Chapter 12 Sparks #2
He gave her a sidelong glance. “I was going to say ‘protective.’ ”
“Protective,” she echoed flatly. “Because I need protecting, do I?”
“You were the target last night. That attack, those blades, they were meant for you.” His voice was strained, his hands flexing at his sides, like he was holding himself back from reaching for her.
Elyria found herself wishing he wouldn’t.
She forced a casual expression onto her face, tried to muster her usual flippancy. “I’m a big girl, Sir Knight. Your concern is noted but wholly unnecessary. Why don’t you leave the big scary cultists to me, and you stay focused on whatever you have been able to find about the lost princess?”
Cedric’s expression tightened. “I told you, I haven’t been able to find any—”
“Surely, there must be something. What about the person who—how did Aurelia put it—‘spirited away’ the young princess before Malakar’s attack?”
“A ‘well-meaning soul,’ she called them.” His gaze went distant, like he was categorically running through some mental list. “I think . . . I think you may be right. Amongst the many, many, many castle records I parsed through, there were numerous lists of those who served in the castle. I remember coming across some references to Princess Selenae’s sylvan nanny. ”
“And? Do you recall the name? A description? Where they hailed from?”
“I cannot remember the details.” Cedric blew out a slow breath. “You truly cannot comprehend just how many records Tristan and I looked at. But I will write to Magister Yvan immediately and have him send a transcription of the pages.” He paused. “It’s not much of a lead.”
“A breadcrumb,” Elyria said with a casual shrug, but there was no denying the spark of excitement that flared in her chest. “But I’ll take it.
Sylvan lifespans outlast fae by centuries.
Their memories are long, and their communities are small.
It is entirely possible someone there remembers, that they could help. ”
“You would go all the way to Elderglade to talk to them? To Verdentia, even?” His expression morphed into one of disbelief, as though he could hardly fathom the thought of traveling to one of the sylvan settlements.
“No,” said Elyria.
Cedric’s face relaxed.
“I would have you go, though,” she added with a wry smile, and his eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead. It was, admittedly, very cute.
“Pardon me?”
“I do believe that following the trail of Princess Selenae, and the half of the crown that she may or may not still possess, falls squarely under your responsibility, Sir Victor,” she said, clapping him lightly on the shoulder as she began walking again, heading down the hall toward her quarters.
“I have an evil sorcerer to hunt down, remember?”
“I . . . suppose you are right,” he conceded, trailing after her.
“Again,” Elyria added, throwing a smirk over her shoulder.
Cedric pressed his lips together, as though trying to keep in whatever he meant to say next.
Elyria found she didn’t much care for that. “What is it?”
His steps slowed. “I hadn’t quite considered the idea that our priorities might take us in different directions yet again.”
She stopped walking entirely. “The escort you suggested . . . you wanted to be part of it?”
Cedric shrugged, casting his gaze to the floor. “Were the king to agree,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, “I would have volunteered to accompany you, yes.”
Elyria’s heart clenched in her chest.
“I do not delight in the thought of watching you walk away from me again.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. Or perhaps she did know what she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t form. She tried to escape the tight feeling in her chest by resuming her steady walk back to her quarters, Cedric falling into silent step beside her.
The two of them stopped only when they’d finally reached her bedroom door.
“This is where we part ways, then,” Elyria said, turning to him. “Just for now.”
His face was painted with something that looked close to misery when she looked at him, an unnamed emotion swimming in the golden-brown depths of his gaze. “Elyria, I—”
“I don’t quite know what to expect from the king after my admittedly unprofessional outburst, but I suppose I will find out soon enough, won’t I?
Do let me know if he decides how he best wants to display his two prizes.
” The words burst forth in a flurry, a babble meant to distract.
Though, to distract whom? Him, from saying anything that would take this nebulous, unformed thing between them to a place they couldn’t return from?
Or herself, from facing the notion that she might just want to go there too?
Elyria swiveled back to face the door, her fingers brushing the handle. “Thank you for the company.” The door cracked open, but she didn’t walk through it. Not yet.
She felt heat at her back as Cedric stepped closer.
“I meant what I said. About not wanting our paths to diverge again.” His breath grazed the shell of her pointed ear, and it was all Elyria could do not to lean back, to sink into him.
Her pulse quickened. Slowly, she turned around. “I don’t think that’s up to us anymore.”
His answering smile was sad as he drew a hand to her face, brushing a lock of hair that had come loose from her braid off her cheek. “I don’t think it ever was.”
