“Then howexactlydid you help them?” Elyria asked. “Are you the one who left that lovely containment rune under my bed?”
“No!” Avery protested, his hands lifted in surrender. “I’m notsanguinagi, I swear it!”
“Yeah, you’re just the one who fucking stabbed me,” Hargrave muttered.
“Well, to be fair, you did sneak up behind him,” Tristan tutted. “And the boy did apologize.”
Hargrave groaned as they rounded the corner once more, and Elyria beckoned Young Shep over with a whistle. And then a groan of a different kind crawled into her eardrums—a pathetic, wheezing sort of sound.
Several yards to the right, a body twitched.
Sid hissed with displeasure, trailing after Elyria as she strolled over to where the innkeeper lay. His body was broken, but the man was miraculously alive and had even managed to crawl a few feet from the spot where he’d landed after falling from her window.
Claw marks decorated the innkeeper’s neck and chest, and Elyria gave Sid a look of approval as she took in the state of the man. He had hauled himself up into a halfway-sitting position, his elbows caked with dirt from slithering along the ground, one leg twisted at a horrible angle.
“Have somewhere to be?” Elyria asked, planting the sole of her boot against his mangled knee.
Pain flashed across his face as she leaned just a fraction of her weight on him, but he did not scream or yell. In an act just as miraculous as his surviving the fall in the first place, the crazy bastardsmirked. He began muttering and mumbling anew, just as he had during their confrontation in Elyria’s room.
“The sun must rise,” he said, then he laughed, like some kindof shock-induced mania had overtaken him. “Let the sun rise. The sun will rise.”
Elyria’s fingers quivered at her side.
“Of course the fucking sun’s going to rise, you fool,” Tristan said, propping Hargrave against the wall. “Avery, what is he talking about?”
“That’s whathekept saying. What he told us. That our job—all of us, not just us here in the village—is to ensure that the sun will rise.”
“All of us? As in, what, all humans?”
Avery nodded. “And in order for that to happen, you all had to die.” He pointed a tremulous finger at Elyria. “Especially her.”
Elyria’s heart was a thunderous beat in her ears. “And especiallynothim, right?” She jerked her head at Cedric, and Avery nodded once more.
A flicker of something unreadable crossed the knight’s face. Shimmered down their bond. Something colder than a question, like he was afraid to ask,Why me?
So, he said nothing. But he didn’t need to. Elyria would ask for him.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” The boy’s voice shook with every word, his eyes darting back and forth between Cedric and everyone else. “He only told us not to harm the Lord Victor. He?—”
“Varyth Malchior.”
Avery didn’t say yes. Didn’t nod. But the way the color drained from his young face was all the confirmation Elyria needed.
“He said, “He is required.’ ”
“What does that?—”
“The sun must rise.” The innkeeper’s voice was garbled, wet, even as he laughed through the words. “The dark vessel is nearly ready. The sun will rise...A new dawn comes.”
Elyria looked down at him, her lip curling.
Her fingers tightened around her staff. Shadows slid down her arm, winding around the weapon in a spiral, consolidating into a sharp, focused point at the tip.
“He will never have him,” she whispered, drawing close.
The innkeeper smiled, teeth bloody, lips pale.
