“Good morning.” A light voice filtered into Cedric’s ears, and he tore his eyes from the row of doors at the back of the room. Zephyr held out a plate of yeast rolls.
“Thank you,” he said, taking one and biting into it for show. Swallowing the hunk of bread was a chore. He didn’t have much of an appetite, not after making such a fool of himself last night.
Satisfied, Zephyr walked away to offer the rolls around the room, gracefully sidestepping Belien when he reached for one.
Kit grinned at the sylvan healer as she grabbed two rolls, along with a pitcher from a nearby table and retreated back to her room.
Cedric watched her go.
Left alone with his fraying thoughts, he could no longer avoid the mental self-flagellation he’d been staving off since last night.
What had he been thinking?
He hadn’t been. That was the only explanation. Or, at least, it wasn’t his brain that had been doing the thinking.
He wanted to punchhimself,the one-track-minded bastard.
Cedric had just been caught so off guard. His thoughts consumed by the memories he’d relived, the feel of the knife slicing through his lip, the fear rooting him in place as he stared at his father’s lifeless body.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Those memories he was more familiar with, the same ones that visited his dreams every so often. But the rest...
His nightmares hadn’t included seeing the intruders searching for something. Hadn’t involved that fourth figure, looming outside. Cedric hadn’t remembered his mother’s final words—ones that he still didn’t understand. And he hadn’t recalled seeing her torn apart by dark magic. He’d just known she died, as if his mind had been trying to protect him from the reality of what he’d witnessed.
Was this why he’d assumed the Revenant’s involvement? As a child, Cedric heard tales of the Revenant’s deadly exploits, of the dark powers that won the Arcanians a war. All children knew the stories.
Cedric’s brow creased. Was it possible that the hatred that had fueled Cedric for the majority of his life, that had pushed him toward the Crucible, had been manufactured by himself?
Lord Church had never said anything to the contrary. Not that theyoften spoke about what happened before Cedric was taken in as a ward of the lord’s estate. But if the lord had known anything more about who was responsible for Cedric’s parents’ murders, he’d never said. He had been perfectly content, in fact, to stoke Cedric’s need for vengeance against the Arcanians—againstthe Revenant.
The infamous Revenant...who was, in reality, a woman like any other. A brash, reckless woman with a reputation so much bigger than her.
Impulsive. Petulant. Maddening.
Beautiful.
He groaned inwardly. He knew how foolish it made him, how disappointed Lord Church would be if he knew what Cedric was thinking. But there was no point denying it. She was a beautiful thing, more so last night than ever before. The way the moonlight caught on her periwinkle hair, making it glow silver...And the vulnerability in her eyes...
It had stirred something in him.
Cedric squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to banish his thoughts—and those jewel-green eyes. This was not a helpful trail of thought to venture down. Dwelling on this wouldn’t get him any closer to his goals. He was just exhausted. He was feeling too much. He was grateful to Elyria for seeing him through the Trial of Spirit, for getting him out. That’s all this was—all it could be.
Because she was right. They were not on the same side. The Arbiter could espouse talk of unity until they were blue in the face, but the bottom line was that only one champion would walk out of the Crucible with the crown in hand.
And that person would be Cedric.
Cedric would have thoughtthe day would move slowly, knowing there was nothing to do other than sit around and “heal”—whatever the Arbiter meant by that. But time moved surprisingly quickly. Leona and Belien seemed to have learned yesterday to stay out of everyone else’s way, so the remaining champions trained and talked and theorized about what the third trial would hold. Even Tenebris Nox seemed to be easing themself out of their self-imposed isolation andinteracting with the rest of the group more.
The weight on Cedric’s chest eased as he sat to the side of the room, watching Nox walk Thraigg and Zephyr through a few nocterrian sparring moves. The dwarf’s eyes went wide when the sylvan spun on him, her dagger in hand. He slid backward, the ornaments in his braided beard jingling.
Cedric chuckled under his breath. Though they were nearly equal in height, the dwarf outweighed the sylvan by at least double. His stout, hardened demeanor and her delicate spryness made them an unlikely pairing, but it seemed as though the events of the Trial of Spirit had bonded them.
Cedric’s eyes drifted toward the closed doors at the back of the room for the fiftieth time that day. He supposed he wasn’t one to talk.
Something glinted in the periphery of his vision, and he turned his head to find Kit leaning against the wall to his right, an apple in her hand. Her wings glittered golden in the setting sunlight that filtered in through the high windows dotting the walls.
She bit into the apple, surveying Cedric with a playful gleam in her mismatched eyes. “She’s fine, you know,” she garbled.
