Chapter 41 You Shall Not Pass
YOU SHALL NOT PASS
ELYRIA
They tried to find another way in.
Well, first, they tried to break through.
Elyria tested every line of the vine-covered gateway with her wild magic.
They wouldn’t budge. Cedric suggested trying to send a sparrow through, to see if they could at least get a message to the others, if they could get one back.
Another burst of light had launched at the shadowy bird like a lightning strike, dispersing it back into the ether before the sparrow had made it within five feet of the gate.
Then, almost as if scolding her for having tried, a second light burst launched in Elyria’s direction.
She narrowly avoided being hit again, though the bedroll she’d had strapped to the back of her saddle was less lucky.
The closest they had come to getting the vines to move was when Cedric tried lighting them on fire with his white-gold flame.
They’d seemed to shudder a bit at that—rippled, as if getting ready to unwind.
But then there’d been another surge of white light that, for whatever reason, did not knock the knight on his ass, though it did snuff his flame right out.
So, they looked for another way.
With the rain coming and going in unpredictable waves that seemed almost taunting, Cedric and Elyria wove through the forest, heading down one of the split paths in front of the blocked archway, making a full circle through the forest, and coming back up the other.
There was no other point of entry—no other gates, no wards to break, no weak points. There were just . . . trees. Forest, and more forest, and then that stars-damned viney gate with her friends stuck on the other side.
By the time they returned to said gate, hours later, the rain was taking another blessed pause, and Elyria had gotten it in her head that she needed to know if Elderglade was physically on the other side, cloaked and warded, or if the archway held some sort of portal and had transported the rest of the group elsewhere.
Releasing her wings, she took to the air, only to find that the forest did not extend upward in any way that made sense.
Or, rather, it extended entirely too far.
Elyria tried soaring up to the canopy line, but the tree line only climbed with her. Troves of silver-barked giants grew into the sky—an infinite tapestry of trees. No matter how far she flew, she could not reach the top.
After a while, her wings began to falter, the air thinning, her shadows sluggish as they flapped. A sickly vertigo crept over her, and she was forced to descend.
She landed beside Cedric, bending at the waist and sucking in breath after breath. “That’s a new one.”
“What is?” He turned from where he had just finished setting up a tent, offering her a sip from his water skein.
“Just more celestial-seeming shit,” she said, taking a long sip. “There’s some intense magic at play in the protection of this place.”
“You think the celestials are the ones protecting it?”
“I don’t know why they would. I always thought Elderglade was just another sylvan settlement. But this certainly doesn’t seem normal, does it?”
“I stopped trying to view things as normal or not back during the first trial, I think.”
“Smart man.”
“You’ve never been here before, I take it?” he asked, tucking his water skein back into one of Polonius’ saddlebags.
She slumped against a nearby tree, wings folding against her back. “To Elderglade? Not once. I’ve visited Verdentia a few times—it’s not too far from Coralith. Crossing into the Midlands at all has held little interest for me over the decades, so I never really thought about coming here.”
“Why has it held no interest?”
Elyria grinned. “Nosy today, aren’t we?”
Cedric grinned back, shrugging his shoulders and gesturing broadly to their surroundings. “Do you have better things to be doing right now?”
“Fair point, well made, Sir Busybody.” Her smile faltered. “I’ve had complicated feelings about the Midlands for a long time now.”
“Because of Evander? When he entered the previous Crucible?”
“That didn’t help,” she said, blowing out a long breath, trying not to summon the memory of watching him walk through the Gate, the feelings of helplessness she’d had knowing he wouldn’t be coming back out.
“But truthfully, I think it goes all the way back to the Battle of Luminaria. To the Shattering.”
Cedric stiffened. “That was the day you—”
“The day I got this power, yes.” She conjured a wisp of shadow, letting it dance off the tips of her fingers. Then, she slid down the trunk she’d been leaning against until she sat on the wet ground, hugging her knees to her chest. “The day I died.”
Silence hung between them, thick as syrup. Elyria felt a pang in her chest, a plucking of that thread.
“The day you what?” Cedric’s voice was like stone as he dropped to his knees in front of her.
Elyria swallowed the knot in her throat, her voice uncharacteristically small when she said, “I died that day. On the battlefield. Our entire garrison was overrun by Malakar’s cultist army.
I was already burning out, my power spent, when a sanguinagi stabbed me.
” She lifted her right hand to her left shoulder, right above her heart. “Here.”
Cedric drew closer, placing his own hand over hers. And even though the sun had started to set, even though a chill was dancing through the air, Elyria felt warm.
“How did you survive?” His voice was barely more than a whisper.
“I didn’t.” She met his gaze, the rings in his warm brown eyes so vibrant and clear, it looked like they were made of his golden flame. Maybe they were.
Cedric’s brow creased, then flattened. “During the Crucible—”
“Yes. It’s what I relived during the second trial. Because the moment I died was the same moment something else happened too.”
“The Shattering.”
She nodded. “Queen Daephinia sundered the Crown of Concord and banished Malakar, and somehow its power brought me back.”
Cedric’s eyes went wide. “During the last trial, after you brought me back, you said, ‘The crown has done this before.’ ”
Elyria let out a breathy chuckle, attempting her best impression of Aurelia’s celestial, multi-tonal voice.
