Page 114 of The Blood Rites

Atheron leans in, his voice low. “The quiet ones are usually the ones worth watching.” He flicks a glance at me. “Isn’t that right?”

He turns to leave, but Kael stops him with a word.

“Coward,” Kael says, soft as a curse.

Atheron pauses mid-stride, then pivots, face serene except for a single twitch of his lip, like a snarl kept leashed. “Do you have something to say to me, Prince?”

Kael doesn’t blink. “You only fight when the odds are in your favour. I’m not impressed.”

Atheron bares his teeth. “Well, perhaps I’ll just have to kill you next. Perhaps I’ll make you watch, Luceris. To prove a point. Would you like that?”

He looks at me, eyes burning. “The light trial is usually third,” he says, his voice turning sweet. “Let’s hope the Mother Shard follows tradition. Your darling prince will be ripe for the picking then.”

He sweeps away, Maleiros and Serraith in tow.

Kael sits back down, this time closer, his knees grazing mine beneath the table. “Don’t let him get to you,” he says, like he’s trying to convince himself.

I want to laugh. “He seems rattled.”

Kael nods, satisfied. “He’s afraid. You humiliated him in front of his dogs. He’ll want to make this personal.”

Eventually, Kael gets up to leave, whispering something to Nyxen before turning to me. “Make sure you eat something.”

I nod, but my appetite is gone.

Callen catches my eye from a table near the wall, Morwen seated beside him, and it’s enough to make me abandon my plate.

She doesn’t notice me at first. She’s staring at her hands, splayed on the table like she’s in prayer.

Callen doesn’t speak when I approach. He only shifts in his chair without looking at me.

Morwen finally glances up, her gaze flat and unmoving. A piece of parchment lies in front of her beside a pale feather shaped like a quill. She writes with no ink in sight, yet words materialise on the page. A gift from the Mother Shard, perhaps? She writes as I sit:

It’s not your fault.

I blink, startled. I want to believe her. I almost do.

She writes again:

Lyssandra was always the bravest of us. They called her the Willing Water back home. The most devout.

I nod, thinking of how little time I had with her, and how completely she had believed.

The feather scratches as she writes more:

But that time has passed. You must focus on your own fate. The water speaks to the children of the sea.

I frown. “What does that mean? Lyssandra said something similar.”

Morwen looks at me, then towards the door. She writes, carefully, her handwriting slow and deliberate:

You and the Shadow. You are bound like the tide. If one goes under, so too does the other.

Callen can’t keep the look of disgust from his face. But Morwen’s eyes shine now. She slides the parchment over to me and points to the next sentence:

The Water Dominion has a name for what you are feeling. They call it the Deep Current. It is the moment before love, when the current begins pulling you somewhere you cannot escape.

She looks at me, her eyes flashing with something between sadness and hope.