“All right, see you in there, then,” she said.
Once again, Cedric felt it—that pulse of magic, that shuddering force all around him. But it wasn’t a welcome this time.
The space between the bent trees of the archway glowed bright,white, blinding. The forest recoiled.
And Elyria was hit with a burst of magic flaring from the archway that blasted her clear off Fjaethe’s back.
She hit the earth hard, skidding backward until she collided with the sturdy trunk of another tree, shadows spasming off her body.
“Elle!” Cedric had never dismounted so fast. He dashed to her side, panic seizing his lungs, making each rain-soaked breath agony. “Are you all right?”
“What the ever-living, stars-damned, motherfuckingfuck?”
She was all right.
“I’m fine,” she growled, pushing herself upright, drawing her shadows in around her until they settled over her skin like a layer of clothing.
Faintly, Cedric thought he could hear muffled voices from beyond the archway. He couldn’t be sure though, because the luminous vines that were rapidly unwinding themselves from around the silver trunks there had his full attention. They stretched across the opening, weaving over it—closing it.
“Go, Cedric,” Elyria urged, pushing him toward the gate. “I’ll find another way through. Or you’ll find me out here when you’re done, pissed but waiting.”
He laughed. “We’ve been through this before, Trouble. Not fucking happening. Remember?”
She sighed, but he didn’t miss the way her shoulders dropped, just a fraction. Didn’t miss the pulse of relief he felt in his own chest.
“This feels oddly familiar too,” Cedric mused, wiping water from his brow as the final vines knitted together.
“Unfortunately, I agree with you,” Elyria said, eyes narrowing on the now-sealed archway. “But this time, we don’t have a whole crew to pull magic from in order to figure it out. Looks like it’s just you and me.”
Cedric smiled. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
41
YOU SHALL NOT PASS
ELYRIA
They triedto find another way in.
Well, first, they tried to break through. Elyria tested every line of the vine-covered gateway with her wild magic. They wouldn’t budge. Cedric suggested trying to send a sparrow through, to see if they could at least get a message to the others, if they could get one back. Another burst of light had launched at the shadowy bird like a lightning strike, dispersing it back into the ether before the sparrow had made it within five feet of the gate. Then, almost as if scolding her for having tried, a second light burst launched in Elyria’s direction. She narrowly avoided being hit again, though the bedroll she’d had strapped to the back of her saddle was less lucky.
The closest they had come to getting the vines to movewas when Cedric tried lighting them on fire with his white-gold flame. They’d seemed to shudder a bit at that—rippled, as if getting ready to unwind. But then there’d been another surge of white light that, for whatever reason, did not knock the knight on his ass, though it did snuff his flame right out.
So, they looked for another way.
With the rain coming and going in unpredictable waves that seemed almost taunting, Cedric and Elyria wove through the forest, heading down one of the split paths in front of the blocked archway, making a full circle through the forest, and coming back up the other.
There was no other point of entry—no other gates, no wards to break, no weak points. There were just...trees. Forest, and more forest, and then that stars-damned viney gate with her friends stuck on the other side.
By the time they returned to said gate, hours later, the rain was taking another blessed pause, and Elyria had gotten it in her head that she needed to know if Elderglade was physically on the other side, cloaked and warded, or if the archway held some sort of portal and had transported the rest of the group elsewhere. Releasing her wings, she took to the air, only to find that the forest did not extend upward in any way that made sense. Or, rather, it extended entirely too far.
Elyria tried soaring up to the canopy line, but the tree line only climbed with her. Troves of silver-barked giants grew into the sky—an infinite tapestry of trees. No matter how far she flew, she could not reach the top.
After a while, her wings began to falter, the air thinning, her shadows sluggish as they flapped. A sickly vertigo crept over her, and she was forced to descend.
She landed beside Cedric, bending at the waist and sucking in breath after breath. “That’s a new one.”
“What is?” He turned from where he had just finished setting up a tent, offering her a sip from his water skein.
