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Malakar cursed, defending against the onslaught of rock and root and shadow, against gnashing teeth and beating wings as Sid continued her assault.

Tenny ran for Cedric.

She was almost to him when she saw it. Turquoise light glinting off silver steel. A round amber stone.

Ashrender was lying on the floor, the blade half-immersed in the liquid mana flowing against the rocky ground.

Tenny pivoted midstep, racing for the sword.

He saw her.

With a shout, Malakar waved one hand, and a blast of power sent Elyria staggering back and Sid hurtling across the cavern, spinning in the air. With his other, he sent a long, swooping swath of cursed shadows straight at Tenny.

The rush of oncoming power blew the hair off Tenny’s face before the shadowy tendrils reached her, and she instinctively shut her eyes before they ended her life.

Her life did not end.

Why didn’t it end?

She cracked open her eyes and gasped at the undulating ribbons of dark power just inches from her nose.

They were shuddering, quivering, still reaching for her—but it was as though someone had grabbed them, ensnared them. As though someone was holding them back.

“Portentia?”

She stepped back with a gasp.

Because when she lifted her eyes to look at Malakar—his arm outstretched, his fingers twitching—amber eyes stared back at her from his night-kissed face.

“Father?” she whispered, her throat hoarse.

He didn’t say anything else. His eyes were black as tar once more, an endless void of night, and Tenny was diving out of the way of the magic that resumed lashing at her.

But that hesitation, that moment of breakthrough, was enough.

Malakar’s hand fell.

And she rose.

Elyria Lightbreaker was a dark phoenix as she rose into the air, her shadow-laced wings flaring wide behind her. No golden circlet sat upon her head. White-gold flames danced there instead—a crown of sunfyre.

She was a queen of shadow and sun, twilight and sunrise, the beginning and the end.

His end.

With a terrifying, glorious cry, Elyria lunged for her staff, scooping it up and immediately wrapping it in gold-ringed shadow. The darkness consolidated in a sharp, spiked tip at the end—a daynight spear. She hurled it like a javelin at Malakar, the strength and speed behind the blow sending him careening back into the cavern wall behind him.

He looked down at the staff embedded in his gut and laughed. “It would appear you are shockingly resistant to learning from your mistakes, regina.” He gripped the shaft with two hands, and Tenny’s face screwed up in disgust as he moved to pull it out.

Only, he couldn’t.

Tenny saw the instant the realization hit him. He was stuck to the wall, the shadow-swarmed staff thoroughly embedded in the rock behind him. Vines crept from the cracks in the stone at his back, wrapping around his legs, his arms, moving them apart and leaving him spread-eagled against the side of the cavern.

He was pinned by the brilliant, magnified mix of the Revenant’s magic—wild and sun and shadows.

Shadows he used to think were his.

Elyria’s smile was a slow, devious thing as it spread across her face.