Page 164 of The Shattered Rite
For the girl who used to believe the world could be kind.
Her body folded forward, shaking. The sob that ripped from her chest wasn’t delicate—it was raw, ugly, the sound of something unraveling.
Malric caught her easily.
Arms around her.
Hands gentle.
Soothing her with the careful touch of someone who knew precisely when to apply pressure, and when to withdraw.
“I know,” he whispered against her hair. “Let it out. It’s all right.”
She buried her face in his shoulder, sobbing harder.
Because surely,surely, he meant it.
Surely, no one pretending could speak so softly. Hold so steadily.
But Vaeronth saw.
And Vaeronth knew.
He watched, unblinking.
Tracking Malric’s heartbeat.
Felt the faint magic threaded through his skin—the wrongness pressing against his senses like smoke slipping through cracks in stone.
Magic designed to silence, to mask.
There’s power around him,Vaeronth rumbled, his voice like stone grinding in her mind.He is not what he seems.
Eliryn couldn’t answer.
She couldn’t hear him clearly anymore.
Not through the storm inside her.
Not through the arms that held her.
Vaeronth curled tighter, helpless in his vigil, forced to watch the predator hold what little remained of his rider’s heart.
And Malric, poised in the perfect quiet of her grief, let his hand drift—once, gently—along her spine.
The way someone would soothe a creature they had already caged.
Interlude 10: Malric
“Mercy is the final kindness a killer offers himself.”—Anonymous Executioner's Notes
She had broken more easily than he expected.
Malric stood in the quiet of her bathing chamber, sleeves rolled neatly past his wrists. Steam coiled around him, lit by the faint glow of the enchanted sconces. The ring on his finger—his tether, his tool—hummed low with power. A quiet, steady thrum. It pressed back against Vaeronth’s senses, dulled the beast’s reach. It had to. Otherwise, Malric wouldn’t be standing here now, watching the girl sway between grief and exhaustion, blind to everything but the lies he wove.
She hadn’t resisted when he guided her from the bed. She hadn’t questioned when he’d stripped her down to her shift with slow, deliberate motions, murmuring soft apologies thatnever reached his eyes. He’d removed her blood-crusted tunic, the trousers stiff with dried sweat, set them aside like ritual offerings. She stood, pale and pliant, bare feet trembling on the stone.
He told himself this was strategy.
