Chapter 93: But She Was Level 71

The Royal Bloodborn looked at him again. "You, on the other hand, have more interesting questions."

"I have several."

"Start with the one that’s been staring at me since you arrived."

Raven narrowed his eyes. "I wasn’t looking at you before you spoke."

"Not with your eyes."

Valeria looked at Raven. "Can she feel Predation?"

"It seems so."

The Bloodborn smiled. "Predation. What an appropriate name."

Raven said nothing. Valeria shifted one step closer to him, a small movement that both Raven and the Bloodborn noticed.

"Who are you?" Raven asked.

"I could ask you the same thing."

"You could."

"And yet you asked first."

Raven waited. She seemed amused that he didn’t rush to fill the silence and finally lowered one leg from the wagon.

"Nyxara."

No surname, no title, nothing else.

Valeria gave a humorless laugh. "I’m sure a Royal Bloodborn traveling alone through Asteria only uses one name."

Nyxara looked at her. "Would five titles make you feel better?"

"I’d feel better knowing which one creates a diplomatic incident when someone has to explain your corpse."

Nyxara’s smile widened considerably. "I like you."

"The feeling isn’t mutual."

Raven intervened before Valeria decided to discover how much blood it took to irritate a Champion. "Nyxara."

Her attention immediately returned to him. "Raven."

He hadn’t given her his name. Roland noticed too, and Valeria stopped smiling.

"How do you know that?"

Nyxara raised a small metal plate.

Raven’s mercenary badge.

His hand went to his belt and found nothing. He hadn’t felt her take it. Neither had Predator’s Instinct, and there were more than twenty-five feet between them.

"Give it back."

Nyxara turned the badge between her fingers. "Level Eleven. Awakened. How disappointing."

Raven didn’t look away. "My badge doesn’t list my Level."

"The badge doesn’t."

Valeria stepped forward again. "Give it back."

"You really are worried about him."

"I’m starting to worry about how interested you are in my concern."

Nyxara tossed the badge. Raven caught it, but he never saw the initial movement of her hand.

That answered one question.

Void Step or physical speed. Possibly both.

He secured the badge again while Nyxara rested an elbow on her knee.

"There. That look again."

"What look?"

"The one a predator gets when it’s wondering whether something will fit in its mouth."

Roland slowly turned toward Raven while Valeria closed her eyes for a second.

"I don’t want to know."

Nyxara showed the slightest hint of fang. "The amusing part is that you aren’t actually thinking about attacking me."

Raven remembered the number.

2.7%.

"That would be stupid."

"But your power wants something from me."

"Yes."

There was no point lying if she could sense it. Nyxara’s violet eyes seemed to brighten slightly.

"What?"

Valeria looked at Raven. He decided the conversation had already crossed enough strange territory that the answer probably couldn’t make it much worse.

"Your Bloodline."

Nyxara went still, then leaned forward with genuine interest. "Can you steal Bloodlines?"

"I don’t know yet."

Predation had detected one. That didn’t mean it could process it, much less that Raven could survive doing so.

"And what did your power tell you when it found me?"

Raven considered leaving out the details, then decided her reaction might be informative. "That you’re a Royal Bloodborn, Level Seventy-One, Champion, with a Bloodline called Night Sovereign and enough high-order Traits that it couldn’t properly analyze two of them."

For the first time, Nyxara stopped smiling.

Not from fear.

Surprise.

Valeria looked at Raven as well. "Your ability learned all of that just by looking at her?"

"Yes."

Nyxara stepped down from the wagon.

She didn’t jump.

One moment she was above them, and the next she was standing roughly twelve feet away. Raven never saw the space between. Predator’s Instinct reacted a fraction too late, and Valeria raised her crimson blades.

"Interesting," Nyxara said.

Raven felt Predation’s hunger intensify. "That’s one word for it."

"And then?"

"Then it recommended that I not try anything."

Nyxara laughed softly. "Your power has better judgment than you do."

"Probably."

"How much risk?"

Raven looked at her. "Two point seven percent chance of surviving forced assimilation."

Nyxara went quiet, then the smile returned much wider than before.

She didn’t look offended that an ability was calculating how to devour her.

She looked delighted.

That was worse.

"Two point seven," she repeated. "Quite optimistic."

"I thought the same thing."

Valeria looked from one of them to the other. "I’d like to point out that this is probably the most disturbing conversation I’ve heard since meeting you, and that includes the time you explained why eating a human heart was technically efficient."

Raven kept watching Nyxara. Predation still wanted her—not sexually, not emotionally, but biologically. His body recognized something inside that woman as an extraordinary concentration of evolutionary potential.

Raven, meanwhile, recognized a Champion capable of stealing his badge without triggering Predator’s Instinct.

The distinction mattered.

Nyxara stepped closer.

Valeria moved immediately, placing herself directly between them.

Nyxara looked at the blood blades, then at Valeria. "If I wanted to hurt him, I already would have."

"That doesn’t improve my opinion of you."

"I wasn’t trying to."

"You seem to have that problem often."

Raven rested a hand on Valeria’s shoulder, not to move her, only to signal that they didn’t need to escalate yet. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye but didn’t lower the weapons.

Nyxara noticed the hand, and her smile changed slightly.

"So you really are worried about him."

Valeria answered without looking away from her. "He’s in my group."

Raven raised an eyebrow. "I thought we were traveling in the same direction."

"This is not the time to argue terminology."

"I only wanted to maintain accuracy."

"Raven."

"Fine."

Nyxara let out a quiet laugh, which seemed to irritate Valeria even more.

Raven studied the Bloodborn again: silver hair, violet eyes, black horns, Champion, ancient Bloodline, a movement ability he couldn’t follow, and a reaction to the idea of being devoured that was considerably less reasonable than expected.

"You’re strange," Raven said.

Nyxara went completely still. Valeria turned her head slightly toward him, while Roland lowered his bow several inches, probably because he needed a moment to process the fact that this had somehow become Raven’s conclusion.

Then Nyxara smiled.

A genuine, dangerously amused smile.

"You just discovered that I’m a Royal Bloodborn Champion, that I could kill you before your sorceress finished forming a lance, and that your own ability wants to devour my Bloodline... and your conclusion is that I’m strange?"

Raven gave a slight shrug. "You seem far too pleased about the part where you’re potential food."

Nyxara laughed, clear and unrestrained. Even Valeria looked briefly thrown off.

"Oh, Raven," Nyxara said. "I think I’m going to enjoy getting to know you."

Valeria answered immediately. "No."

Nyxara finally looked away from Raven to regard her. "I wasn’t asking you."

"That’s exactly why I answered."

Raven rubbed the bridge of his nose.

He had left Mirevale feeling considerably stronger: Level Eleven, Awakened, more mana, better control, more efficient Traits. Less than half a day had passed, and now he was standing in front of a woman sixty Levels higher and two Existence Ranks above him, whose Bloodline made Predation react like a starving animal and who seemed to find the entire situation entertaining.

Raven looked back at the nearest corpse. "Before this conversation gets any worse, I want to know what happened to the caravan."

Nyxara’s smile didn’t disappear. "Then you’ll be staying a little longer."

"Looks like it."

"Good."

Valeria looked at her. "Stop saying it like he just agreed to a date."

Nyxara tilted her head. "Would that bother you?"

The three blood blades around Valeria grew slightly larger.

Raven watched them, then looked at Roland.

The archer slowly exhaled. "Don’t drag me into this."

Raven had no intention of doing so. He already had enough information to recognize a threat.

The problem was that he still didn’t know which of the two women would start first.