Page 153 of The Shattered Rite
It was shattering over the terrifying truth:
Blindness made her worse than weak. It made her useless.
And she hated herself for it.
She hadn’t understood—not really—what losing her sight meant. Not until blood had soaked her hands, and Silas’s final breath had rattled against her knee. Not until she'd been helpless to save him. Not until her world narrowed to sound and fear and the sound of her own heart screaming.
She was a liability now.
A danger to herself.
And the next time something came for her—she might die before even realizing a threat was near.
She moved forward, hollow and trembling, hand pressed to the wall. Her dragonblood seemed unimportant now, useless with her as its vessel. Her breaths rasped through her throat, too shallow, too fast.
Vaeronth’s voice pressed steady through the storm inside her skull.
Fifteen paces. Turn left. Archway ahead.
She clung to him. To the words. To anything that wasn’t the silence left behind her.
Then—footsteps.
Light. Deliberate.
She froze.
“Dragonblood?”
Her body jerked.
Whitvale.
She flinched before she even registered him as the owner of the voice.
He stopped short a few paces from her. For once, his voice wasn’t oily with amusement. He sounded... startled. “What in the gods’ name—?”
“I—” Her voice cracked. She couldn’t see him, but she tried to look in the right direction. She tasted blood on the back of her tongue. “I—Silas—someone attacked us.”
She heard him step closer. His voice sharpened. “Your guard? Is he dead?”
She nodded helplessly. “He was attacked. I tried to stop the bleeding, but—I couldn't. He’s gone.”
For the first time since she’d met him, Whitvale didn’t say anything clever.
She felt him circling her, hesitant, assessing.
“You’re blind,” he said softly. Not a question. Not pity, either. Just observation.
She nodded anyways. “I didn’t see who it was. I didn’t—I don’t know who—” Her breath caught, and she took a shaky step back from him. “Why are you even here?”
“I was just walking aimlessly, I wanted time alone to think after our little meeting with King Thalen,” Whitvale said. He sounded winded now, or cautious. “I—I didn’t expect to see you like this.”
Her pulse was a hammer in her throat. She took another step back, nearly slipping in bloody tracks she'd left on the floor.
“Did you know this would happen?” she rasped suddenly.
Whitvale's voice stilled. “What?”
