Page 23 of The Shattered Rite (The Sightless Prophecy Trilogy #1)

“A blade remembers the hand that forged it, even when it’s forgotten what it was meant to protect.” —Virellen of the Black Sigil

There are worse things than being born a weapon.

Malric should not have lingered.

The maze breathed and bent around him, a living thing of stone and shadow. Most walked it with dread. He walked it like memory, silent and sure, his boots never scuffing, his breath too shallow to echo.

He was made for places like this.

But tonight… something pressed against that certainty. A presence, still near. A pull.

Eliryn.

The dragonrider.

His gloved fingers drifted to the ring on his right hand—the blood-forged signet that marked him as the king’s blade. Its weight was constant, but tonight, it felt heavier. He twisted it once, feeling the cold bite of its magic brush against his pulse.

It knows, he thought grimly. It knows what it was made to kill.

And perhaps… it already recognized her.

She shouldn’t have unsettled him. And yet… her presence lingered longer than he liked. Too long.

He hated thinking about her.

And still, he thought of the way her voice had sounded when she said his name. How her injuries hadn’t made her smaller. How the marks on her skin caught the light like they belonged there. Like they were meant for her.

His hands flexed without him realizing.

Malric stopped beneath a crumbling arch, one hand braced on the stone, steadying himself. He knew this sensation. Knew how it started: the mind looping back, caught on a problem it couldn’t solve. Obsession, his father would say, is failure disguised as discipline.

But Eliryn wasn’t just a problem.

She was becoming a fixation.

And fixations were dangerous.

For everyone involved.

He knew that.

And yet, when he closed his eyes, it wasn’t her power he remembered. It was her.

The way she stood after exhaustion should have broken her. The faint tilt of her head when she listened like she didn’t trust what her own eyes told her. The brief, unguarded smile she gave him in the library, like she didn’t know he was supposed to kill her.

Her smile haunted him more than her magic.

He hated that.

Some part of him wondered—darkly, quietly—what it would feel like to be the last thing she trusted. To be the one she looked to, when the others fled.

That was the part of himself he knew better than to listen to.

Because when Malric fixated on something… he never let it go.

Not until it bled.

Not until it broke.

He forced himself to move, sinking to one knee and testing the ground with his palm. Warm. Still shifting. The trial was awake, watching, weighing every step.

He should be moving. But his hand lingered against the earth, and his thoughts strayed back.

To her.

The way she’d held the sword, awkward but unafraid. The way she asked questions no one else dared. The way she didn’t flinch when she thought he was an illusion, didn’t run when she realized he wasn’t.

She didn’t know it, but that moment might have already changed her fate.

Or his.

Malric cursed under his breath and pulled out the old leather-bound book he always carried. The pages were filled with ink and secrets, scraps of overheard prophecy, ciphered maps, old marks of dead kings, and sketches from his own hand. Symbols of flame. A dragon’s eye cradled by a crescent moon.

He flipped to the newest page. At the top, in neat, sharp ink: The Dragonrider. Eliryn. Subject marked by prophecy. Eyes like storm clouds before the storm.

He paused.

Then added, almost reluctantly: Not what I expected.

Malric leaned back against the stone, letting his head rest for a breath. His muscles ached beneath the stillness, trained to stay coiled, never softened. But lately… something had cracked his indifference.

It had been years since anyone had looked at him without fear. Longer since someone saw him without knowing what he was.

She had. Somehow.

Even if she didn’t yet understand what she was looking at.

His fingers drifted to the scar under his chin, the one no armor could cover. It hadn’t healed right. Left by someone he’d trusted once, an echo of a lesson burned deep.

Don’t hesitate.

But Eliryn made him hesitate.

And that alone made her dangerous.

Not because of her growing power.

Because of what she might make him remember. The boy before the blade. The name before the silence. The man who might have chosen another path, if someone—anyone—had given him the chance.

He stood quickly, shoving the book back into his cloak. Too much stillness in this place invited regret. He couldn’t afford that. Not yet.

The next corridor was narrowing, darkening. A change was coming.

Before he vanished again, he looked once more in the direction she’d gone. Not with cold calculation this time, but something like… reluctant hope.

“I’ve hidden the monster—for now. But I can't wait for the moment she meets him.”

Then, without sound or farewell, Malric melted into the dark again, just another shadow among many.

But his thoughts lingered behind like footsteps he hadn’t meant to leave.