“He had no choice,” Elyria said softly, joining them. “Your father was going to kill Cedric.”
Tears rolled down Tenny’s cheeks. “I should be relieved too, right? What should matter is that you’re safe, that he didn’t get to do what he intended. That he wasn’t able to summon Malakar’s power, wasn’t able to sacrifice you to his warped cause.” She looped her arm across her chest, gripping the back of Cedric’s hand. “But even knowing whohe really was, knowing all the awful, horrible things he did...” She shook her head.
“You are allowed to grieve him, Tenny.” Elyria took Tenny’s other hand in hers, then looked at Cedric. “You both are.”
The silence that settled over them all was so heavy, it might have crushed someone less strong. But after a few moments, Tenny swallowed, releasing both Cedric’s and Elyria’s hands to wipe at her cheeks.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice shaky. “All of you, for coming for me, for stopping him, for?—”
She cut herself off, her eyes widening, her body stiffening as she continued staring at her father’s body. And then her mouth was moving again, forming words that Elyria could not hear.
Like a veil had dropped over her, like her shadows had surged in her ears and were blocking out the sound, Elyria couldn’t make out a single word.
She didn’t need to.
Not as she turned, following the line of Tenny’s sight. Elyria’s gaze dropped to the shadows that were suddenly gathering around Malchior’s body, a dark mist that swirled over him, wrapping him in night. For a few seconds, it was as though there was no body anymore. As if his very form had disintegrated into shadow. But then those shadows were reforming, reshaping. Making something new.
Something . . .else.
Cedric, too, had turned, a dangerous shock overtaking the grief on his face. His hand immediately went to his hip, searching for Ashrender, which still lay discarded on the floor near the swirling mass of shadows. Shadows that were?—
It all happened so fast.
With a jolt, Elyria pushed Cedric and Tenny behind her with such force, they were sent sprawling backward, crashing into Nox and Kit. She launched to her feet, wisps of shadow dancing in one palm, a tremor rocking through the very foundations of the tower at the behest of the other.
Cedric shouted her name, but Elyria was already darting forward with a flap of her wings to meet the mass of darkness, to keep it from getting any closer to them.
“What issss thisssss,” it said, voice slithering over Elyria’s skin like a dozen harsh whispers, snakes that she could feel crawling over her. Searching.
The darkness was just shy of solid now, having taken the form of legs, arms, a long torso. It was taller, broader, more imposing than Malchior had been in life, tendrils of power curling off him like wicked smoke and masking any facial features that might have formed.
It didn’t stop the shudder that ran through her as eyes she could not see pierced her.
The dark figure raised a shadow-swarmed hand, a single finger outstretched, pointing in accusation. “You have something that belongs to me,” it—he?—hissed.
Elyria broadened her stance and floated closer to the ground as if she might mask Cedric from view. Her thoughts raced as she heard him rushing up behind her, the need to keep the locket—the crown—from this twisted perversion of Malchior blaring in her head, yes, but it was nearly drowned beneath the deafening, overwhelming need to protecthim—to keep Cedric back, to keep him safe.
He washers, and Varyth Malchior would never touch him again.
“You will never have it,” she hissed. Her free hand curled into a fist and a tremor rocked the tower again. The floor split a few feet in front of Cedric, the stone tearing apart, widening into a rift that forced him back.
“Elyria!” he yelled, a string of expletives rending the air as he pivoted to chase down the crack in the floor—to get ahead of it, get around it.
To get to her.
Her eyes burned as she lengthened her shadow into a razor-edged whip and shot it at the Shadow Malchior, who had already crept a few steps closer. She wrapped it around him, cinching it tight, ready to cut this perversion of power back down.
“I don’t know what evil you’ve harnessed to be able to do this, Malchior,” Elyria spat, “but Noctis awaits you in the Hereafter. It’s time for you to go.”
Elyria could’ve sworn she felt the darkness smile under that mask of shadow.
“Mal...chior.” The darkness tested the word, no longer spoken ina chorus of whispers but a single voice, though it still sounded rough, raspy—like it had spoiled from lack of use. “No. Close. But not quite.”
Elyria’s eyes widened.
“You have something that belongs to me,mi umbrae regina.”
And then her shadow whip wasn’t cinched around anything anymore. It split, unbidden, into dozens of strips—long individual ribbons of black that the figure suddenly had gripped in one hand, the shape of him consolidating further, shadows peeling back to reveal a pale hand, a vein-covered chest, a sharp face coated in disdain.
