“Nope,” Tenny said, popping thepwith gusto. For someone who was about to break into her seedy father’s secret blood-sealed safe, she seemed to be in remarkably easy spirits. “And before you ask, yes, I made sure he is really gone this time. Thibault told me he’s already left for our home in Seastone—he’ll be gone for almost a fortnight.” She made a face. “Would’ve been nice if he’d bothered to tell me that himself, of course, but then I suppose he might’ve asked me to go with him and, well, you need me here, don’t you?”
Kit frowned at the sadness poking through Tenny’s flippancy. She had to have been a mess after their startling discovery two days prior. The notes about Cedric would have been alarming enough. But then to witness her father using blood magic? Even if he was not a full-fledgedsanguinagi, he was teetering on the edge of an incredibly slippery slope. And if Lord Paramount Leviathan Churchwassomehow involved in the Cult of Malakar?
Well. Solaris help them all.
Kit couldn’t imagine the feelings warring in Tenny’s heart and mind as she compared the father she knew with what she’d seen with her very eyes.
Actually, that was a lie. Kit could very much imagine how Tenny must be feeling. It had to be similar to how she felt every time she thought about Evander. Thought about the brother that she loved, and the monster that he became.
That Varyth Malchior turned him into.
Kit rubbed at her chest, trying not to flinch as the memory of Evander’s darksteel blade piercing through her tore into her mind. She needed to nip this line of thinking in the bud. If she started dwelling on everything that happened before the final trial, she might not be able to stop. She would be tempted to sink back into that dark place, the one she’d had to repeatedly claw herself out of after the Crucible ended.
It was a place without hope, filled with nothing but the terror of her brother’s betrayal, the pain of his blade, the despondence of knowing that Elyria had to be the one to stop him.
Ellie.
She had been the only shred of light that kept Kit from vanishing into the depths of her mind. Knowing that Elyria was there on the otherside. That she hadn’t run this time.
In the months that followed their time in the Celestial Sanctum, Elyria had walked on eggshells. She seemed petrified that Kit resented her for what she had done. Acted like she needed to beg Kit’s forgiveness for having stopped her brother.
She didn’t realize there was nothing to forgive.
Evander had been lost long before Kit’s impulsive decision to take on the Crucible. Long before Elyria’s selfless choice to follow her.
And she hadn’t just stopped him. She had saved him. Kit knew that.
She just hoped that Ellie knew that too.
Tenebris Nox was still standing behind Kit, and though there was no way they could have seen the look on her face, nor known what was going through her mind, they placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze before moving toward the mirror on the wall.
“Yes, we do need you here, Tenny,” they said, voice low. “So let us not waste the opportunity, hmm?”
Tenny gave a short nod before joining the nocterrian at the mirror. “So, what do I do? Do I just...” She slid her golden locket along the chain at her neck, as she seemed prone to do when she was nervous.
“Here.” Kit pulled a dagger from the sheath at her thigh and offered it to Tenny, handle first.
“How, uh, how much do I need?”
Kit looked at Nox, who shrugged. “More than a drop, less than a puddle.”
“Helpful.” Tenny took the blade and, with a clipped hiss, sliced through the pad of her pointer finger. Red blood beaded at the tip, and she was quick to wipe it on the surface of the gilded mirror—a swoop in one direction, then the other.
The outline of a heart, drawn in blood.
“Cute,” Kit said, rolling her mismatched eyes.
Tenny opened her mouth, but whatever she might have said was lost to the sound of scraping stone. The trio watched as their reflections were replaced with crimson symbols, words of the Old Language appearing one by one, before the mirror slid aside.
Tenny gasped.
Kit swore.
Nox tensed, the shadows at their feet swirling.
Because there, right in the center of the compartment that had just revealed itself, nestled amongst glowing tokens and small coin purses, was half of a golden crown.
It sat on a black velvet cushion, lanternlight flickering over the delicate filigree of its sharp spires, the jewels set within sparkling. It curved in an almost-perfect crescent, before ending at a jagged edge on either side, where Queen Daephinia’s sunfyre arrow had split it in two.
