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This all felt familiar, somehow. A scene flashed through his mind—Elyria cutting her way through a room full of cultists, their blood pooling on stone, filling deep runes that had been carved specifically to catch their sacrifice. When Varyth Malchior had set his trap for Cedric in the tower at Seastone, he’d used Elyria and Cedric to cut down his followers, ones who had willingly sacrificed their blood—and their lives—to his cause.

But there were no runes here. There was only this field, the seam where they’d healed the Chasm, the first part of their freshly fixed world.

Cedric staggered back a step.

It wasn’t the blood. He’d seen blood. Spilled plenty of it.

It was the willingness.

The hope on their faces as they performed this final act.

There was more to this than death. This was an offering.

And he knew exactly to whom this gift was being bequeathed.

He just didn’t know why.

Around him, soldiers backed away from the bleeding bodies as though the mania that had driven these cultists to take their own lives was contagious. But aside from that, everything was quiet, still.

Too fucking still.

The hush that descended over the field was nearly as thick as the mist covering it. Cedric tightened his grip on Ashrender, forcing his lungs to draw in even, steady breaths.

Elyria’s head snapped up at the exact same instant Cedric felt the pressure shift.

“Ellie? What is—” Kit cut herself off as Elyria whirled toward the seam of the Chasm . . . and to the parting mist on the other side. Because that’s what it was doing—parting, right down the middle of a wall of cloudy white, like curtains being drawn. It wasn’t dispersing into the air, pushed out by the rising sun, the way mist should.

It was revealing what had been hidden beyond.

“Quartered hell,” Tristan breathed. “Is that what I think it is?”

Cedric didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Because somewhere inside his mind, a terrible understanding was taking shape—for him and Elyria, both, if the horror he felt emanating down the bond was any indication.

They hadn’t been fighting Malakar’s army.

They’d been preparing his altar.

50

JUST REWARDS

ELYRIA

Elyria had seen mana springs before, though she rarely visited them up close. And aside from one misguided visit to Foxfire Hollow when she was younger, she’d never even been to the northern parts of the Midlands. So while she was aware that a spring did exist in the center of the continent, near the foothills of the Ironpeak Mountains, its proximity to the eastern Chasm and, thus, Havensreach’s border made its location so inconvenient that few of her people had ever seen it.

Until now.

And it was incredible.

An oasis blooming in the middle of the snow-covered field.

Raw mana swirled in a spiral that had been cut into the earth, shimmering a rich, radiant turquoise. The ground that the mana touched was not frozen or desolate or bare. It was lush and green, with palm fronds sprouting from tall grass and bushes blooming with sun-yellow sideralis flowers—a veritable cornucopia of life bursting from the soil that Elyria’s wild magic itched for.

It was vibrant and vital and alive—and so, so beautiful.

Less beautiful, however, was the sight of the scarlet-robed sanguinagi cultists spaced evenly around the spring—twelve of them, like the markings on a clock.

No, not twelve.