“ ‘A miracle never before seen, and never since replicated.’ The crown’s power brought me back—brought so many of my fellow soldiers back from the brink.
But, that power wasn’t the only thing unleashed when it shattered. ”
He swallowed. “Your shadows.”
“His shadows. His power. I don’t know why it chose me.
Why it sought me. But it did. And the instant it latched onto me, it took me over.
The war was over. Malakar was gone. I had been reborn, and the first thing I did was slaughter every remaining cultist on the battlefield, along with many other innocent people.
My own compatriots.” She blew out a disgusted breath. “The Revenant indeed.”
“Hey.” Cedric’s fingers closed around her hand, drawing it away from her shoulder and up to his mouth, where he pressed an achingly gentle kiss to her knuckles. “That was not your fault.”
She laughed dismissively. “You don’t know that. What if the reason I was chosen was because it saw the corruption inside me, just waiting to be unleashed? I shed plenty of blood before ever becoming the Revenant. I come from a family who speaks death like a language. My very lineage is darkness.”
Cedric shook his head slowly, his lips brushing back and forth against her knuckles. “I know you. I feel it. Here.” He brought their linked hands to his own chest, and Elyria felt his pulse beneath her palm. “You are a good person.”
“You barely know me,” she said, heart clenching as if in protest of the words. “And like the beautiful fool you are, you have a tendency to only see the best in people.”
Cedric dropped their hands from his chest but did not release hers.
“Lord Church said something similar to me. About seeing the best in people. I think he meant it as an insult too, but I refuse to see it as such.” His mouth tipped to one side, his scarred lip pursing.
“And I regret to inform you that I am unlikely to change.”
“The first and perhaps last thing he and I will ever agree on, then,” Elyria said with a scoff, though her expression softened a second later. “I don’t want you to change.”
“Then believe me when I tell you these things. You are not your father. You are not his dark star, nor Malakar’s darkness. And you are not the things you have done.”
Elyria’s chest felt tight. “If it had turned out that I was responsible for your parents’ deaths, if it had truly been the Revenant who killed your family that day, would you be saying the same thing?”
She felt something like anguish shimmer down their bond, but Cedric didn’t rise to her bait. “It would still be true,” he said, and Elyria’s eyes pricked.
She blinked rapidly, finally pulling her hand out of Cedric’s as she made to stand, turning toward the vined-off archway once more. “Yes, well. None of this is helping us get through that, is it?”
“Very subtle with the change of subject there, Trouble.”
“I’m just trying to keep us focused. And it appears I’m just as nosy as you today, I guess. I want to know what could be so important about this place that it requires these kinds of defenses.”
“Well, if it is the same sanctuary that Audaxus was muttering about, it makes sense that it would be a safe place for someone.”
“Yes, but what is it about us that makes it so we are not allowed in? Especially when it readily accepted all the others?”
Cedric grimaced as he got to his feet, pressing his lips into a hard line.
Elyria’s eyes narrowed. “What was that face for?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
“Cedric.”
“It’s just that, technically, you’re the one who wasn’t allowed in. It feels very clear to me that the magic at play here is not a fan of your shadows.”
Elyria made a face, but she couldn’t argue with that. “Are you regretting being stuck on the outside with me? The others could be getting answers about Princess Selenae and the crown as we speak. Could be finding out about Malchior, about where to go next.”
“I don’t regret anything,” he said, his tone suddenly so sincere that Elyria’s neck felt hot. “It sounds like you’re regretting being stuck out here with me though.”
She laughed. “I trust the others to get whatever information might be helpful. It’s not as though they’re in there battling Varyth Malchior himself.
If Elderglade doesn’t like my magic, I feel pretty damn confident it really won’t like his.
And as long as I’m the one who gets to bring him to justice in the end, gets to make him pay for all he’s done .
. .” Evander’s vein-stricken face and shredded wings flashed across Elyria’s vision.
She shook her head.
“Elle? Are you all right?”
“Oh, right as rain.” She straightened, tossing a glance back at the archway, the silver trees now luminous in the dying light.
And almost as if she summoned it with the words, thunder cracked through the sky.
“That was a poor choice of words,” she said, rolling her eyes as the clouds broke open. They were soaked in seconds.
“Think this is fate’s way of telling us to pack it in for the night?” Cedric asked, wiping water from his forehead before motioning toward the tent. “I think it’s pretty clear we won’t be going anywhere tonight.”
“Stars above, I’m so fucking sick of this rain,” Elyria said. Nearby, Fjaethe huffed as if in agreement.
Cedric lifted the tent flap, holding it open for Elyria.
“One moment.” She raised both arms at her sides, letting her wild magic hum in her veins.
With precision, she lengthened the leafy boughs of the two trees that the horses were hitched to, weaving them together to form a large canopy that spanned over the horses’ bodies, offering them some shelter from the quickly worsening storm.
She chuckled at the look on Cedric’s face as she moved into the tent. “Eventually, you’re going to get used to seeing things like that,” she said, sweeping past him.
“I hope I never do,” he said, and he followed her inside.