They just weren’ther.
He wanted to understand. Wanted to know where her fire had gone. Had it truly been snuffed out so easily? Or was she simply burying it beneath layers of placating acquiescence, all for the sake of this strange diplomacy?
It wasn’t all bad. Wasn’t all stoic indifference and placid, agreeable cordiality. Sometimes, she looked at him, and it was as though he saw straight through to the center of her when he looked back.
And something was different. Was shifting between them. He felt it. Like that tether tugging at his chest was vibrating, shimmering,refiningitself. Until it was less like a thick rope tying Cedric to this world and more like...a thread.
Sometimes, he thought he caught her smiling at him.
But just as quickly, the smile would disappear, leaving him to wonder whether all of it was simply in his head.
That’s what killed him most.
Alas, it wasn’t as though he could ask. Though the two of them were being constantly shuffled in and out of rooms together, being presented as a duo, ornaments to the king, rarely did Cedric have the chance to say more than five words to her at a time. They were never alone. Always surrounded by guards and attendants and Kit and Dentarius and Lord Church and His Majesty. Barely given the chance to breathe, let alone actuallyspeak.
No chance to ask her what that kiss meant.
No chance for it to happen again.
And Cedric didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, because while his entire being ached at the memory of her soft lips, the feel of her body pressed against his, the guilt over his loss of control gnawed at him, a snarling beast in his gut.
He’dburnedher.
It was an accident, yes. A small injury, something Cedric knew Elyria capable of healing with barely more than the flick of her finger.But still. He hadn’t been able to control it. The instant their lips met, there was no containing that surge of heat in his chest, the way it flared through his veins, raw, unfiltered. Itsoughther. And what if next time, it did much worse?
“I know something of having a power inside you that you don’t know how to control.”Elyria’s words from after the Trial of Magic were a soft refrain in Cedric’s mind.“I know what it’s like...to carry that ever-present weight of guilt. Of blame. To feel like something inside you is wrong.”
She did know. She did understand. And wouldn’t it be nice, he thought, if he could actually talk about this with her? If he could sit down with her, have a real conversation without the threat of looming death or political pretension?
Just him. Just her.
Unfortunately, that would require him actually being able to locate her. And that, it turned out, was proving an impossible feat.
When she wasn’t fulfilling her role as the Victor of Nyrundelle, Elyria Lightbreaker was absolutely nowhere to be found.
It wasn’t as though Cedric hadn’t looked.
Oh, how he had looked.
But it was as if Elyria only existed when called to perform her victor’s duties. As soon as they were done, she would disappear into the ether. She wasn’t in her chambers during the day, nor in the training yard or the library or the council room. She was just gone. Until the next time that she wasn’t.
Kit had been irritatingly tight-lipped about Elyria’s whereabouts. Tenebris Nox and Thraigg were both equally unhelpful—mostly because they only seemed amused by the fact that Cedric kept asking. Meanwhile, the fae king’s counselor, Dentarius, barely deigned to acknowledge Cedric’s existence.
It...concerned him. He just wanted to see her, wanted to make sure she was all right. And selfishly, maybe he needed her too. Needed the grounding that only her presence seemed to provide these days. His chest felt sore from the constant push and pull of the tether—the thread—there, a constant reminder of just how intricately they were woven together, even if he still did not understand why.
Just last night, his mind had been so abuzz with worry that Cedrichad to physically restrain himself from going to her room in the middle of the night, pounding down the door, and demanding she finally look him in the eye.
Demanding she admit that she felt this too.
“Have you had a chance to speak with Ten yet?” Tristan’s voice pulled Cedric back.
Tenny.
And therein was the other reason sleep had been so elusive for Cedric this past week. Despite their detour to the king’s council, Lord Church had indeed made good on his demand for Cedric to debrief him on what he’d found in Paideus. But the moment Cedric had stepped into the lord’s study, he’d first had to answer for something else.
Cedric squared his shoulders as he turned to face Tristan. “I have barely had the opportunity to eat and shower between these incessant duties. When do you think I would’ve had time to speak with her?”
“You can’t put it off forever, Ric,” Tristan said with a shrug.
