Page 175

Not when there, at the center of the cavern, standing on a floating dais of shining, glossy—fuck it all—obsidian rock, was Malakar.

His back was to her, the hood of his robe lifted over his head. Nothing but a man-shaped swath of black, sucking the light from his surroundings.

She wished she didn’t know that shape.

She landed hard on a floating platform of silver-streaked marble, the end of her staff striking the stone with a thud that echoed through the cavern. “You’re done, Malakar,” she spat. “This is over.”

“So you all keep saying.” He did not turn around. “Does the word have some new meaning we are not aware of? Because from our vantage, regina, this is anything but over.”

Elyria exhaled her annoyance. “If you want to spend your final moments arguing semantics, that is your choice. It won’t save you.”

“Though, speaking of things being repeated,” he continued, as though he didn’t hear her at all, “we would be remiss not to point out the poetry of being in this place together. Do you not see it? Feel it? The power we could have had?” He paused, his hood shifting as he tilted his head to one side. “What we still could have. It isn’t too late for you to join us. You desire a whole Arcanis, a healed Arcanis? We can give you that. Arcanians and humans alike will grovel at your feet, mi regina umbrae. We can rule over them all . . . together.”

Elyria huffed out an exhausted laugh. “You think I would allow you to poison the Line and rewrite the world? Would let you enslave the oppressed and kill those who oppose you just so I can play at being empress of the bones?”

“Poison?” he echoed, amusement woven through the word. “No, regina. We are the antidote. We are the cure. These so-called celestials make claims about balance, about righting the ways of the world—the world they created. And yet, when the time came to truly tear down the ways of old, to plant the seeds for a balanced future, they abandoned us.”

“How is the future you desire any different?” Conviction boiled in Elyria’s blood. “You offer nothing but death and silence. A world where the scales are tipped, with you on one side and everything and everyone else on the other. And that is an imbalance even the celestials will no longer be able to ignore.”

Malakar’s head tilted farther, his hood falling back to reveal the barest sliver of his pale face as he looked over his shoulder at her. “Then it is a good thing no celestials shall remain to protest.”

Elyria blinked. She took one shocked step forward. “What are you saying?”

Malakar’s shoulders rose and fell in a silent laugh. “The Line is only the ink. If we want to rewrite the world, we first must eliminate its authors.”

“You would challenge the celestials themselves?”

“We would kill them. We will kill them. Empowered by the magic of this place, we will crush them and take their power. And then, yes, regina, we will shape this world anew.”

Elyria sucked in, then blew out, a deep, slow breath and leaned against her staff. “You know, when all this started, when you had me trapped in your tower and pinned to your table, there were moments when I truly feared. Not necessarily for myself, not because of what you were doing to me. But because of what you could do—would do—to the rest of Arcanis. I feared what you would turn this world into if given reign over it. How frightening, I thought, to realize that the sublime sorcerer of darkness himself, this brilliant, evil man had returned. The same one who, unwittingly or not, had already long been the architect of my misery.”

Elyria eyed the obsidian platform beneath Malakar’s feet and sucked back the ribbon of shadow that was wrapped around her staff, tucking it inside herself. Now only the barest hint of Cedric’s sunfyre remained twisted around the weapon, embedded in the wood like a golden thread.

Safer this way, she thought. She did not want her shadows igniting the volatile stone, and even more, she did not want to risk Malakar taking hold of them again. She knew she was stronger now. Knew that her shadows were different. That they were no longer his, nothing close to his.

But still, there was the memory of how it had felt to have him seize them, the way he’d used them against her. It crawled over her skin, a film she could never quite seem to scrub clean.

Elyria cleared her throat. “So, yes, I feared you,” she continued, shifting her weight to her back foot. “Because I thought you some diabolical mastermind plotting to take over the world. But that’s not exactly the case, is it? You are not some genius, some savant. You are simply a man who was given too much power, and it has driven you mad.”

Malakar was so still, it was like he had frozen in place. He stayed like that, unmoving, his arms stiff at his sides, his head turned just a fraction, as Elyria rose with a great flap of her wings and launched herself at the dark sorcerer.

But then it was not Malakar who was frozen.

It was Elyria, clutched in some invisible vise, suspended in midair like the useless rocks drifting around her. Power pressed in on her from all sides—crushing, diminishing. Her arms and legs were forced wide, her fingers compelled to straighten. Her staff clattered to the obsidian at the dark sorcerer’s feet.

It wasn’t her shadows he’d taken hold of. Wasn’t ribbons of blood or darkness that curled around her limbs, squeezing her, slicing at her. It was raw, pure, unfiltered, indefensible magic that held her, her limbs stretched out, a dark, unnatural star spread-eagled in the air.

The blood drained from Elyria’s face when Malakar finally turned to face her. Mana dripped from the corner of his mouth. Silver veins spread under his eyes, streaking down his cheeks, his jaw, his neck.

“Too much power,” the sorcerer mused, his voice raw, rasping. “No. If anything, it is not enough.”

And he leapt into the Line.

56

AN OFFER MADE

CEDRIC