“I should be saying that toyou,” Elyria snarled, twin daggers already out of the holsters she wore at each thigh.
Several cultists lunged. Cedric met one man mid-swing, his sword clashing against thesanguinagiblade. The blow sent shudders down Cedric’s arm, but he pushed the cultist back with a roar.
Beside him, Elyria was a blaze of purple fury. She darted forward with astonishing speed, wings flaring strategically to boost her to the left, then to the right, ducking and slashing. She was a scythe cutting throughsanguinagilike stalks of wheat—a glorious onslaught.
Dropping into a roll, Cedric slashed upward, cutting into the first man’s side.
Blood sprayed.
And Cedric looked on with horror as the cultist crumpled to the ground, his hood falling back to reveal the familiar face of an attendant he had known quite well growing up here. Something clenched around Cedric’s heart, freezing him in place, even as Elyria continued her savage charge through the room. Faint shadows leaked from her skin like a cape of black ribbons as she cut down the fourth, the fifth, the sixth cultist.
It was over in seconds.
And Elyria’s brow was creased as she returned to Cedric’s side, breathless but entirely unharmed. “They didn’t put up much of a fight, did they?”
Cedric swallowed, finally snapping free from the paralysis that had overtaken him. He tore his eyes from the body at his feet. “I suppose?—”
A slow clap echoed through the chamber.
From the far side of the forge, the darkness seemed to shift, peeling away from the wall...and Varyth Malchior stepped into view.
His silver-capped cane was nowhere to be seen. Clad in robes black as the void save for the wolven sigil stitched onto the front, the leader of the Cult of Malakar casually avoided a puddle of blood.
“I always knew I could count on you, my son,” he said, his baritone voice like honey—sickly sweet—as he stepped over one of his slain cultists and came to a stop directly in front of the manaforge. He held his arms out as if he expected Cedric to run to him.
The very notion had Cedric recoiling instead.
Malchior dropped his arms, his jaw tightening. “Admittedly, I was worried for a moment you wouldn’t come. Thought perhaps I had misjudged how much you care for my daughter. I am pleased to know Portentia does still matter, despite”—his amber eyes flicked to Elyria—“other distractions.”
Elyria started forward, but Cedric wrapped a hand around her forearm, gently holding her back. His voice was tight when he said, “You’re Varyth Malchior.”
“What a relief it is that the truth can finally come out. How I’ve longed to tell you everything, Cedric.”
Elyria let out a scoff but did not try to advance again.
A chill settled in Cedric’s bones. “You lied to me my entire life. Raised me in your home to be your weapon. Sent me into the Crucible to retrieve the crown you could not win.”
“Yes,” Malchior said solemnly.
That vise around Cedric’s heart squeezed tighter, and like she could feel it too, Elyria moved closer to him. “You killed my parents,” he said, his voice breaking on the last word.
Malchior sighed, his eyes tracking the motion of Cedric’s hand sliding down Elyria’s forearm, her own grip tightening around the bloodstained daggers in each of her hands. He hesitated, as though he couldn’t quite decide how to answer. Eventually, he simply repeated, “Yes.”
Cedric shook his head, like it might erase the leagues of heartbreakheld within that single word. “You know who I really am. You’ve always known.”
Malchior clucked his tongue, taking a step forward and eliciting a low growl from Elyria. “I was never able to confirm it entirely on my own, but I had observed enough to feel relatively confident of who your mother was. And certainly, if I hadn’t known before, the display I witnessed from you that night sealed my suspicion.”
Cedric balked. “The display...from me?” His mind flashed back to the horrors of that night—the fear immobilizing his small body, the sight of his father lifeless on the ground, the sting of steel against his lip...the heat of golden flames as his family’s home burned.
Malchior nodded, a greedy glint in his eyes. “I don’t think I would have believed it, had I not seen it with my own eyes. A boy so young, with a power so great. A sunbringer, just like his grandmother. Such a pity you never seemed to be able to harness it again.”
Cedric’s mind felt like shattered glass—a thousand sharp, jagged pieces that he so desperately wished would fit together. He recalled the way the cultists who came for his family that night had torn through the cottage, searching for something. He thought of the look on Lord Church’s—on Malchior’s—face when Cedric told him about the missing half of the crown, that semblance of surprise. And Cedric thought of the missions he’d been sent on to find out more about the lost princess, to find the missing half.
“What were you looking for that night?” Cedric asked, his heart beating an erratic rhythm in his chest. “How much did you already know about the state of the crown? Did you already know that the crown still lay in pieces? Why send me on a chase across Arcanis looking for information about my mother if you already knew she had been tasked with safeguarding the other half?”
Malchior sighed again. “That’s just the problem, isn’t it? I suspected, but I didn’tknow. Aurelia”—he sneered as he said the name, like it tasted rotten on his tongue—“was not particularly forthcoming with the details. Not for one sounworthyas me.” He barked a dark laugh. “The star god would rather I rotted inside the Sanctum than touch the celestial-forged power of the crown. But these great celestials do love to hear themselves speak, as it turns out. Perhapsafter so many years alone in the Sanctum...”
His eyes flicked to Elyria, his lip curling with the ghost of a smirk. Cedric’s hold on her wrist tightened ever so slightly, a reminder that he was there with her.
