Not quite.
The cracked remains of Elyria’s heart plummeted into her stomach as she stood and approached the pedestal, dripping hands fisted at her sides. What sat on the blood-red velvet was somethinglikea crown. A golden crescent, sharp spires topped with radiant gems...that abruptly came to a stop just as it started to curve around.
Incomplete.
A fragment.
“What is this,” Elyria whispered, lifting a red-stained finger as if to take it. She didn’t. She let her hand drop limply back to her side. The very thought of touching the half-crown made this all too real.
She was still hoping that it wasn’t.
“Is this what all this was for?” Her voice was hoarse, hollow. Aurelia had to be listening. “You push us through your trials, watch us fall, break, bleed...and for what? To wield a broken crown? To win half of what was promised?”
“I’m sorry.” The celestial’s voice came from behind, a chorus of whispers on a phantom wind.
Elyria’s head snapped toward the source of the sound, a bitter laugh searing her throat. “You’resorry?”
Aurelia’s hood was down, her aurora-streaked hair shimmering in the starlight. The galaxies in her eyes swirled with something that might have been sorrow as she passed Cedric’s body, and rage lit up Elyria’s chest.
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry,” she spat. “Don’t even look at him.”
“I take no pleasure in what occurred here tonight, Elyria Lightbreaker,” said the celestial, though even as she spoke the words, Elyria could sense a kind of lightness to her voice. A relief that hadn’t been there before.
“Your Crucible has been completed,” Elyria said, eyes narrowing. “Your useless prize won. Are you not free? Your sentence commuted? Your spirit unbound? Let’s get on with it, then. Tell me how to get out of here, how to get back to Kit and the others, and how all of us can leave this place. You can even keep your shattered crown. I don’t want it.”
Aurelia’s answering sigh was a symphony of emotion—longing and resolution and, unfathomably, irritation. But she did not speak, and her refusal to respond had Elyria’s inner shadow rearing back. She was done with this. Done with the Crucible and the celestials’ games. Done with cryptic non-answers and half-truths.
“On with it,” she pressed. “Give me your final instruction, and you can go. Iwantyou to go.”
“Until the One True Crown is claimed, I remain bound to this plane,” said Aurelia.
“Fine, I claim it. Happy?” Elyria flung her hand out to pick up the half-crown. The instant her fingers wrapped around one of its pointed spires, her blood began to sing, her nerves lit on fire.
She gasped, dropping it back on the pillow.
“How?” she hissed. “Whatis?—”
Elyria cradled her hand to her chest, fingers tingling. When she looked down, she saw they were not covered in red anymore. Neither was she. Her pants, her blouse, her vest, previously dark and slick with blood, were pristine. As if the mere act of touching the crown had burned away all evidence of Cedric’s sacrifice.
She blinked, unwrapping the bandage from her arm to see her skin completely healed, all remnants of the burns from when she’d calmed Cedric’s flaming form gone. It made her feel empty. Like the last trace of him had been erased.
The sheer power in that single touch made her dizzy.
“Now you see why only one truly worthy could be allowed this privilege,” Aurelia said.
Black smoke coiled around Elyria’s feet, tendrils of living night snaking up her body. “Privilege? What privilege? To walk alongside death as it comes for the people I care for? You say I must beworthyif I am standing here, buthewas worth more.” She jerked her head toward Cedric’s body, still laid out on the cold amphitheater floor.
“He paid the ultimate price, and it didn’t mean anything in the end. I might be able to leave this place, but it won’t be with the prize we sought.” Her voice cracked, sorrow coming in relentless waves that crested over her broken heart. Cedric, Evander, Gael, Cyren...even Leona and Belien, Paelin and Alden and Brandon and every champion who’d ever been lost to this cruel place, unknowingly in pursuit of a prize that didn’t exist.
That flash of celestial power that Elyria felt was just that—a flash. A taste. A fragment. It wasn’t whole, wasn’t complete. Her shadows closed in around her, wrapping her in a dark cocoon as if trying to shield her from this reality. Elyria couldn’t seal the Chasms with half a crown.
Blinking back tears, she asked, “What was the point of any of it? Why did you tell us the crown awaited when you knew this was all there was?”
“The crown does await,” Aurelia said, starry eyes glazing over. “A shattered crown shall be united, a sundered land restored.”
Elyria’s jaw tensed, her nails carving crescents into her palm from how tightly she clenched her fist. “Stop,” she said. “If I go years without hearing another word of that stars-damned prophecy, it’ll stillbe too soon.”
Aurelia didn’t seem to hear her. Didn’t seem to care. “A severed people shall be made whole.”
