Page 90

And then a blurred shape broke through the trees to Elyria and Cedric’s left, coming to a stop right at their feet, and Elyria’s heart suddenly felt like it might burst.

Sid let out a noise that was somewhere between a purr and a yowl as she nuzzled her face against Elyria’s hand, then sat back on her haunches and tilted her head at the pair.

“Fuck me over both Chasms,” Elyria said softly, falling to her knees and wrapping both arms around the massive shadowcat’s neck.

Cedric let out a chuckle, then seemed to cut himself off, the warm amusement that had flitted down the bond suddenly replaced with gnawing concern.

Elyria peeled back from Sid and gave Cedric a bemused look, but before she had a chance to ask him what was behind that reaction, two panting sylvans—clearly the guards that Elder Larkess had stationed outside the gate to keep an eye out for Nox—had caught up to the wily shadowcat.

“Forgive us, my lady. It slipped right past us,” said one, a particularly petite-looking woman with her forest-green hair twisted into long, braid-like wefts.

“She,” said Elyria, getting back to her feet.

“Pardon?” said the other sylvan, a boy who couldn’t have been more than two hundred, given the distinct lack of tattoos gracing his skin. He was barely more than a teenager by sylvan standards if he hadn’t earned his marks yet.

“She,” Elyria repeated. “Sid is a girl.”

Sid let out a proud “mrow” as if to confirm that fact.

“And don’t feel bad. She is fast. Be glad you were even able to follow her at all. Under normal circumstances, she likely would have slipped into the shadows and been completely untraceable.”

“Well, of course she isn’t able to do that here,” said the boy. “Shadow magic is suppressed in the glade.”

“Don’t I know it,” replied Elyria, and she realized as she said it that she hadn’t particularly minded that fact. Since the moment she’d awoken in Elderglade, in fact, she’d barely thought about her shadows at all, and it had been a glorious reprieve. She wasn’t sure she was ready to face dissecting everything that had happened to them—because of them—since that fateful day at Seastone. The way they’d been used against her. What it meant that they were still hers.

That they’d been quiet, subdued—though, granted, in a wholly different way than they had been at Castle Lumin under Malakar’s captivity—had been a blessing.

Elyria cleared her throat. “Right, as I said then.”

“But that she is here at all . . . ,” Cedric said under his breath, and Elyria didn’t think he was talking to anybody but himself. His tone was ominous though, and Elyria wanted to ask him about that but found herself distracted by the way Sid’s wings were folded oddly over her back.

Rather than lying flush at her sides or having disappeared from sight altogether, masked by shadows or magic, her wings were partially raised. One overlapped with the other, covering the space between Sid’s shoulders.

Elyria frowned. Was she injured?

“What’s going on there, girl?” she said, moving forward to run a hand along the half-shadowy, half-feathery length of the wing lying on top.

Sid rose back onto all fours, stretching her front paws in front of her and lowering her head to the ground. Almost like she was . . . bowing.

And then, with slowness and care and unabashed grace, the volacarnii opened her wings.

“Noctis take me,” Cedric breathed.

Elyria stumbled backward and collided with Cedric’s chest. He lifted his hands to her upper arms, bracing her, steadying her.

And she was grateful for the support—literal and otherwise.

Because there, nestled between Sid’s shoulder blades, nearly glittering as the sunlight caught on the delicate spiderwebs of frost spread across them, were Elyria’s wings.

“Where is Nox?” Kit asked.

Sid only tilted her head, and Elyria swore that the cat’s eyebrow was arching in judgment of the fact that Kit really seemed like she expected an answer.

“She isn’t going to be able to tell you, Kitty Kat.”

“Shut up. I know that. I—shut up.”

Elyria’s answering smile was short-lived as her eyes returned to the sight of the frost-encased purple-and-green wings staring back at her from the center of the council room table. Sid brushed against Elyria’s legs, butting her head between them to force Elyria into a wider stance, then settled on the floor between her boots. As soon as Cedric had lifted Elyria’s wings from Sid’s back—delicately, reverently—the shadowcat had immediately begun shrinking in size. She was now something more akin to a large dog, rather than the oversized panther she had entered Elderglade as.