Elyria’s breath caught in her throat as he pressed his palm to the doorframe, warmth radiating off him.
He was close now. Closer than he had any right to be.
Not close enough. In the periphery of her vision, his forearm flexed, the corded muscles there tense.
It stirred something in her, a flare of heat all her own, a tightening behind her navel.
As if he could hear the thoughts forming in her head, Cedric leaned down, his face only inches from hers, his eyes lowering to her mouth.
Her shadows stirred, that rattling box in her chest ready to burst open, the emotions she’d kept buried there for months threatening to spill out, to overwhelm her, to consume her.
She wondered what it would feel like if she let them.
It would be so easy, after all.
All she had to do was tilt her head, tip her chin, move a fraction to the right, and her lips would brush his.
And so, that’s what she did.
Elyria pushed up onto her toes, until with just the barest hint, the slightest contact, their lips met.
She pulled back, just far enough to study the glorious rings of gold in Cedric’s warm brown eyes. Just for a second. Half a second. Less.
Because the next thing Elyria knew, his lips were crashing into hers again—immediate, imminent, urgent. Cedric’s entire body lurched forward, pressing her into the doorframe.
She loved it.
Loved the feel of the wood biting into her back.
Loved the softness of his hair between her fingers as she raked her hands through it.
Loved the pressure of his free hand running up her side, gripping her waist, digging into her skin, while his other one stayed in place, fingers gripping the doorframe so hard she heard the wood creak.
“Cedric,” she murmured against his mouth, and he groaned as though hearing her say his name was the key to his very undoing.
Heat flared in Elyria’s core.
Flared elsewhere, too, she realized.
Because, suddenly, the glorious warmth of his body against hers was a little too warm. The hand on her waist was a little too hot. And their scorching kiss was a little too scorching.
It was burning.
And Elyria didn’t mean to do it, but a soft hiss of pain escaped her anyway.
In an instant, Cedric ripped himself away from her, cursing under his breath. The air around him shimmered, heat rolling off him in palpable waves. He fisted his hands at his sides, eyes closed, breathing sharply in through his nose and out through his mouth.
A few moments passed before his breath steadied, his hands relaxed. The heat in the air began to dissipate.
But Elyria could see it. Could see the guilt brewing on his handsome face. Could see the questions, the seeds of regret already planting themselves in his mind.
She refused to let them.
Elyria ignored the pain that flashed across her burned lips as she smirked, tilted her head appraisingly, and said, “Seems like that’s something you might want to get under control.”
Cedric tried to chuckle, but it came out ragged, broken. “Tell me how, and I’ll oblige.”
“See, now that is an excellent attitude to have,” she said with a wink.
Despite her best efforts to breeze past the moment, Cedric’s face fell.
His voice was little more than a whisper when he said, “It’s getting harder for me to control.
It wasn’t like this before. But after last night .
. .” His breathing began to quicken again, his eyes widening with panic.
“I don’t understand this magic. Don’t know where it came from. Don’t know how to wield it.”
Elyria didn’t realize she’d made the conscious decision to call them, but suddenly her shadows were drifting from her fingers, wrapping around Cedric’s arm, dancing up his shoulder, grazing his jaw. They settled over him, a blanket of cooling smoke, and he relaxed.
“Hmm,” Elyria tutted, making a show of tapping her chin as she pulled her shadows back, letting them recede into the ether.
“If only there were someone of whom you might ask such things.” She reached for his mana token, glowing faintly against his chest, and toyed with it between her fingers.
“If only there were an entire delegation of magic wielders who recently arrived in your fair city.”
Cedric gave her a pointed look, already so familiar to her now, and her chest felt lighter than it had in months.
“You don’t even need this anymore, do you?” she said, voice feather soft as she dropped the token, her fingers moving to his collarbone instead. “Is that what you’re afraid of? What scares you most? That it might mean you’re not—”
“Yes,” he said, the word sharp, cutting her off. “Yes, that is exactly what I am afraid of.”
“Cedric, you—”
She didn’t get to finish the thought. Not as footsteps sounded from down the hallway, voices echoing off the walls. Cedric sprang farther back from her, his head shooting toward the source of the sound, posture straightening, the sudden space between them a chasm all its own.
And Elyria didn’t second-guess herself when she slipped into her room, the door clicking shut behind her.
For a moment, she thought she heard the shuffle of pacing footsteps—back and forth, back and forth—in front of her door. Thought she might have felt a hand being laid on the other side of it.
Thought she heard him mutter, “But that’s not what scares me most.”