Cedric coughed. “How did you get here? How did you get out of...”
“Of my own personally curated nightmare?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not exactly sure. Helpful, I know.”
He snorted in affirmation.
“I just...I was there, I was surrounded by this—I don’t know how to describe it. This nothingness, this?—”
“—void.” The word nearly got stuck in Cedric’s throat.
A quizzical expression flitted over her face. “Yes, exactly. I had just...” She cast her eyes down, and Cedric thought—not for the first time—that she didn’t seem to be doing that well with this whole trust thing either.
“You had just . . . ?” he prompted.
She looked up at him. When her jewel-toned eyes met his, Cedric had to actively work atnottearing his gaze away. They were so full of pain, so full of vulnerability. In them, he saw years of pent-up agony, of loneliness. But there was also the tiniest glimmer of hope. Some new kind of peace he would’ve sworn wasn’t there before.
He didn’t know what to make of it.
Apparently, neither did she. Because the next thing he knew, she was barreling on as if nothing had happened.
“I fell through the void, or it sucked me into it, or something happened. And then I was here. But I’m not sure I’m supposed to be? All I know is I heard—” She cut herself off again.
“You heard me,” Cedric finished for her.
She nodded.
She’d heard him. She’d come for him.
He tried to sidestep how that revelation made him feel.
“Suppose you were able to get back to that void,” Cedric said withforced lightness. “Suppose someone knew where one was around here. Do you think it would carry us out? Take us back?”
“I think it’s as ridiculous and foolhardy a plan as anything else we might come up with.” She grinned. “Let’s give it a shot.”
So, with a final look at the smoldering remnants of his childhood home—the illusion of it, the reality of it—Cedric and Elyria set off into the woods.
Reachingthe wooden bridge didn’t take long.
Working up the courage to jump off it did.
Every cell in Cedric’s body screamed at him not to do it. Told him this wastheabsolute stupidest thing he could do, and four hells, was heactuallycontemplating this, and didn’t he remember that this was still a competition? Shouldn’t he be more suspicious that she was trying to get him to leap off a bridge?
Sweat beaded at his brow, his heart thundering as they stood on the edge of that void, staring into the endless nothing. But ultimately, when Elyria’s hand wrapped around his, when her eyes met his with hope and, yes,trustbeaming from them, Cedric leapt.
25
A GILDED DAGGER
CEDRIC
Magic rippled around Cedric.The dark of the void exploded in a dazzling display of starlight and color as he and Elyria fell. It was like falling through worlds.
And then he was surrounded by stacked stone and closed walls. Torchlight glinted off his armor, neatly stacked in a corner. Their weapons were still propped against the wall.
They were back.
