Chapter 61 Aftermath
AFTERMATH
CEDRIC
Cedric couldn’t move.
Couldn’t blink.
Couldn’t breathe.
How had it all gone so wrong, so fast?
Varyth Malchior was dead.
Wasn’t he?
But something so much worse rose in his stead.
Malakar.
The dark sorcerer resurrected.
And he took her, cleaving Cedric’s heart from his chest at the same time.
“Where is she?” Tenny cried, the tower rumbling as she ran up to where Kit and Cedric still stood at the edge of the split in the floor. “What happened? Where did they go?”
He had no response, no words. Nox came up behind Tenny, whose fists were beating against Cedric’s armor, blaring in time with the stilted stutter of his heart.
Kit reached for Tenny’s hand just before she reared back and turned that fist to Cedric’s face. “Ric, what the fuck happ—”
Someone gasped.
Someone else retched.
Cedric didn’t know who did which. He could only identify the wail, guttural and raw, that tore from Kit’s throat as she finally followed his gaze, landing on the spot Cedric had been unable—unwilling—to look away from.
The spot where nothing of Elyria remained, not the fierceness of her soul, nor the spark in her emerald eyes, nor her cherry-almond scent.
Nothing but two severed purple-and-green wings laying on the stone, blood pooling around them.
“Her—her—her—” Kit couldn’t form the words. Couldn’t say it.
Cedric didn’t blame her.
He took her wings. Her beautiful, perfect, ethereal wings.
The expression that had flashed across Elyria’s features in the single moment before she disappeared—the agony of it, the magnitude of it—played over and over in his mind. More than physical pain, it was something soul deep. He could feel it. Feel her loss. It ached in his chest, a hole of despair.
He could live a thousand lifetimes and he’d never be able to forget it.
“Where did he take her?” Nox’s voice pierced Cedric’s thoughts.
“How did he take her?” Tenny asked, face ashen. “You killed him. He was dead.”
“It wasn’t Malchior.” Cedric looked down at his fisted hands, at the sunfyre lighting his veins beneath his skin.
The words were emotionless as they left his mouth, shock driving them out.
“Or maybe it was, in a way. But it was more like his death triggered some kind of resurrection.” He swallowed, sucking in a painful breath. “Malakar has returned.”
Even more painful was the silence that followed.
“I would say it is impossible,” Nox finally said, their voice solemn, “but we’ve seen enough impossible things that doing so would only waste more time.”
Kit wiped away tears with the back of her hand. “Time that the Cult of Malakar certainly won’t be wasting now that their blood king has returned. Time we need to spend getting her back.”
Cedric opened his mouth to respond but a hot pulse from right below his clavicle interrupted his words. He searched for the tether that tied him to her, that same thread that had formed in the Crucible, had snapped and repaired.
Their union had turned it into something different, no longer a tether, no longer a thread, but a bond of light, of warmth.
Of love.
Cedric dove into himself, right to that place deep behind his ribs, beneath his furnace of power.
Relieved breath rushed from his lungs when he found their bond—a thick golden cord, strong and shining. He committed the feel of it to memory, fused it with his consciousness, his very being. He would never let it go.
He would never let her go.
Another pulse flared against Cedric’s chest. He looked down at his mother’s locket to find it glowing where it hung against his chestplate. He’d nearly forgotten all about it.
“Is that—” Tenny lifted a hand as if she might reach for the locket, then thought better of it.
Cedric nodded. “The other half.”
“What do we do with it?” Kit asked.
“Who fucking cares?” he all but spat, just as the tower shook again, stone rumbling against stone, its foundation crumbling.
“We must leave,” Nox said, looking around. “This place will not stand much longer.”
Cedric exchanged a look with Kit, who nodded before flitting to the other side of the room.
She knelt by Elyria’s wings with reverent grace before tenderly picking them up, stacking one over the other.
With a quick twitch of her fingers, she rinsed the blood from them, then crystallized the remaining water into a soft layer of frost—a protective shield, freezing them in time.
She did not hide her sobs when she returned to Cedric and the others.
Tenny’s eyes were wide as she ran over to where one of Elyria’s daggers had fallen in the chaos. In an instant, she had cut through a layer of her dress. Kit gave her a glassy-eyed nod before taking the fabric and gently wrapping it around the wings, cradling the bundle like a newborn babe.
Cedric stared at the precious package in Kit’s arms, that heat in his veins blaring, barely contained.
“Let Nox keep the other half of the crown hidden. I don’t give a fuck about repairing it right now, but we can’t give Malakar the chance to take it.
And neither can we risk him getting his hands on this.
” He covered the locket with his hand, relishing the burn of it against his palm, an incarnation of his anguish.
“The crown banished him once; it can do it again. After we get her back.”
Because if there was one thing Cedric knew with absolute certainty, it was that he would get Elyria back.
If he had to scorch all of Arcanis to do it, he would.
Reaching back inside himself, he tugged on that golden cord, seeking the reassurance of its existence. He needed to know that, wounded and suffering as she might be, at least she was alive.
And faintly, so faintly that he very well could have imagined it, Cedric felt a tug in return.