Page 95 of Guardian of Exile

“Can I—” Her voice, hoarse from all the screaming, gave out. She tried again. “Can I tell you a secret?” she asked Loclyn, her words the softest of whispers.

"Of course." Loclyn was jubilant, as if mesmerized by her. His right hand clutched the Harvester in his fist, his left rising to cup her face. “Tell me all of your secrets, child.”

She smiled up at him. “Jevryn didn't kill Kiev.” She leapt onto death's ledge, barely sticking the landing. The balm of A-Queltr poured over her, severing the hold of Loclyn's magic, and her body returned fully to her own control. “I did.”

She couldn't pull Alihana, the blade trapped beneath her. She didn’t have to. She punched her fist upward as Constance flowed over her hand and snapped into a gauntlet, blades sprouting between her knuckles. They cut through skin and bone like butter, punching into Loclyn's heart.

His eyes flew wide in surprise. The tentacles of his magic flared outward. They couldn’t reach her through A-Queltr, but they were reaching for anyone else. Her Hidden magic, tortured and bruised from recent misuse, yet answered her call, finding Griff and Kaden and Morgen and Tristen. But Loclyn wasn’t reaching for them. She remembered Alihana saying that he was tied to his Devoted. It was their energy he took, pulling it in by the bucketload, so potent it crackled in the air, but it didn’t matter. She’d pierced his heart, and he was no healer. What he took could have countered a magical attack. It could give him the energy to stave off sleep for days. It could give his body the reserves to heal more quickly on its own. And it kept him alive now past when he should have expired.

But his magic could not repair a ruptured heart. His hands clawed at her fist against his chest, but it was no use. Constance protected her. Loclyn’s attempts grew weaker and weaker, until at last he slumped on top of her. She didn't have the strength to pull Constance free. She certainly didn't have the strength to push Loclyn’s body off.

Her vision wavered, going in and out, in and out. She clung stubbornly to consciousness when she wanted only to give into it. She forced herself to stay awake, because though the Harvester still hung from her neck, it was no longer Hidden, and she didn’t want to find out who it might manage to call in the absence of that Hiding.

She couldn’t physically move to grasp it, but she reached for it with her Hidden magic, her abuse of that power arcing fresh pain through her. But her magic knew the target, had been Hiding it for years. And though reworking the Hiding hurt, it was a simpler task for its familiarity. She tied the last thread on it, and once it was safely Hidden, she let her eyes close and she let herself go.

Or tried to. Someone was shouting in her mind. Someone old and irate, screaming something about a ledge and a path. She couldn’t quite grasp what they were talking about. All she wanted was to sleep. But every time she tried, they raged all the more furiously in her mind.

Beneath her, the floor thrummed, a bone-deep call. That feeling meant something, didn’t it? Her vision flickered in and out. The third time it came back, it was to see someone limping into the room. They had long, tangled black hair, a face covered in cuts, their left eye swollen shut, their robes torn and covered in blood. Their one open eye bore a flaming red iris.

Their identity finally clicked into Nyx’s disjointed brain, as she thought that this was the messiest she had ever seen her father look. She smiled tiredly at him. “Hi, Vasi,” she said weakly, the Salyrian word for “dad” spilling off her tongue. Then her eyes fluttered shut and the physical world faded.

Inside, in A-Queltr, she lost her footing and tumbled off death's ledge.