“That sounds like a losing proposition for us both.”
“On the contrary,” she said, slinging her staff over her shoulder and raising a delicate, pale finger toward the mirror. “Thatis what we call a win-win situ?—”
She brought her finger to the mirror, just the barest touch. It was enough. The surface turned liquid again, gold rippling out from where she made contact.
Cedric heard her sharp intake of breath too late.
Molten gold slid up her wrist, wrapped around her arm,took holdof her.
He lunged, his hand outstretched, trying to grab her, trying to pull her back. He missed her by a heartbeat. His fingers snagged a few long strands of periwinkle hair as the Revenant was sucked into the gilded depths. All that remained was the sharp sounds of wood and metal rattling against rock, as Elyria’s staff and daggers bounced against the floor, discarded.
The rippling gold stilled, hardening back into unyielding stone.
Shit.
Panic gnawed at him. Where had she gone? This couldn’t be how it was supposed to go.
Could it?
It struck him then that perhaps this wasn’t the most terrible thing that could have happened. Was he not just lamenting their being stuckhere together? So why was his pulse racing? Why did his armor suddenly feel too tight?
Cedric slammed his gauntlet-clad fist upon the wall—once, twice. The stone shook. He drew back. “This is your idea of unity, is it?” he yelled into the empty room.
As if in answer, the wall shimmered again, gold light dancing between the intricate swirls of paint.
“Let me in,” he said.
“Are you certain?”a voice replied, echoing in his head. Not the ominous, multi-tonal voice of the Arbiter, but someone else. High pitched. Young. Eerily familiar.
A chill crawled up Cedric’s spine. He shook it off. “Yes,” he said, laying his palm against the stone.
“Even knowing the darkness you must face?”
He swallowed. “I will face whatever the trial demands.”
The voice in his mind hummed with approval as the stone dissolved once more, making way for rippling liquid gold. He held his breath, waiting for the mirror to envelop him the same way it had Elyria.
Nothing happened.
His jaw tightened. He poked at the mirror, rapping his gauntletagainst it. It felt as if he was tapping on glass.
“What is this?” he asked aloud.
“When defenses are raised, the path cannot open. Shed your shields,”crooned the voice in his head,“that you may reveal your truth.”
“What does that—” He looked at himself in the mirror, at the gleaming armor upon his chest, the pauldrons sitting heavy on his shoulders. “You mean that literally, don’t you?”
Cedric could’ve sworn he heard the equivalent of ashruginside his head.
He chewed the inside of his cheek. Elyria hadn’t had to remove any protections. The trial had taken the fae as she was. Granted, the supple leather bodice and breeches that clung to her lithe frame—not that he’d been looking, of course—were certainly not the same as a knight’s armor. But was he supposed to believe that the world’s most defensive, sarcastic woman didn’t have her own kind of shield up?
The gold began to roil—agitated, impatient. Finally, the knight began removing his armor. He slipped off his gauntlets first, flexing his fingers. His cuirass clanged as it hit the ground, an echo of the hollow thud that seemed to beat in Cedric’s chest. He was used to the comforting weight of steel pressed against his heart.
Piece by piece, his armor fell away, and as he unbuckled the final item, a strange lightness settled over him. Not just the physical relief that came with unburdening his body of its heavy protection. Not a sense of freedom, either.
The disquiet of being . . . untethered.
He looked at his golden reflection in the mirror again. No longer was he Sir Cedric Thorne, champion of Kingshelm, ward and vassal of Lord Leviathan Church. He was just...Cedric.
