Tristan slunk over with a groan, still clutching his shoulder. “Why?” His blue-eyed gaze went to Audaxus, motionless on the ground, Ashrender still sticking out of his chest.
With a sigh, Cedric gently laid down Dentarius’ arm and moved to retrieve his weapon. “Is it becauseheis dead?” he asked with a sneer, plucking his sword from Audaxus’ body—and giving it a twist for good measure.
“Or because their plan was foiled?” Kit offered. “They hadn’t expected us to be fighting. Tried to eliminate us before we had a chance to join the fray.”
“That seems to be a common strategy of theirs, doesn’t it?” Elyria said, and Kit blinked at her, as though only just realizing both Elyria and Cedric were next to her.
“Stars a-fucking-bove, Ellie,” Kit cried, wrapping her arms around Elyria’s shoulders. “I’m so relieved you’re here.”
Elyria winced as Kit’s arm brushed her injured wing.
“Oh, hells, sorry, sorry,” said Kit, already weaving a ribbon of healing magic around the wing.
Elyria released a tired, breathy chuckle. “It’s fine, Kitty Kat. I am relieved we arrived in time too.”
“Quite the entrance you made,” said Nox.
Elyria grinned at the nocterrian and got to her feet. “Thank you for your message. Clever bit of magic. You’ll have to show me how you did that sometime.”
Nox nodded thoughtfully. “I believe there is still much we can learn from each other.”
“Yes, well, I—Oh, come on now.” Elyria interrupted herself mid-sentence as one of the newly arrived guards yelped in surprise, darting back from the corner where a cultist woman’s body had lain.
Well, they’d thought it was a body. The fact that the woman wasnow on her feet, blood dripping down her hand, made it clear that she was very much still alive. Fat droplets hit the floor with asplat, long curls of blood magic emerging from her fingers like scarlet whips.
“Really?” Elyria gestured to the room around her. “You think you can fight us all?”
The woman simply loosed a wild yell into the room, rearing back to attack.
Cedric sighed, tightening his grip on Ashrender’s hilt.
He needn’t have bothered.
Because this final cultist wasn’t the only wild thing in the room. And with a low hiss, Sid was suddenly tearing out of a crack in the air, launching herself at the woman.
The massive shadowcat’s paws landed squarely on thesanguinagi’schest, and the woman stumbled back, back, back. Bloody ribbons whipped through the air until, with the sound of shattering glass and snarling shadows, the two of them fell through a stained-glass window together.
“Stars damn it all, Sid!” Elyria shouted, racing to the broken window. “Not again.”
“She really has to stop doing that,” Cedric muttered.
He joined Elyria at the window, the two of them peering out, expecting to see a similar scene to what they’d witnessed in Dawnspire—the broken body of the cultist hitting the ground, and Sid having disappeared back into the shadows.
That is not what they saw.
Instead, their gazes drifted up into the sky above them, where Sid had a mouthful of the cultist’s robes between her teeth, her paws wrapped around the woman’s waist as she thrashed and screamed in midair.
In midair, because from Sid’s back had sprouted two wide, shadowy wings. Dark smoke seeped from the tips like feathers as the shadowcat hovered—flew.
Not just a shadowcat.
“Volacarnii,”Elyria whispered in her mind.
“Of course,”Cedric said back, wonder and awe and just a little bit of panic spreading beneath the words.“Should’ve figured you couldn’t do anything halfway.”
“Let me go, you unnatural beast!” the cultist cried, scratching atSid’s forelegs. “You should not exist, I’m going to?—”
Sid peered at Cedric and Elyria, like she was waiting for permission.
