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There was only one voice she could hear, each remembered word making her blood pulse faster, her magic burn brighter.

“Do not fear, mi regina umbrae. Soon you will forget all about him. . . . We will be so much more.”

Elyria’s skin crawled as she recalled the feeling of his hands on her, the way he’d taken hold of her power, the helplessness. Black tinged the edges of her sight—a deep, dark rage swelling behind her ribs.

Never again.

Never fucking again.

He would not remake the world to his vision.

He would not steal another ounce of power.

She would make sure of it.

“Elle!” Cedric called down their bond, and she felt his panic, felt his fear—she could even feel the impact shuddering through his bones as he continued to fight. But she couldn’t stop even long enough to see where he was. She wouldn’t.

She couldn’t let him get away.

Elyria shut the door in her mind.

She was close now. Close enough that the eleven remaining human cultists noticed her approach. With sneers and yells, bows of bloodred crystal materialized in their hands, and their own arrows were now shooting at her, trying to bring her down.

Elyria’s shadows misted off her staff, flattening into a long, body-blocking shield, which she used to deflect them. With every clink against her shield, Elyria’s inner smile broadened. She could do this. She could get to him.

Still, eleven was not a small number of sanguinagi. And as she soared ever closer, she realized with unfortunate clarity that there was a reason these ones had been selected to help their blood king wound the world. Why they remained to defend the crater, to ensure their dark leader was able to make his way to the Line.

It happened so fast, with her focus was so single-mindedly bent on getting to the crater that Elyria didn’t even register the flash of pain at first. She might not have noticed at all were it not for the spiky red fletching dancing in her periphery as she waved her hand, trying to summon her wild magic to attack the cultists below. And even with that, she might not have cared that she had an arrow sticking out of her fucking hand, except for the way it dispersed in a bloody mist that seemed to instantly crawl inside her wound.

It was agony.

Like her very veins were being ripped apart from within, a fever searing through her hand, her arm. She screamed, her joints locking up, her bones on fire. Her staff and shield fell away as she clutched her hand, her free hand’s fingers digging into her palm like she could carve out the pain.

She couldn’t.

And Elyria Lightbreaker dropped from the sky like a falling star.

“Get the FUCK UP, Elle!”

Huh, Elyria thought groggily. That sounded a lot like someone she knew. Someone who didn’t swear very often. Who rarely lost her composure. Who⁠—

Elyria’s eyes snapped open, and she found herself staring at a scarred, wingless back. Jocelyn stood in front of her in a wide, braced stance, knees bent, a sword in both hands. And in front of her, standing between Elyria, Jocelyn, and the crater, eleven glaring sanguinagi cultists approached.

The hatred on their vein-stricken faces was visceral. Their eyes gleamed, their irises all the same shade of dark orange-red. Blood dripped from open wounds on their palms, filling the air with a coppery stench as blood-spun weapons sprouted in their hands.

Elyria sat up with a groan, every muscle in her body aching from the impact of hitting the ground. Her eyes immediately darted to her hand, which was free of its puncturing arrow, and free of the excruciating pain that had felled her. The agony-inducing blood-spell that arrow had carried had been blessedly short-lived, and with a tiny wisp of healing magic, Elyria sealed the gash it left behind.

“Now, Lightbreaker!” Jocelyn shouted, and with protesting limbs, Elyria got to her feet. Her staff had fallen a few yards away, but she didn’t need it. Dark mist flowed down her arms, swelling over both her hands. It lengthened, sharpened, until each of her ten fingers closed around the hilt of a shadow-forged blade.

Together with Jocelyn, she lunged.

They fell into rhythm without speaking—Elyria striking from above, her shadowblades plunging down, hacking away at red crystal swords, maces, shields.

Below her, Jocelyn fought with lethal grace, her own swords flashing in precise arcs. Thorn-covered brambles erupted from the ground, and Elyria honestly wasn’t sure which of the wildshapers was responsible for summoning them, but it hardly mattered. They wrapped around boots, tore into legs—pinning half the sanguinagi in place with anguished cries.

But quartered hell, there were just so many of them. And with every spray of blood that did not take the cultist completely to their knees, they only seemed to grow stronger. Like the spilling of their own blood made their magic surge.

Bloody ribbons streamed from fingertips, sharp as razors, slicing through the brambles. The cultists rushed forward, a swarm surrounding Elyria and Jocelyn both. . . .