“I don’t see through you,” she said, her melodic voice so soft that he thought he might have imagined it. “I just see you.”
Still braced against the wall, Cedric turned his head toward her, thoughts swimming. Two silver-flecked pools of emerald-green beamed at him. He opened his mouth, no idea what in all four hells he was going to say in response to that but feeling strongly like he needed to saysomething.
He was rescued from the task when Thraigg let out a grunt, stood, and lumbered over. “Glad to see ye back on yer feet, lad. Feeling all right?”
“Better.” Cedric rotated his shoulders, testing the feel of his body. “Might even venture to say I’m feeling good.”
A sort of bereftness sunk into him as Elyria pushed off the wall, offered the dwarf a friendly nod, and proceeded to take the spot he’d just vacated by the fire.
“Glad to hear it,” Thraigg said, oblivious to and unaffected by Elyria’s sudden departure. “Think it’ll be much longer before you’re back in fighting shape? Can’t imagine this damned maze will stay idle forever.”
Cedric hated the confirmation that they really were only still here because they’d been waiting on him. He made a mental vow.No longer.
“Right,” he said, jaw tight. “I’m ready when you all are.”
33
MAKING FRIENDS
ELYRIA
Get it the fuck together,Lightbreaker.
Elyria was half a heartbeat from slapping her palm clear across her own cheek in the desperate hope that it might mean smacking some sense into herself. What waswrongwith her?
She could still feel the ghost of her power throbbing in her chest, as if ribbons of shadow were wrapped around her heart. They’d been in place ever since she’d used them to drop Belien Larkin to his death. She didn’t know how to get them to loosen.
Elyria was a killer. Many times over. That was a fact. And despite her best efforts over the decades, killing with the shadow was certainly nothing new.
Killing withhershadow feltdifferent.
It’s not as if the crazed sorcerer didn’t deserve it. He’d careened over the edge of sanity so fast it was a miracle that he didn’t take more of them down with him. She didn’t doubt that the others would have made the same call, the same choice, had they been able to act just a little faster.
But there was still something momentous about the seconds after Belien struck Cedric.
Because when Elyria saw him fall, her power didn’t overtake her. It wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction, the result of shock or self-defense. She wasn’t being ruled by desperation or guided by the whims of her inner darkness.
She was in total control.
It was a purposeful, conscious choice she’d made. To hurt. To kill. To protect.
Her heart had beat an uneven rhythm as she’d wielded her shadow like a deadly rope against Belien with one hand and held onto something else with the other. That golden thread that started somewhere in her chest and led straight to that infuriating, confounding, reckless fool of a knight. A thread that had pulled taut when that crimson lightning bolt struck his heart—strained almost to the point of snapping.
A thread that she refused to let go of.
She would not lethimgo. And after she released Belien into the depths of the labyrinth’s chasm and sealed the ground overtop, she turned all her focus inward andtuggedon that thread.
He would not die today. She would make sure of it.
And so, she did.
Zephyr said she didn’t understand how he had survived the hit, how he hadn’t passed instantly into the Hereafter.
But Elyria knew. Knew that there was somethingotherabout this thing between the two of them. A bond that could have been forged with whatever they went through in the Trial of Spirit or could have simply been placed there by whichever celestial seemed to love fucking with Elyria most. And she couldn’t deny its existence anymore.
Even if she could barely look Cedric in the eye now.
What the fuck is wrong with me?her inner voice reiterated, a haunting, judgmental refrain that accompanied her as she wandered towardthe campfire.
