“This place is why I did it,” Zephyr said quietly. “He found it. Found us. He knew of the children here—our sanctuary.”
Cedric and Elyria exchanged a look.
Zephyr’s hands shook. “He said if we did not help him win the Crucible and secure the crown, he would raze this place to ash. Burn every mixedborn child. Kill us all.”
“An empty threat,” Elyria spat. “Varyth Malchior would never have even been able to make it inside. This place is protected. Ask me how I know.”
Zephyr winced. “That is how the elders felt too. They did not agree. But I—I couldn’t just do nothing. Couldn’t risk it.” Her gaze once again went to the mixedborn children, most of whom had already lost interest in the discussion and had wandered back over to the stream to play. “I couldn’t risk them. He would have waited. Would have plucked us off, one by one. Would have found a way. He’s powerful, Elle. He—” She cut herself off at Elyria’s answering glare.
“You don’t. Get to. Fucking. Call me that.”
Zephyr nodded meekly. “I did everything he demanded. Every awful thing. I protected Cedric.”
“Youfooledme. Played me. From the very beginning.”
Again, Zephyr only nodded her head. No denials. No excuses. “I tried to forge that bond. But when I realized it was you two who had done it instead, I...I let you go instead, knowing I would still be able to get him his crown.”
“You sent us in there knowing one of us wouldn’t be coming back.” Elyria’s voice was like stone.
“Yes.”
“You hoped it would be me.”
Zephyr hesitated. “Yes.”
Rage pulsed through Cedric, and for a moment, he was confused because it wasn’t coming down the bond from Elyria. It flared, hot and volatile, from deep inside his own chest.
Elyria, on the other hand, waslaughing.“Well, at least you’re being fucking honest for once. I suppose that’s progress.” She took a long breath. “What is he planning?”
“I don’t know. I am not his confidante. Never even met the man properly. I only did as I was told, dropped the crown where instructed.”
“I still do not understand,” Cedric said, his free hand going to his waist, wrapping around the amber stone in Ashrender’s pommel as though searching for something to steady himself. So many questions hung in the air between them. Regardless of her intentions, Zephyr’s betrayal was like a wound that had only just begun to scab over. Now they were picking it raw again.
“Why me?” Cedric asked again. “Why was it so important thatIget to the crown? Why would you have been willing to die to let me have it? Surely, if what you say is true and Malchior threatened this place, you would have wanted to survive. With the power of the crown, you could have protected Elderglade from him.”
“My life is not worth more than yours,” Zephyr said. “I only wanted to keep the sanctuary safe. He wanted you alive,andhe wanted the crown. It was a price I was willing to pay. And besides, I...” She looked down. “The more I got to know you, the more I wanted you to live too.”
“I bet she fucking did,”Elyria’s snide voice bounced down the bond.
Squeezing her leg twice, Cedric finally removed his hand, bracing both elbows on the table and scrubbing at his face. “I suppose it would be asking too much to think he might’ve told youwhyhe wanted me to be the one to claim the crown? Why he wanted me alive at all?”
Zephyr opened her mouth to respond, but the words Cedric heard next did not come from her.
“He is not the only one who did, dear boy.”
Cedric froze, some strange blend of confusion and recognitionpulling his attention to the spectators behind him. To the elderly sylvan woman emerging from the parting crowd.
He didn’t know how old the sylvan woman had to be in order to look so deeply weathered—as though she was halfway to becoming one of the surrounding trees. Her brownish-green skin was deeply lined, almost bark-like. The wispy hair on her head had faded to a shade of green so light, it was nearly white. From what he remembered being told during the Crucible, Zephyr herself was some three hundred years old, yet looked barely a day over twenty.
The elder’s robe dragged along the grass as she approached the group; Young Shep and Jocelyn exchanged a sheepish expression as they trailed behind her. As if he’d been waiting for this exact moment to make his dramatic entrance, Thraigg emerged from the shack and trod straight toward the sylvan elder with a broad smile on his bearded face.
She gave the dwarf a warm nod. “Thank you, my friend. For everything.”
Cedric’s brows shot halfway up his forehead.
The dwarf huffed a tired laugh. “Jus’ doing my best, Lark. In the Sanctum and outside it.”
“That you have, my friend.”
