Page 28 of The Shattered Rite (The Sightless Prophecy Trilogy #1)

“Witness is a kind of oath. Be sure you mean it.” —The Quiet Arts

He didn’t watch the door; he watched the way the room changed around her.

Air that smelled of coin and vinegar drew itself straight. Dust hung lower, more obedient. She stood, counted exits, didn’t sway. The marks along her throat answered her breath like a second pulse. Her shoulder—set like something torn and shoved back where it belonged—refused to broadcast the ache.

Then the older warrior: mountain-cut, scar-mapped. Not Malric's problem—until their forearms clasped.

Touch, here, is not courtesy. It’s a claim.

Jealousy flared like a struck match—small, clean. He let it burn to a steady pilot light, the kind that never admits it’s heat.

It should have been his shoulder she measured. His name traded for hers. His steadiness she set her breath to.

But the king liked mirrors.

"Be a shadow," King Thalen had said. " Cull. Watch. Make it look like the trials are working."

If the king truly wanted her destroyed, he’d have risked counterfeit choosing, Malric’s name declared by the Flame, Malric inside the trials at her shoulder. Not this distance. Not this deniability.

Shadows don’t harvest truth. They ration it.

He’d already had to step into her path to make anything real. Their connection crawled. He disliked the pace.

Malric watched as they sat—her blade over her knees, the warrior’s hands loose and ready—and their shoulders touched, stayed. After a few breaths their rhythms matched without conscious thought.

The desire to edit the scene—remove the extra piece, claim the empty inches—moved through him like a cool decision.

He was good at removing.

He was not good at feeling.

The last time he let attention cross into attachment, it ended with a woman dead and a mission compromised.

Not a lover; a lever he told himself he could hold without breaking.

He misjudged. She died because he let himself be distracted; he almost followed her into death because rage makes men stupid.

After that, he learned to starve the part of himself that reached. He learned efficiency like a religion.

This was not efficient.

This was a slow, precise hunger he didn’t intend to starve.

Below, the steward pretended to have competence.

Malric knew he could go to the king with a clean report, telling him about her new ally in the trials. Thalen would praise his observations and leave him where he’d put him: above, outside, hidden.

No.

Malric wanted more.

He would become close to her. He would be the constant she learned to account for, the correction that kept her upright, the edge that taught her where to cut.

Possessiveness isn’t a sin if you’re honest about it. It’s a plan.

He thought about the mask he wore for her. How clean his hands looked when he offered a cloth. How stains always return, no matter how well you wash. He’d told her nothing that was a lie; he’d only withheld details.

I’ve hidden the monster—for now. But he would show her soon.

He wanted that moment. He wanted to stand close enough to measure the change in her eyes when understanding arrived. Some people flinch. Some harden. Some lean in. He wanted to know how she would respond.

He tracked small, useful truths. The way she never sat with her back to a door. The way pain had taught her economy instead of drama. The way her left wrist—the one he’d corrected—held true now, even tired. The way she ignored Whitvale because he was cheaper than her attention.

He imagined the scene rewritten: her breath taking its measure from him; her forearm finding his like the natural place it belonged; her mouth forming his name— Malric —not as a test, but as something you set on a table and intend to keep.

He remembered the first time she’d said it and remembered the cadence.

He wanted it steady, next time. He wanted it warmed.

He stayed where the rafters held him and let the want sharpen instead of spread.

He marked the timing of the guards’ turn by the stutter in their lantern shadows.

He counted the beats between the steward’s bell and the footfalls.

He noted the soot-blackened finger on the third torch to the left—someone had been checking the bracket for a loose pin.

Malric noticed everything , no detail too small.

He would speak to the dragonrider again where light chose no favorites and stone remembered order. He would plant himself at the distance a weapon lives in—closer than a breath. He would give her the choice to step back and measure what that meant or give her judgement as quickly as she thought it.

She shifted, only slightly, and the pendant at her chest warmed in answer. He felt the echo of it the way you feel thunder approach before sound.

The room traced her silhouette.

Malric would soon cast the shadow over it.