Page 216 of The Crown’s Temptation

The Bloodhaven

NOX

Seven Years Ago

Two years in Morrath and she still hasn't forgiven anyone for it. The palace that taught her Morrath was a kingdom of monsters. The tutors who nodded solemnly over maps they'd never seen. Ryaran, who might have told her, and who had the poor manners to die first.

She went into the pit expecting death. Instead she was hungry.

"She knew," Axar says. "She would have told you eventually."

"How convenient for everyone."

He lets it pass. He never wastes words trying to improve reality, which is the single best thing about him.

"Do you know what a feeder can do to a Yorali king?"

"No."

"Compel him."

She lets that sit.

Sometimes. Briefly. At a price. But enough that Orsin would have chained one beneath his throne if he'd ever gotten his hands on it, and enough that her ignorance is the only reason she ever walked out of that palace.

Nox laughs, and it comes out ugly.

"So my choices were to become my father's favorite weapon, or my father's greatest fear." She counts them off anyway, because they deserve the ceremony. "Neither of those lasts long."

"No."

"Then I suppose I should thank her for dying."

"You should thank her for the shielding," Axar says. "The rest was luck."

Life in Morrath falls into routine. Learn, feed, fight, sleep, repeat. She becomes very good at surviving, good enough that it starts to feel suspiciously like living, and she dislikes that intensely. Living suggests permanence, and she intends to outlast Orsin of Yorali by about an hour.

Then the Witchward finds Ryaran's daughter.

Alive. Veiled. Hungry. Small enough that every room looks borrowed around her. Hands on her that have no business anywhere near her.

Nox watches without blinking, and the witches take the silence for indifference.

It's arithmetic. Distance, guards, escape, power, all of it weighed against everything that girl is standing in the middle of.

She comes up short. Everything she has comes up short.

When the vision ends she puts another coin on the table.

"Where does one become stronger?"

The oldest witch finally looks at her.

"Bloodhaven."

“Absolutely not,” Axar says when she asks him about it.

"You have been a feeder for seconds."