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Elyria widened her stance and planted her feet. In her mind’s eye, she saw a torn cloak, golden thread woven across either side of a ripped seam. She pulled on that thread, and ever so slowly, stitch by stitch, the tear began to close.

Before her, the gap narrowed.

And narrowed.

And narrowed.

And narrowed more, still.

Elyria grunted, and beside her, Cedric’s breathing became labored.

Her shoulders burned. Her palms tingled.

Still, she kept pulling.

Pain lanced through her skull, the crown suddenly burning too hot, its weight too heavy. As if it was pulling from Elyria, rather than the other way around. As if it wanted to pour them both straight into the wound of the world.

She tasted copper. Her vision blurred.

More, the magic seemed to croon. More. Use it all. Heal it all. Close every scar.

Elyria’s breath hitched. She could do it, couldn’t she? Close the rift from here to the southern sea. Close the western Chasm, too, while she was at it. She could flatten mountains, bury mana springs, or create new ones altogether.

She could do anything.

She was power incarnate.

Cedric’s hand tightened around hers, his voice brushing her mind. “That’s enough, my love.” The words were faint, like someone shouting through a rainstorm. But Elyria heard them. And the reminder of his presence, the fact that he was there with her, in this with her, was all she needed. She might be willing to crumble herself to ash in order to heal the world, to burn through every last cell until there was nothing left of her but a speck of shadow on the wind . . .

But she would never burn through him.

The very prospect of it was so suddenly sobering that Elyria stumbled in place. But Cedric was there, his grip still firmly locked on her, keeping her afloat.

Elyria’s heart slammed against her ribs as she turned her head to look up at him. Her solimaeus’s gold-filled eyes looked back. They saw everything.

“I can—” she began, throat raw.

“But you don’t have to,” he said, and she heard the strain in his own voice, the effect of his power being pulled and stretched in tandem with hers. “Not now. Not today.”

His free hand went to her chin, and he bent to graze her lips with the gentlest, tenderest kiss, before he turned her face back toward the Chasm. She forced herself to look down at the remaining gap, the narrowing seam. It was only a few feet wide now—short enough to leap over.

They would not close the entire Chasm in one fell swoop, but they would seal it here, now, and they would prevent Malakar from getting to the Line.

Enough, she told herself. It has to be enough.

She squeezed Cedric’s hand. Nodded. And with one final, controlled pull, the remaining sliver of the Chasm sealed.

The world stilled.

For several achingly long moments, there was silence—nothing but Elyria’s own heartbeat thudding in her ear and Cedric’s pride pulsing down the bond between them. Elyria swayed on her feet, and in a flash, Cedric’s arm was around her, steadying her, anchoring her against his chest. She pressed her forehead to his pauldron-clad shoulder, her lungs burning.

And then it was as though Gaia herself breathed a sigh of relief.

The deed was done.

The wind picked up, a slice of icy air cooling the sweat that had gathered on the back of Elyria’s neck. She sucked in a crisp, wintry breath. And the crowd behind them erupted in thunderous applause.

“We did it,” she rasped.