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He needed to go faster. Fuck, why wasn’t he faster?

He surged forward, his heels digging into the snow-covered ground as he willed his limbs to move, willed the sunfyre pumping through his veins to push him farther, faster. The crater was right there. He was so close.

A still-blazing Ashrender clutched in his trembling fingers, Cedric ran . . .

. . . and slammed straight into a wall of teeth and claws.

Sunfyre flared as Cedric slashed Ashrender up, down, left, right. “I. Don’t. Have. Fucking. Time. For. This!” he yelled, and the abomination let out an inhuman squeal as it came apart in pieces.

But, of course, it wasn’t the only one.

And it wasn’t just monsters he had to contend with now either.

Cedric ducked, narrowly avoiding a bolt of crimson power as it tore through the air at him. The sanguinagi who had fired it let out a frustrated cry, then launched herself at him, a crystal chain whip forming from her bleeding hands. It lashed out, snagging on Ashrender as Cedric threw the sword up to defend himself, knocking it from his hands.

Cedric’s heart squeezed when the blade went skittering across the frozen earth, amber stone glinting in the sun as it tipped right over the edge of the crater . . . and fell in.

The cultist woman laughed, the blood-forged chain whip dangling from one hand, a spark of scarlet lightning dancing between the fingers of the other.

And then a different kind of lightning speared right through her chest, leaving a charred hole in her robes—and her torso—large enough to see straight through.

From the other side of the grotesque window, Sephone wiggled her fingers. “Lose something?”

Cedric had never been so stars-damned grateful to hear anyone’s voice.

Well, that wasn’t true. There was someone else he would give anything to hear right now. But there had only been that one precious, fleeting moment after Elyria’s mental doors had opened when he’d heard her—her anguish, her fear, her despair . . . before she vanished into the crater and their bond went quiet again.

Just an effect of being so close to the Line, he told himself. He refused to think there could be any other reason.

“Much appreciated,” Cedric said, flinging the now very dead cultist’s body aside.

“Stay alive, Your Majesty.” Sephone shot into the air, trailing after a gryphon that was soaring away with someone’s collapsed body thrown over its back. Cedric couldn’t tell who it was, though. Not when another abominable creature was suddenly before him, upon him, preventing him from getting any closer to the crater’s edge.

Panic gripped Cedric’s chest when he glanced down at his empty hands. He’d lost his daggers while fighting with Tristan, Ollie, and the other soldiers earlier, had left them behind the instant he felt Elyria’s walls come down. And now with Ashrender gone . . .

Cedric knew that he certainly wasn’t powerless, but he was unaccustomed to fighting without at least the presence of steel in his hand. It made him falter, made him slow. And with the monster bearing down on him and all others on the field engaged with enemies of their own, Cedric could not afford to be slow.

The creature threw itself at Cedric with slashing claws, and he was only a hairsbreadth from having half his face ripped off when he leapt out of the way.

“I like the scars you already have. I would prefer it if you didn’t collect any additional ones.”

They were words Elyria had said to him in Kingshelm the night before they went to Seastone. The night before every quarter of hell broke loose, and she was taken from him. Even the memory of her voice bolstered him, had the furnace of power in his chest sizzling. Heat warmed Cedric’s hands, and the creature hissed as white-gold flame erupted from his palms.

Cedric grinned and, recalling what Raefe had done back in Castle Lumin during Elyria’s rescue, clasped his palms together. He willed his fire to wind tight, braid itself together. And when he drew his hands apart, a rope of pure sunfyre was strung between them.

Cedric flicked his wrist, and the attacking beast’s scream was blood-curdling as the fiery whip wrapped around its waist. The revolting scent of seared flesh filled Cedric’s nose as he pulled on the rope, cinching it tight, and for one awestruck moment, Cedric thought he had it.

But this monster still had its wings. It shot into the air, dragging the rope—and Cedric himself, who did not know how to let go—up with it. Fear gripped every part of the knight as he was pulled higher and higher, the battlefield around the crater becoming fully visible as his vantage changed. The terror of flying through the air was temporarily abated in favor of the anguish that took him over when he spotted Jocelyn lying a few yards from the edge, her eyes closed, her body draped over the blood-soaked snow.

But he could not focus on the heartbreaking image for long. Not when the abomination was suddenly jerking in the air, Cedric’s sunfyre rope like a garrote around its waist. It pulled tighter, tighter—burning through flesh and muscle and nerve and bone, until with a sickening squelch, it cinched right through the monster entirely, separating the beast’s torso from its lower body.

The two halves fell away, and Cedric might have been impressed by the unique, if unintended, means of taking down one of these abominable creatures—had it not occurred in midair, with him becoming a direct casualty of his own magic. Because then he was falling, his face contorted with a soundless scream, his arms and legs flailing as he fell, and fell, and fell.

He closed his eyes as the ground rushed at him. Of course this was how it would all end. He always knew gravity was the real enemy.

The impact hurt. Pain bloomed over Cedric’s ribs as he fell on his side. But it was not the bone-crushing force he’d expected from his body splattering on the frozen ground.

Because Cedric had not collided with the ground at all.