The last thing she heard was Cedric roaring her name.
And then there was nothing but wind and sky and pain.
59
LIGHTBRINGER
CEDRIC
The world exploded.
Power ripped through the magic binding Cedric’s limbs together, flinging him off the platform with divine force. Glass shattered. Stone cracked. The runes etched into the floor pulsed crimson one final time before the blood filling them evaporated in a surge of heat.
And Cedric’s magic flooded his veins anew as whatever wards or runes orsanguinagispells Malchior had cast on this place disintegrated with it.
His back met the wall with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs, but Cedric barely felt the pain. Not over the ringing in his ears, the way he screamed Elyria’s name over and over and overagain in his mind.
And not over the deafening silence that followed after she was flung from the tower.
She was all right. She was alive. She had to be. He knew this, knew it as surely as he knew he was still breathing himself. Cedrictuggedon that thread and felt the simultaneous reassurance and panic of hertuggingback.
It was faint. A pulse. A thrum. How far had she been flung? Was she injured? Light cracked across his skin, his magic burning in his blood. It flared from his core, from that place where his bond with Elyria lived. Sunfyre seared through him, illuminating his veins through his skin.
Ashrender was on the floor a few feet from Cedric. He staggered over to it, closing his hand around the hilt of his father’s sword.
Malchior was already standing, darkness swirling at his feet. He had one arm braced against the wall on the other side of the room, the manaforge between him and Cedric little more than an empty basin and a lump of twisted metal now.
Blood trickled from his temple. “She should never have come here. She has ruined you.” His eyes went to the mangled manaforge. “And you have ruinedeverything.” The shade of his eyes was more red than amber now, waves of blood magic pulsing off him, interweaving with his shadows.
The wards were gone. This was Varyth Malchior’s true power.
“She saved me. You are the one who is ruined.”
Malchior scoffed, moving toward Cedric. In one hand he conjured a shield of shadow, solid as obsidian. In the other, a sharp crimson saber, light reflecting off it like glass. “It could have been our time to reign over all Arcanis, you stupid boy! With Malakar’s power, our people could have finally prospered. Could have known peace.”
Cedric rolled his shoulders back. “And so they will,” he said, the words like flint striking steel. “But not because of you.”
Malchior growled, lashing out with hissanguinagisaber, slashing at Cedric.
The knight sidestepped the blow, swinging Ashrender in a wide arc. “For my father.”
Malchior defended against the attack with his shadowy shield, the impact sending a thunderous crack through the remains of the tower.
“For my mother.” Cedric pressed forward, heat blazing through him, and it was as though he left the ground scorched with every step.
“For Tenny. For Evander and Hargrave and every life you ever took.” Cedric’s next strike sent a shockwave through the floor, cracking the stone beneath Malchior’s feet.
Malchior snarled, lifting his saber and thrusting it toward Cedric.
“For her.” Cedric deflected the strike, looping his sword under the crimson blade and jerking his wrist. “And for me.” The weapon soared from the sorcerer’s grasp.
Malchior still clutched the shield with one hand, while a mix of shadows and blood magic erupted from the other. They shot toward Cedric in a desperate fury. “You could have ruled by my side. You could have had everything.”
Overhead, a periwinkle blur ripped through the sky.
“I already have everything.”
Cedric drove Ashrender forward.
