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And Tenny moved.

She let out a shriek when a small wave of mana crashed around her feet, splashing over them as she snatched up Ashrender from where it lay. Her skin burned where the mana soaked in through her boots, but the feeling was lost as soon as she heard Cedric’s pained groan. Tenny whipped her head to the left, where Sid was whining at the injured knight’s side. Her large, shadowy head butted his shoulder, as though trying to urge his arm over her neck.

“No, no.” His words were slurred, his head swinging weakly from side to side. He held his bleeding hands aloft, keeping them away from Sid’s fretting form.

Ashrender in hand, Tenny ran to join them, her eyes bulging at the sight of the jagged pieces of stone sticking out of his skin. “I have him, Sid,” she said unevenly. “Stay back for a moment.”

The shadowcat growled her displeasure as Tenny swallowed hard, her mind racing. Cedric needed help. Needed more healing than she could provide. Sid could fly him out. But Sid was made of shadow, and the obsidian in his hands . . .

Tenny touched her mana token, draining its final dregs of power as she targeted the rocky piercings on Cedric’s right hand and wrist. It was fast, and it was bloody, and Cedric’s hissed string of curses made it clear that it hurt. But Tenny was able to clear the shards from one hand, messily sealing the wounds before it was her turn to curse. Her magic had sputtered out entirely.

Maybe it was enough, though. Tenny grabbed Ashrender and cut a length of fabric from her skirt, then wrapped Cedric’s remaining hand—a makeshift mitt for the rest of his obsidian-laced skin.

“Sid!” Tenny urged, and the shadowcat was back in an instant, tucking herself under Cedric’s body, bracing him, helping him to his feet.

A scream sounded from where Malakar was still pinned to the wall of the cavern, struggling against the roots holding him in place, against the staff still plunged deep in his gut, against what looked like several shadow-forged daggers lodged in various parts of his body.

Elyria floated back and forth several feet in front of him, her wings fluttering slowly—the ultimate predator toying with her prey.

“Do not fear, mi sanguinexos,” she said darkly, flipping a shadowdagger in her hand before flinging it into the dark sorcerer’s shoulder and eliciting another rage-filled roar. “Soon you will forget all about this. I will snuff out whatever tiny, insignificant delusions you might still have of winning.”

Malakar laughed, luminous light-blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. “Clever, regina. Always so clever. But you cannot kill me. I have already foreseen it. The world will be remade. Our victory is prophesied.”

“The sword,” Cedric grunted, and Tenny ripped her gaze from Malakar and Elyria to look down at Ashrender, still in her grip.

“Don’t be daft; you’re in no shape to help her,” she said, panting as she attempted to haul Cedric onto Sid’s back. “The best thing we can do is get you out of here.”

“It’s not . . . for me.” He snapped the fingers of his free hand, summoning a single spark of sunfyre, which he touched to Ashrender’s mana-dipped surface.

The sword ignited, not with white-gold sunfyre but with a dazzling, kaleidoscopic array of rainbow flame—raw mana, true magic, the power of the Line.

Tenny’s wide eyes met Cedric’s.

He nodded.

“Elle!” Tenny reared back and threw the sword, sending it spinning through the air.

A single ribbon of gold-laced shadow whipped forth to catch it. Elyria wrapped her fingers around the amber-stoned hilt. Shadowy mist wound down the sword in her hand, mixing with the prismatic fire blazing across its length.

“You wanted to remake the world,” Elyria said darkly. “Remake this.”

She thrust a flaming Ashrender into Malakar’s heart.

Everything went still. For a moment nothing happened. Malakar just blinked those onyx-black eyes at Elyria, the galaxies swirling over his skin moving, writhing, like they were trying to escape.

He gaped at her, then gasped a wet-sounding breath. “Im-impossible.”

“A sanguine, ad sanguinem,” she replied, rainbow flames extinguishing as she pulled Ashrender from his chest.

Turquoise light wept from the wound in his gut, the hole in his heart.

“Who says I can’t learn from my mistakes?” she said.

And with a furious, lightning-fast swing of her arm, Elyria Lightbreaker, the Revenant, cleaved the dark sorcerer’s head from his body.

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