Page 51

“Cedric . . . ,” Raefe warned, gray eyes darting between the standoff before him and the open door to the room, as though expecting another dozen cultists to burst in at any moment.

Malakar tilted his head at Cedric, black pulsing with flares of amber in the light. “That’s right. Cedric.”

Elyria’s face twisted at the way the dark sorcerer said his name. Like he was already entirely too familiar with it. Like he was testing out what it felt like to keep it.

“We know you, don’t we?” asked Malakar, his tone darkening. “Sunbringer.”

Elyria felt confusion pulse down the bond—Cedric’s, her own. She tried to twist away, but the sorcerer only dragged her against his chest. Chuckling darkly, he dipped his head, pressed the flat of his tongue to Elyria’s shoulder, and lapped up a thin rivulet of blood that was still trailing down from the back of her head.

Revulsion—hers—and rage—Cedric’s—slammed through her in equal measure. The sound that left him at the sight was feral—a low, guttural growl that ripped from her knight’s chest.

“She is mine!” he roared, lunging forward another few paces. The air around him began to shimmer, refracting, heat rolling off him in waves.

The shadow around Elyria’s throat tightened further, black spots blooming at the edges of her vision. Her magic slipped and slid through her blood, still an untamable, elusive thing, though it felt stronger and stronger with every passing second—with every step Cedric took closer to her.

Malakar licked his lips. “You have been keeping secrets from me, regina. He is not quite so human after all, is he? How curious.” His finger trailed along the edge of Elyria’s bondmark, and she shuddered violently.

“Get your hands off her,” Cedric growled, though he had halted his approach again.

Malakar ignored him, his voice hushed, low, as though he was once again conversing with only himself. “Ah, then she is not the only one who has been keeping secrets from me, hmm? Tsk, tsk. Good thing we will have plenty of time to sort these things out later, once he is gone and she is ours entirely.”

Alarm sped up Elyria’s already fluttering heart, but the dark stalemate between her captor and her solimaeus continued. It didn’t matter that Elyria knew Malakar would not risk losing his power by killing her—not before he’d exhausted his other, previously interrupted, options, at least. She knew it didn’t matter what she said to Cedric, because he would not risk losing her.

And Elyria knew that Malakar knew it too. Knew that he had to be stalling at this point, waiting for more of his followers to rush through the doors, waiting for there to be enough of them to win, now that Cedric and Raefe had already fought through so many. Now that they were tired, their wells of power spent.

And as multiple bootsteps approached and the shouting grew louder and Raefe’s harsh, “Hurry the fuck up!” and “We need to go, dammit!” filtered in and out of Elyria’s ears, she knew she had to do something.

She had to protect what was hers.

Mine, whispered something in the back of Elyria’s mind. Ours.

“Ours,” Cedric whispered back, his eyes locking with hers.

And that kernel of his light, so difficult to grasp, flared again in the center of her chest, tangling with her shadows and a wave of wild magic so bright she wanted to cry. She couldn’t handle it. Her head felt so heavy. Everything hurt. And yet . . .

“Cedric,” Elyria rasped, the word half choked, half thought. “Don’t⁠—”

“That is right, regina,” Malakar crooned. “Tell him to stop. Tell him to go. We do not need him anymore, do we? Just as we do not need these.”

With a laugh and a snap of his fingers, Malakar released the shadows binding Elyria, and she immediately slumped into him, unable to stay on her feet. The dark sorcerer grasped her upper arms, one hand digging into her flesh on each side, holding her upright like he was showing off a rag doll.

But that wasn’t the grip she was focused on.

She steeled herself against the way he tried to grab at the shadows inside her. Tried to close his fist around the darkness behind her ribs and hold fast.

No.

When she was caught off guard, when she was weakened by wards and spells and sadness, when she was not with him, Malakar might have been able to seize her shadows. Might have been able to wield them against her, because she thought they answered to him.

But they did not.

They were not his.

They were hers.

And, just a little bit, they were her knight’s, too.

Just as Cedric’s sunfyre had melded with her magic, a thread of gold woven through the black, so too did a tiny wisp of herself live in him.