“I said, stop. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Or fall to darkness once more,” the celestial continued. “So will they reclaim the One True Crown, wielding its terrible?—”
“Fuck you! Fuck your prophecy!” Elyria exploded, cutting off Aurelia’s recitation with a scream. Shadows shot in all directions, knocking the pedestal over, the crown bouncing on the floor with a riotous clang before rolling to a stop near Cedric’s body. The sight of it, with its shattered edges and its mocking glint, so close to him—the physical, visceral reminder that his sacrifice had been in vain—drove her into motion. In a heartbeat, she was next to him, one hand pressed gently to his chest as she knelt to snatch the crown up and fling it away.
But again, when she touched the gilded surface, a surge of power shot through her like a bolt of lightning. Raw, pure, overwhelming. Her hand shook, her fingers clenched around the crown. A strangled cry poured from her lips when she realized she couldn’t release it. It was as if the golden spires were fused to her.
Neither could she pull her other hand from Cedric’s body. It was pinned flat against his chest, power surging through her like a conduit.
Magic rippled in her blood, pulsed beneath her skin. She let out a whimper when the dagger lifted from Cedric’s chest, pulled free by the otherworldly power coming from the half-crown.
Life thrummed in her veins. She had never felt anything like this. Nothing could compare. Nothing came close, not even those seconds outside the labyrinth, with the blood of the other champions roaring in her veins, with Cedric directing his magic through her. Then, she’d felt powerful, alive. Like she had every thread of magic at her fingertips, like she could bring it under her command.
This was different. Elyria couldn’t control this magic.
Shewasthis magic.
She was the birth and death of every star, the darkness born in shadow. She was life and she was light.
She knew this light.
A memory pricked at the furthest reaches of Elyria’s mind—blinding white light bursting across a battlefield, a tidal wave of energy rolling through bodies and buildings.
And that’s when she felt it.
Deep behind her ribs, wrapped in her shadows, buried in her grief. A tiny, fragile flicker.
Atug.
Elyria’s breath caught. Her fingers tightened around the metal of the crown, somehow searing and numbing, hot and cold at once. Her shadows stretched out, covering Cedric’s body, dark tendrils weaving around him. Searching. Reaching. Not for a golden thread—that bond was gone, it had snapped when he died—but a tether, spun from the darkest part of her, seeking that whisper of light.
It was here. It had to be.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she leaned closer to him, her whole body shaking under the weight of the celestial force roaring in her veins. “Please,” she begged. “Please.”
And there it was—that flicker, the final ember, the last echo of Cedric’s light, buried deep within him. Elyria grasped it with all that she had, all that she was, and shetugged.
Vaguely, she thought Aurelia might have been speaking—yelling, cursing, screaming—at her. Elyria didn’t hear it. She could feel the magic start to wane, that cold exhaustion spreading in her veins, like the star-blessed power of the crown was making her burn out twice as fast.
She didn’t care. Not as her shadows surged, twining around the pair of them, wrapping the piece of the Crown of Concord in ribbons of black. They encircled that small, fragile flicker inside Cedric, coaxed it, nurtured it, pulled it to the surface.
And just as that coldness spread to her chest, burnout having almost fully consumed her...she felt it.
Not a flicker, but a spark.
A pulse of warmth.
A goldentug.
A gasp of life.
And a beating heart.
55
ABSOLUTION
CEDRIC
