Page 47 of The Shattered Rite
He found a slit window, and leaned till the night put cold fingers on his eyes. The city lay quiet in the way of places that have learned to lower their voices. Beyond the walls, campfires studded the dark. Pilgrims, profiteers, the devout, the curious, the wolves in cloaks. The trials would end when everyonegathered; the sovereign meant to give them a show to watch. He meant that show to beher.
The thought didn’t sit right.
He went back to the door. He didn’t mean to, but he found himself there all the same.
The corridor wasn’t the same corridor anymore. Torches had moved by an inch. The air had the fit of a room that sits with its hands in its lap and pretends not to listen. He stood before the seam again and let his palm hover to the edge of burning. He could die here without sound. The knowledge didn’t scare him. It made something else turn over in his chest.
“Later,” he breathed. The ward made a sound too small for ears, like glass deciding not to crack.
He pictured her again, the way thieves catalog what they mean to take. The tilt of her chin when she pretended she wasn't afraid. The cadence of her walk. The cut on her forearm she held closed by force of will, not cloth. The heat that lifted from her skin when the pendant throbbed. The way people looked at her, away, and then back as if wanting to be punished by their own curiosity.
Malric wasn't one to pray. He did, however, for the first time in a long time,hope. For clarity.
The dragon’s presence feathered through him one last time.
He flexed his hand, shook the ward out of his bones, and let the castle swallow him.
By the time he reached an outer hall where wind found arrow slits and hunted his face, the night had thinned to bruise-blue. Somewhere a bell tried for the hour and quit. He leaned his head to the stone.
He hadn’t planned for her. He had planned for beasts, for fools, for royals with brave mouths and cowards with brave clothes. For trials that let men pretend they earned what godsassigned. Not for a girl who refused to be ordinary when the world demanded she be useful and quiet.
He did not know her name. He did not want it.
But he would learn it anyway.
From a guard’s careless mouth.
From a steward’s ledger.
From a man begging for his life who thought gossip could buy him breath.
If he had to, he’d take it from the air itself.
He would decide how long she lived. How close she came to breaking. How much the sovereign would get of what he wanted. How much Malric would keep for himself.
He’d been sent to be her ending.
Watching the dark bleed toward morning, Malric accepted something he shouldn’t: he didn’t want to be her ending. He wanted to be the knife she chose. Or the hand that taught her how to sharpen.
He pushed off the wall and moved into the hour when men sleep poorly and lies sound most like truths. The sovereign would ask for a report. Malric would give him one—with all the pieces, except the ones that mattered.
He had time now. Time to watch. Time to decide.
He wasn't used to wanting things.
But he wanted to see her again.
He wanted to know what came next.
Even if it was her death.
Especially if it was by his hand.
Because someone like her… couldn't belong to anyone else.
Not even herself.
And as he melted back into the shadows of the castle's spine, Malric finally understood:
