’t know the magic would require every Firstborn accounted for. The wards I laid on her, the iron that bound her… it confused the spell. The magic reached for her and found only fragments—her presence, but not her place. It tore through the mortal lands in search of her, rending them from Elantis. The Veil rose fractured. Rìan was bound into his own magic instead of killed. And despite all my cleverness, despite every effort I’d made to keep her, I still lost. Caer Leahnn was gone forever—and I’d doomed her to a realm severed from magic, where she was destined to die.”

His grip tightened around my hand. “I just wanted you to know before—” He stopped, a choked sob tearing out of him. “I just wanted you to know. Everything that happened to the humans… everything that happened to Rìan… the reason the Veil was flawed and Tharnyx found a way to bleed his Infection through… None of that was your mother’s fault. None of it was your fault, El. Not a single part of it.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “It was mine.”