A stream of shadowy butterflies flew in through the open doorway, followed by the gaggle of breathless children. Whines and groans replaced their laughter as Elyria splayed her fingers once more. The butterflies flickered, then dissipated into the ether altogether.
“Sorry, kids,” she said. “Show’s over.”
To their credit, the children were quick to replace their disappointment with happy chatter about what they had just witnessed.
She turned back to Cedric, voice soft. “They deserve more.”
“They will have it,” he replied, and his tone was so earnest, his words so sure, that Elyria almost believed him. “You’ll make sure of it.”
“If your precious lord ever lets me leave this fucking city,” she grumbled.
Cedric’s lips pursed to one side, his brow creased.
“Sorry,” she said. “I know it’s not your fault. On my fairer days, I might even understand the king’s reasoning for the delay. I just wish it was different.”
“I wish things could be different too,” Cedric said, and there was no mistaking the sadness in his voice. Like he felt the same ache she did. The same loss that came with wanting something she was sure she had no right to want.
Still, as Tenny and the housemistress waltzed through the front door, the children dispersing through the home, a sense of normalcy settling back over the house, Elyria let herself imagine—for just a few moments—what it might be like to get it anyway.
17
BASER INSTINCTS
CEDRIC
Step.Slide. Sweep. Parry.
Cedric narrated his movements in his head, thrusting the staff in his hands forward with measured steps. With a grimace, he turned to look at the charred marks on the disfigured practice dummy he’d chucked to the side. Thankfully, it was still early—so early, in fact, that the light of dawn slipping over the horizon was barely enough to illuminate this corner of the empty training yard. Still, he would need to clean that up before anyone else ventured out for their own morning drills.
Despite the fact that he could feel the fire in his veins, the heat sizzling in the center of his chest, more acutely than ever before, he had only made marginal progress in mastering his power. He thought perhaps he understood a little bit more about where the pool ofmagic sat within him. Understood how to pull it back, keep it from spilling over at inopportune moments. But being able to wield it purposefully, to call it forth without immediately setting his target alight with white-gold flames seemed an entirely separate matter.
So, after yet another failed attempt—and yet another practice dummy he’d have to replace—Cedric had decided to go back to basics. The diversion was well warranted, he thought. And if he tried hard enough, he might even have been able to come up with a reasonable excuse as to why he’d picked the quarterstaff to practice with over the myriad of blades hanging on the weapons rack.
Parry. Sweep. Slide.
He reversed his steps, mirroring his earlier movements, slashing through the air in a wide arc, a pleased smile tipping his mouth as he started to feel more comfortable with the heft of it, the length. Cedric spun the wooden staff in his hand a few times with a flourish—an outrageously long baton.
“Cute.”
Elyria’s voice was a silver bell chiming through the air, and Cedric’s eyes immediately shot to the source of the sound. They locked onto her lithe form leaning against the far rail of the training ring, her cream-colored tunic tied in a knot at her waist, the fitted leather breeches tucked into calf-height boots. Her hair was loosely braided over one shoulder, tiny sprigs of merryleaf tucked into the length.
Stars a-fucking-bove, she was a sight. The pale light of cresting dawn painted her skin an even lighter shade of porcelain than it normally was, and despite the early hour, her emerald-green eyes were bright.
Cedric tensed, his movements stilling for a heartbeat. He forced himself into a casual pose, slinging the staff across his bare shoulders, bracing its middle against the back of his neck. His eyes flitted wistfully to his shirt, hastily discarded and dumped over the railing when he’d begun to work up a sweat. The very same railing that Elyria happened to be leaning against.
Retrieving it would mean approaching her, and he truly wasn’t sure he had the strength of will to move even an inch toward her without reenacting that stolen moment in the hall outside her room. It had taken an alarming amount of restraint not to do exactly that duringtheir visit to the Walk the other day, considering they’d been in a house full of children.
A blush crept into his cheeks at the thought, and he tightened his grip on either side of the staff. His embarrassment deepened at the question that naturally popped into his mind at her unexpected appearance. How long had she been watching him? Watching him practice withhersignature weapon, no less?
In typical fashion, as though she’d heard his very thoughts, Elyria smirked as she pushed off the rail and strode over. Cedric cursed the delicate points of her ears and their superior hearing that he was suddenly very sure included being able to hear his walloping heart.
Get your shit together,he commanded himself, to little avail. He’d been consumed by the thought of her in every spare moment since their encounter in the hallway. Who was he trying to fool? It had been that way since that fevered kiss under the aurora during the final trial. Hells, since their near-miss in the moonlight after the second one. He was somewhat ashamed to admit it, but it might even have been since their very first encounter outside the doors of Castle Lumin.
He simply couldn’t get her out of his mind.
The feel of her soft lips on his, the scent of her skin, her body pressed against him, the brush of her magic against his own—it was a refrain, a pulse in his bones. It didn’t matter how many times he fisted his cock in a fruitless attempt to rid his mind of her. She was ever-present, like a thrall had been cast over him. Unbreakable.
As if he wanted to break it.
