“The only thing,” sneered the innkeeper, and any questions Elyria might have had overwhyCedric had been deemed off-limits would have to be held for another time. Because it turned out that when that bloody whip had bit into Elyria’s skin, her shadow-forged weapon wasn’t the only thing that returned to the ether. The innkeeper’s bindings were also gone, and the second cultist had snatched up the dagger he’d tried to kill Elyria with earlier.
“Motherfuckers...” Cedric said, shoring up his grip on Ashrender’s hilt as the two cultists rushed them.
A growl split the room.
Elyria watched in awe as Sid appeared in midair, a blur of smoke and claws launching from the darkness, latching onto the neck of the innkeeper. The shadowcat crashed into the man with such unholy force that he stumbled straight into the window—no, through it. Glass shattered and wood splintered; the innkeeper released a mangled scream as the two of them fell.
“Sid!” Elyria screamed, just as the sound of a wetwhumpreached her ears. But she couldn’t look to see if Sid was all right. Not with the silencing ward suddenly broken, the room flooding with sound—screams, shouts, clanging steel. Chaos.
Elyria stumbled from the sudden onslaught on her senses, her hand shooting to her temple, her shadows rippling around her as if they might protect her against the noise.
Cedric was still fighting off the final cultist, who was little more thana stream of unintelligible screams as she came at him over and over with the dagger, clearly unconcerned with the innkeeper’s warning against harming the knight. Elyria watched with blurred vision as he raised Ashrender in defense, slashing a long cut down the woman’s forearm.
Blood dripped onto the floor.
The cultist smiled.
And despite the blaze of sound still clouding her mind, and the rebound of power now that the runes binding the room were broken, Elyria launched herself into motion. She thrust her staff forward just in time to block the new blood weapon that thesanguinagihad conjured—a mace with a spiked head that looked as though it had been carved from ruby.
Once again, red sparks burst as the weapons clashed, forming anXin the air as Elyria pushed against the cultist’s dark strength. Cedric didn’t waste the opportunity she gave him. He thrust Ashrender through the bottom of theX, piercing the cultist’s chest. Her heart.
The woman’s lips formed a circle, a wordless “oh,” as she sank—first to her knees, then to the floor.
For several moments, Elyria and Cedric stood there, drawing in heavy breaths. Then, she remembered.
“Sid!”
Elyria ran to the blown-out window, peering over the edge. She saw the crumpled body of the innkeeper on the ground below them, mayhem all around. His crashing back onto the scene outside had given the captive Arcanians a much-needed distraction, it appeared. No longer were the five of them kneeling at the feet of their captors.
Thraigg and Shep had gotten free of their bindings, and each fought a cultist with fists and elbows. Ollie, too, was unbound, wielding a long spear made of ice in one hand, his other outstretched, raising a wall of water that held several cultists back.
It wasn’t all good news, though. Jocelyn was still tied up, fighting against her restraints as the others tried to get to her. And Sephone had collapsed on her side, blood soaking the ground around her.
“Shit.”
There was no sign of Sid. Elyria blew out a long breath, readying herself to jump into the fray below, trying to subdue the panic spikingin her chest. She could only hope the cat had leapt back into the shadows before the innkeeper’s body hit the ground.
“Are you ready?” Elyria asked Cedric, who had finished wiping the blood from his sword, placing it back in its scabbard as he cast a pitying look at the two dead cultists laying on the floor before him. Elyria’s heart clenched; he did not delight in killing.
“Ready for what?” he asked in response.
Elyria didn’t answer. Only slung her staff over her back and sheathed her dagger before launching herself at him, her wings bursting forth in a shimmer of purple and green.
“What are you—Elle, no—no, no,fuck!”
But Cedric’s words—and screams—were lost to the wind as she slammed her body against his, wrapping her arms around his torso, securing them under his shoulders, and propelled them both through the open window.
37
MY FUCKING CAT
ELYRIA
Cedric’s vise-likehold on her—one arm wrapped around the back of her neck, the other around her waist—was so tight Elyria could barely breathe as she angled hard toward the chaos below them.
She didn’t need to breathe, though. What she needed was to get them all out of this stars-forsaken mess.
The ground rumbled, her wild magic awakening as Elyria careened both herself and Cedric directly into a pair of cultists advancing on a still-bound Jocelyn. They tumbled across the dirt, Cedric releasing his grip on Elyria and immediately chasing after one of the cultists with a roll that ended in a clean draw of Ashrender.
