“I have barely the comprehension to understand that this ‘power’ came from inside me at all, let alone that it’s something that can evenbecontrolled. You should stay away from me,” Cedric replied, though despite being the one to say the words, something in his chest roiled at the suggestion. He couldn’t find the strength of will to enact it, to put any actual distance between them. Everything in him seemed to be screaming to do the opposite, in fact. So instead of pulling away, he flipped their hands so hers was face up, his fingertips dancing across her palm.
She scoffed. “I’m not afraid of you.”
He looked up from where he’d begun tracing the lines on her hand and met her glowing green stare. “Maybe you should be.”
“Maybe you need to stop being afraid of yourself.” Her gaze was unwavering as she wove her fingers between his. Her voice dropped. “You’re not alone in this. We’re so close, I can feel it. So close to the end. Whatever happens next, we can face it...together.”
Together.
The word was a chorus swelling in his ears, loosening the lingering remnants of whatever had constricted around his heart. For the first time since he woke, he felt like he could take a real breath.
“I’m sor?—”
“I swear to Solaris, Lunara, Gaia, and Noctis alike, Cedric, if you say ‘I’m sorry’one more time...”
He pressed his lips together. “I shall try to apologize less,” he said after a moment, his mouth tipping up sheepishly as he called upon the words they’d exchanged at the beginning of the second trial, “if you promise to try and loosen up a little when the occasion calls for it.”
Elyria’s lips pursed, her cheeks flexing, and Cedric knew she was fighting a laugh. He was very pleased when she lost that fight, a beaming smile overtaking her face. It was like the first rays of sun breaking through an overcast sky.
“That sounds like a losing proposition for us both,” she said, and the lopsided grin playing at the corners of Cedric’s lips bloomed until he found himself laughing.
A true, full-bodied laugh.
Elyria stared at him, the silver flecks in her eyes winking like stars on a windy night. “He laughs! Consider me utterly aghast.” She flexed her bandaged arm as if testing his handiwork, her voice teasing. “Did the fire burn away your broodiness?”
The question was said in jest, an attempt to stretch the lightness that had just finally broken through between them. Cedric knew this. It hit him like a hammer to the chest, nonetheless. A reminder that he had been changing—that he had changed—since being here. Making him question just how much of that change was due to the Crucible, or simply because whatever was in him had been slowly awakening this whole time.
It had haunted him since the moment the fire surged from his body. No, earlier. Since he crawled out of that lake of flame and smoke like he’d been born from it. Maybe since the first time he’d felt that heat coiled in his chest, waiting all along to break free.
His next words came out as a broken whisper. “What is wrong with me?”
Elyria cracked a grin. “Oh, come now, that’s far too easy.” When Cedric didn’t respond, her expression softened. She shifted, straightening her back even as she left their fingers intertwined, their hands laying on the bench between them. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Cedric.”
“It feels like everything that’s happened is my fault,” he said,voice shaking. “It’s my fault you got hurt. It’s my fault Gael died. It’s my fault that?—”
She lifted her other hand, her first finger raised to halt him. A contemplative look crossed her face, as if she was carefully weighing her next words. “I know what it’s like...to carry that ever-present weight of guilt. Of blame. To feel like something inside you is wrong, to let it eat away at you until nothing of you remains but wisps of smoke and a collection of scars.
“I ran from my power for years. Ran from myself. After Evander died, I blamed myself for not being strong enough. For not controlling it. I thought maybe if I’d been stronger, if I hadn’t been so scared of what I could do, he’d still be here.”
She looked across the chamber and met Kit’s eye, a bemused expression on the other fae’s face. “He only did it to help me, you know. Only entered the last Crucible because he thought that with the power of the crown, he might be able to free me from this.” She opened her free hand, and a wisp of shadow danced over the bandage crossing her palm. “That he might finally be able to give me peace.”
Her voice cracked on the last word. Cedric didn’t have a response to share. He also didn’t think she needed one. That this confession was as much for her as it was for him. So, he simply listened, rubbing his thumb in slow circles on the back of her hand as she spoke.
“For twenty-five years, everywhere I looked, all I saw were the places he wasn’t. Every time I walked into a room, every time I turned the corner, my eyes would go to the places I thought I would find him. The places he should have been. Sitting in his favorite chair. Reading a book on his side of the bed. Filling a water basin for the housekeeper with the snap of his fingers. Even things I used to complain about him wasting his time on...”
With a sigh, Elyria closed her hand, snuffing out that wisp of magic. “Things that, now, I would give anything to be ignored for again. If it meant he was still here.”
“He never would have wanted you to stop living, Ellie.” Kit’s voice was low as she crossed the space between them, coming to kneel at Elyria’s side. “And I wish I’d known this was the burden you carried all these years.”
A single tear rolled down Elyria’s pale cheek. Cedric resisted the urge to wipe it away.
“If only you’d endangered your life sooner, we might have had more time to enjoy this,” Elyria said with a choked laugh.
Kit reached out and lightly smacked Elyria’s shoulder. “We’ll have plenty of opportunities to make up for lost time after we get out of here,” she said.
Elyria pulled her hand from Cedric’s to take her friend’s instead. “After,” she said, and his heart clenched all over again.
He wanted to speak, to say something, to acknowledge this strange thread between them. To ask if she felt it too.
