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Damn them both for it.

The reminder washed the lingering film of those thoughts from her mind. No point. There would be no point. Every conclusion she’d drawn while in captivity still rang true. She would rather die than live under Malakar’s thumb again. And she knew Cedric would rather die than let that happen too, a thought Elyria could not and would not even think of entertaining. After all, if the situation was reversed . . .

A thought sparked in the back of her mind. Was it reversed? Who was to say the enemy was not here for Cedric, too? Or instead?

“That’s right. Cedric. We know you, don’t we? Sunbringer.”

The memory of the way Malakar’s lips had formed around Cedric’s name was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. Did he know who Cedric truly was? That he was the very heir to the kingdom Malakar had tried to take? That he was Daephinia’s living legacy?

Elyria never wanted to find out.

And so, she wouldn’t.

Fuck Malakar and fuck his followers.

They would protect this place.

She nodded at Cedric.

He nodded back.

And they ran.

31

ROSES AMONG BRAMBLES

ELYRIA

Like blurs in the night, Elyria and Cedric raced across the clearing toward Kit and Jocelyn, only slowing when an older sylvan woman tripped as they passed. Elyria was already ahead of Cedric, and he waved her on as he stopped to help the woman up.

“Quickly now,” he said, his voice clear as day in Elyria’s ears even as she continued forward.

“My ankle,” the woman cried. “Leave me! You must get the others to safety.”

“We leave no one,” he said, and Elyria’s heart clenched. She turned to see him rubbing his hands together, Ashrender momentarily discarded on the ground. Awe overtook Elyria as she watched Cedric weave a wisp of healing magic over the old woman’s ankle before helping her to her feet.

But the pride and joy Elyria might have felt over watching her solimaeus so casually and proficiently wield his magic was lost to the sudden ferocity of the snarls coming from the entrance path.

The cultists were not patiently plodding along anymore. They were running now, charging forward, though the alarmed expressions Elyria could make out on their faces told her it was not necessarily of their own volition.

No, it was the snapping, snarling, thrashing beasts they held who were suddenly rushing forward, hauling their supposed masters along with them. And panic licked up Elyria’s spine as she realized every single monster was singularly focused on her knight.

On his magic.

“Motherfuckers,” she spat, spinning on the spot. She lunged forward, one knee hitting the ground, plunging Cedric’s dagger into the grass and planting both her hands on either side of it.

Elyria’s wild magic sparked in her veins as she searched through the threads of life from which all of Elderglade was woven. She followed her power down into the earth, sifting through the nature-made magic there, until she found exactly what she was looking for.

And with her fingers digging into the soil, with the wild, feral sounds of the enemy in her ears and Elderglade’s very heartbeat pulsing against her ribs, Elyria pulled.

Sharp, thorny brambles burst from the ground in front of the rushing line of sanguinagi and their beasts. Elyria quickly wove them around the surrounding silveroak trunks—back and forth, in and out, above and below—until she had formed a spiky, perilous wall that blocked the enemy off from the rest of the glade.

First one wall, then four—five.

Sweat beaded on her temple as she pulled more and more and more from the earth, the outraged cries of the cultists and echoing snarls of the beasts muffled by the wild-woven cage confining them.

Cedric was back by her side, Ashrender once again in hand, by the time she finished. She tore his dagger from the ground and sheathed it in her belt, and then the two of them were running again.