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“Sorry,” he said automatically.

Her lips curved. “There’s that word again. Didn’t we already talk about this?”

“I’m . . . still working on it.”

She studied him, moonlight catching the flecks of silver in her emerald eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Cedric winced as the bond flared with amused disbelief. There would be no getting anything past her anymore. If there ever was. “Fine,” he said. “Everything. Some things. I don’t know. Regardless, it’s nothing for you to fret about. You just focus on resting, healing. Let me do all the worrying.”

“I would never dare try to steal your favorite pastime from you, Sir Worrywart,” she said with a wink, stepping back from him to gesture at herself. “But I’ve been resting. And healing. And evidently being fed magical sylvan soups that have me feeling better than I had even before—” She chewed on her bottom lip for a second. Then, with a minuscule shake of her head, she plastered on a new smile and continued. “Not to mention being given regular baths by overly attentive knights. I’m practically a new woman.”

“Well, isn’t that a shame? I rather like the old one.”

“Ah, still quick with that wit, I see.” She rose onto her toes and brushed a light kiss against his scar.

“I am serious though, Elle. You’ve been through so much. It’s perfectly natural that your body—that you—would need time to recover.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m serious too. Do you think you know my body better than I do?”

He choked on about six wholly inappropriate answers. Not the time, Thorne. “Of course not. I’m sor—” He bit his tongue.

Her gaze softened. “I just want to be with you.”

And Cedric’s heart broke a little bit more.

He tried to stifle the way his breath hitched, reaching for her again, drawing her back into his embrace. “All right,” he said into her hair. “In that case, I suppose there is something we should talk about.”

She released a muffled-sounding snort into his tunic. “Should I be alarmed?”

He peeled back to look at her, take in the simultaneous contentment and consternation in her gaze. “No, not at all. It isn’t—” He broke off. Reconsidered. “Well, I’m actually not sure. But we can’t avoid it any longer.”

She waited, one eyebrow arched in question.

“It’s about your wings.”

19

OPTIONS

ELYRIA

By the time the sun had climbed past the treetops, the clearing at the center of Elderglade was already bustling.

Elyria could feel the magic of this place humming through the soles of her feet—the grass and the trees and the life here, all braided together into something that echoed deep in her bones.

She reveled in it.

After all those weeks without her wild magic, all that time without even a trickle in her blood, she couldn’t get enough of it now. Couldn’t seem to stop wielding it, without purpose or reason. Tiny sprays of wild blooms sprouted where her bare feet parted the grass—she hadn’t wanted to wear boots—as she and Cedric strode through the glade. The sprig of merryleaf she’d tucked behind her ear wound itself into her braid, twisting with the strands of periwinkle.

Her knight watched her with an awestruck expression—one of her favorite ways he tended to arrange his face, she decided—as they approached the dining hut, hands laced together. She smiled at him, twirling the ring on his finger in playful circles with her thumb.

It would be so fucking easy to get used to this, she thought. And though she had, once again, not really meant to say it to Cedric, the way his grip on her hand tightened and the slow sigh he released told her he’d heard it anyway. Told her he agreed.

Elyria could not imagine anything better, in fact, than getting to endlessly stroll through this magical place with him at her side. Here, where there was no dark sorcerer hellsbent on cutting her power from her, no blood runes making her skin crawl. Here, where joy and magic and light were everywhere. Here, where it was just him and her and⁠—

Not just him and her, she realized as a green-haired, green-skinned figure emerged from the dining hut with a tray balanced on one hand and a pitcher in the other.

Elyria darted forward so quickly that Cedric was like a toy on a string being pulled behind her. Young Shep barely had time to put down the tray and pitcher before she had barreled into him, scooping the sylvan into a one-armed hug.