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And Cedric Thorne stepped over the threshold.

14

SOLIMAEUS

ELYRIA

The fire was the wrong color.

Or, rather, it was a perfectly normal color. Spitting flames of yellow-tipped orange crawled around the corner at the end of the entrance hall, consuming tapestries, leaping down the carpet. Thick smoke filled the air as dozens of cultists ran into the hallway, their faces slick with sweat, their eyes wild. Some of them were yelling at one another. Some of them were attempting to smother or slow down the flames. Some of them were simply looking expectantly at Malakar, who stood a few feet in front of Elyria, chest heaving.

With her vision still blurred by the blow she’d sustained after she’d been freed from Malakar’s hold and he’d presumably flung her behind him—in defense or rage or a combination of both—it took Elyria a moment to understand exactly what was happening. Took a moment to register the distant sounds of metal grating against metal, the voices still shouting, yelling, screaming around her.

“Ambush!”

“Seal the doors to the western corridor!”

“How did they get in?”

“Get to the forges!”

“Stop them!”

“Kill them!”

Dark boots and darker robes whipped across her vision as cultists sprinted past, one of them cursing as they tripped over Petra’s body. They stumbled with a downward glance, then continued on, completely unconcerned with the headless corpse lying in the middle of the floor.

Elyria’s stomach lurched.

The whole hall seemed to tilt, the crackle of the still-blazing fire mixing with the cannonade pounding in her skull. She lifted a shaky hand to prod at the back of her head, and it came back covered in red.

“To the grand hall,” yelled Malakar, and fingers bit into Elyria’s arm as she was hauled upright, her bare feet dragging over the blood-soaked carpet. “Move,” he snapped.

Elyria wasn’t entirely convinced her legs remembered how to move, and the thought passed through her cloudy head that this would have been a really nice time to still have her wings.

Her slowness did not impress the dark sorcerer. This became evident when coils of black mist suddenly wrapped around her, snaking down from where he held on to her, winding around her arms, her calves, her ankles, moving her forward like a puppet being pulled along a string.

Elyria tried to muster that kernel of light inside her once more, tried to get it to burn through Malakar’s hold on her, but it was small, slippery. Her own power flared, a mix of wild and shadow streaking through her veins, as though whatever spells had dampened it all this time had been suddenly undone. But it was too much, too fast, and though she could feel it, though she wanted to sob with relief, she couldn’t grasp it. Couldn’t wield it.

She was so, so dizzy. How hard had she hit that fucking door?

Malakar shuffled her down the hall, a dozen sanguinagi surrounding them both, and with the dark sorcerer’s shadows forcing her to face forward, she couldn’t see what was happening at her back. But even through bleary eyes, she could see how each cultist’s gaze was fixed on whatever was going on at the opposite end of the hall. She could see the fear in their eyes as clashing metal, shouts of warning, and pained cries continued filtering through the smoke.

Something almost painful pierced Elyria’s heart as the voices behind her started to take shape, as she reconciled that not all the words being shouted were from the cultists fighting whatever this invading force was.

As she realized one of those voices sounded . . . familiar.

Sounded a little bit like one she used to know.

Because beneath the nausea churning in her gut and the ringing in her ears and the pain—four hells, the pain—something else was tugging at her.

And that realization had hope poking out from within that rattling box inside herself. Hope she hadn’t let herself feel in months.

Elyria’s chest was an echoing cavern, that tug behind her ribs banging, pounding, booming—louder than the beat of her heart. Confirming what she knew in the marrow of her bones was always bound to happen but that she had still fought against believing.

He had come for her.

The thought filled her with such immense joy that it stole the breath from her lungs. But it wasn’t the only thing leaving her breathless.