Page 58 of The Shattered Rite
“You remember.”
“I remember thinking you looked like you wanted to be anywhere else.”
“And yet,” he said softly, “I stayed.”
She hesitated. “Why?”
His answer came without pause, smooth as a blade sliding free. “Watching people is what I do.”
A beat.
“And now?”
Now his smile sharpened, not unkind, but not comforting.
“Now I’m interested.”
A pulse of warning lit in her chest. Vaeronth stirred, the bond flaring slightly in her mind.
Easy,she thought to him.He's not threatening us.
Yet,Vaeronth rumbled.
She couldn't argue that.
Instead, she shifted her weight slightly, her tone dry. “Interested in what, exactly?”
“In seeing what you do next.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“Only if you’re predictable.”
She crossed her arms. “Is there a reason you’re talking in riddles? Or do you just like annoying strangers in libraries?”
“I like libraries.” His gaze swept her—slowly. Deliberately.Intimately. “And you don’t feel like a stranger.”
That stopped her.
For a breath.
Then: “If I don’t feel like a stranger, you’ve been too close for too long.”
He laughed. It was low, real, and disturbingly warm. She hated how much she liked the sound of it.
“I’m Malric.”
“And that’s supposed to mean something to me?”
“No,” he said softly. “But it want it to.”
Before she could answer, he flicked two fingers.
The lantern breath shivered. Air folded—no words, no circle, no chalk—and a bookarrivedbetween them, weightless for a heartbeat before settling into his palm. Her runes prickled along her forearms; the pendant warmed as if the room had inhaled.
Records of the Trials: A History of Ascension and Ruin.
He hadn’t even looked at the shelves.
