Page 134 of The Shattered Rite
Malric’s jaw locked until it ached.
“You know your task.”
Malric bowed his head. Shallow. Sharp. Controlled.
Then he turned and walked. Step after step. Down the stone corridor. Toward his own chambers.
Eliryn's voice lingered in his mind like a knife still buried.
She said her name like it was a gift.
And now, he was meant to tear her world apart in return.
Malric reached his chambers without memory of the path. His ring burned cold against his skin, blood-forged and heavy, the mark of obedience. His father’s tether.
He braced both hands against the stone wall, breathing hard, muscles coiled tight beneath the black of his robes.
She shouldn’t have mattered.
She shouldn’t still be in his head.
But when she’d said his name—casually, lightly, like she wasn’t terrified—something in him had twisted. Unmoored. He’d told himself it was strategy. Leverage. That making her trust him would make it easier to end her when the time came.
She had looked at him not with fear, not with revulsion, but like she saw someone worth speaking to.
And that… that was the problem.
She was supposed to be a target.
Instead, she was becoming the focus of his fractured mind.
He pressed his forehead to the stone, let the coolness bite into his skin. Control. He needed control.
But when he closed his eyes, all he saw was her. On the rise, hair whipped by the wind, voice raw with exhaustion but still teasing him. Still standing.
She didn’t belong here. In the castle. In his mind.
She was hope wrapped in dragonmarks.
And Malric had been trained to kill hope.
But he didn’t want to.
Not this time.
“Damn you,” he whispered.
He should end it. Now. Sever the thread before it tangled him further.
Instead… he imagined her voice saying his name again.
He shoved away from the wall. Prowled the length of the chamber like a caged animal. His thoughts snarled inside his skull, no longer sharp and clear but circling back, over and over, to her.
He could feel her starting to trust him.
And it felt like poison.
Because if she asked—if she reached for him in earnest—he wasn’t sure he’d be able to refuse her.
