“I’ve done many things in my many years in this world. Not all of them pleasant, not all of them right. But I can tell you that not once have I had any interest in participating in the slaughter of some inconsequential human family.”
She could have been lying.
She was probably lying.
But what if she wasn’t?
Cedric touched a knuckle to the scar at his lip, struggling to keep his expression neutral as his thoughts churned. So what if shewastelling the truth? It didn’t change anything. Didn’t change the fact that he was who he was, and she was one ofthem.All it did was confuse him.
The Revenant as the figurehead he could blame for his pain made sense. Elyria was something else entirely. And that unsettled him deeply.
Despite his best efforts, Cedric’s gaze drifted back to Elyria, Kit, and Zephyr. The sylvan had finished sealing the gash on Elyria’s back and had even healed some of the small wounds he’d noticed on Kit. But from the way the three of them were suddenly radiating tension so thick he could have cut through it with his sword, you would have thought the healing had just begun.
Elyria’s head snapped up and he wasn’t quick enough to look away before her eyes locked with his. She scowled, scrabbling at herpants in a way that made Cedric suddenly feel like he was intruding on something private. And if the defiance, anger, and something Cedric couldn’t place—pain, maybe?—flowing from the fae wasn’t confirmation enough, the blush of embarrassment that began coloring her pale cheeks certainly was.
Cedric felt an unexpected pang of guilt burst in his chest. He averted his eyes, his gaze landing on a crack in the stone wall beside him that was suddenly the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.
His attention could only be deflected for so long, however, and a minute later he found his gaze wandering back to the trio.
The tension in the room ebbed as Kit murmured something to Elyria. Zephyr joined back in their conversation and was showing the two of them some tin she’d pulled from her belt of magical healing tricks. A genuine smile broke out on Elyria’s face as she nodded, transforming it into a somehow even more exquisite version of itself.
The change was so unexpected, Cedric nearly choked on his own breath.
His face screwed up—lips pursing, breath quickening—as warmth blossomed in his chest. Pride. Surely that was what he was feeling. Pride over whatever Zephyr had done to elicit Elyria’s radiant reaction.
He most certainly wasnotreacting to her smile itself.
That was the only thing that made sense. Stopping to help the sylvan healer in the arena had indeed been one of Cedric’s better decisions of late, after all. She really was very good.
Yes, pride. That definitely explained the warm feeling stretching over his ribs. It made absolute sense that pride in his new ally’s healing mastery would strike Cedric utterly senseless.
He refused to dissect the thought further.
And that was fine, because when Cedric tried to locate that beaming smile and the fiery fae it belonged to again, it was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, Elyria’s face was arranged into a sneer so chilling, he thought the temperature in the room might have actually dropped.
What the fuck just happened?
Cedric missed the impetus for the rapid change in her countenance—the woman was bound to give him whiplash—but he didn’t miss the smug look on Belien Larkin’s face as he stared down Elyria.Nor did he miss the low snickers coming from Alden Ashford. And he certainly didn’t miss the way that Zephyr seemed to have suddenly retreated into herself, all traces of the calm confidence she’d exuded while healing Elyria and Kit erased.
Fucking Alden. Something itched at the back of Cedric’s mind, and he suspected he’d made a mistake in sitting with the saint earlier. He’d had hopes of building upon the groundwork of allyship he’d laid back in the camp. But if Alden was aligning with Belien and Leona, he was a lost cause. Cedric would rather take on the rest of the trials alone than get looped in further with that miserable lot.
Convicted, Cedric looked up to see a storm of periwinkle hair stalking toward him.
“You,” Elyria growled, stopping just short of him.
“Me?” Cedric replied. Her fury was nearly as hot as the dragonfyre had been, and he didn’t understand why she aimed it so viciously at him.
“What the quartered hell is your problem?” she demanded.
Cedric’s brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
It took every ounce of will in Cedric’s exhausted body not to roll his eyes. “I promise you, I do not.”
“Then you are a bigger fool than I thought. Hard though that is to imagine.”
