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There’d been a tiny, minuscule flicker of doubt, right before she told Jocelyn, wherein Elyria wondered if it would come across as cruel, like she was bragging. But her friend only pulled her into an uncharacteristically enthusiastic embrace, and that fear was quickly assuaged.

“This is how it was always meant to be,” Jocelyn had said, and Elyria had to avert her eyes to keep from crying. Stars above, she’d cried more in the past few days alone than she had in her entire life beforehand. She really needed to get a handle on that.

The group stood in a tiny clearing between towering evergreens, a good thirty yards from the nearest tent. Elyria, Cedric, Thraigg, Kit, Jocelyn, and Shep all peered at the two crown halves, neatly laid on the snow-covered ground. Kit had placed them so they very nearly fit together, and without looking too closely at the jagged seam between them, the mark of Daephinia’s magic when she split the crown in two, one might think it was a single piece already.

The group formed a circle around the crown, and with the dark color of the cloaks Tartanis’s men had provided and their hoods drawn to keep out the winter chill, Elyria wanted to laugh at how they must’ve looked.

How they did look, she was sure, to her father, Raefe, and Sephone, who were not being particularly surreptitious about the way they observed them from the main part of the camp.

“Feels like we’re members of the stars-damned Cult of Malakar, standing here like this,” Elyria muttered.

Kit snorted a laugh. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

“Who says we can’t beat ’em?” Thraigg huffed.

“Excellent point, my friend,” Elyria said. “If anything, this is just us beating them at their own game. We’ll start our own cult. A better cult.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to come up with a better name, at least.” Kit tapped her chin in an exaggerated show of contemplation. “The Cult of Lightbreaker. Nice ring to it.”

Elyria shrugged. “It’s not my crown. ‘The Cult of Thorne’ sounds like the name of someone’s sarcastic gardening club though.”

“The Cult of Nero, then,” Shep offered. He turned to face Cedric. “That’s your namesake, you know. You could claim your grandmother’s name, easily.”

Cedric gaped at them all. “I’m no stranger to the more macabre brand of humor you Arcanians tend to favor, but I think I’m going to have to draw the line here.”

They all burst out laughing.

“Fair enough, Sir Sensitive.” Elyria grinned at him. “We’re obviously just teasing. I see you haven’t gleaned my tolerance for that from this little bond of ours.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” he grumbled.

“Back to the matter at hand, then,” Jocelyn said appeasingly, gesturing to the crown. “You’ve already tried channeling your power into it?”

Elyria nodded. “Tried channeling our magic, tried healing it, tried sending Ric’s sunfyre into the seam. Nothing.”

“And the elders don’t have any additional ideas?” Kit asked.

Shep shook his head. “This is just as new to them as it is to all of us. Elder Larkess . . .” His mouth curved into a sad smile. “She seemed quite convinced that your combined magic was the answer, but it isn’t as though the celestials left instructions.”

“Show us exactly how you tried, Ellie,” Kit suggested.

Blowing out a breath, Elyria bent down to sweep up both halves, then held them together in front of her. “I had them just like this—Ric behind me, his hands over mine. He channeled, I channeled, we channeled.” She pursed her lips. “I don’t really know what else to—oh, shit.”

Her fingers slipped, and one half of the crown began falling away from the other. Multiple hands shot out to catch it, but Cedric was fastest.

He hissed as his hand closed around the jagged edge and the sharp metal sliced into his skin. The scent of copper spiked through the air. But that wasn’t what had Elyria’s mouth gaping, nor gasps ringing out around the circle. It was the way that Cedric’s blood glowed—then changed. Like it was transforming into liquid gold along the shattered edge of the crown.

“Of fucking course,” Elyria breathed. “Two bloods shall find their way, right? They did leave fucking instructions; they just had to be as cryptic and useless and celestial about it as possible.”

She dragged her finger along the broken edge of the crown half still in her hands, the metal like a serrated knife as it split her skin. The instant her blood made contact, it, too, shifted into something shimmering and golden—glowing bright.

“Quick,” Kit said, “put them together and⁠—”

There was no point. Before Elyria and Cedric could even lift their arms to piece the two halves together again, the metal began to quiver and shake. It vibrated down Elyria’s arm, and the feeling was alarmingly similar to when she’d accidentally wielded the crown half at the end of the Crucible, when she’d brought Cedric back to life. In that moment, she’d been unable to drop the crown from her hand, like it had momentarily welded itself to her.

It was much the same now. And Elyria could only watch—in awe, in horror—as both crown halves began to transform.

Light bloomed from the jeweled spires, brighter and brighter and brighter, until each person in the circle had to turn their heads, averting or closing their eyes against the glare.