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“Evidently.” He cocked his head. “Is that the limitation of shadow magic in this place, then? A nightwielder can exist here but cannot ride the shadows as one is normally wont to do?”

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been trying.”

Elyria said the words casually, but Cedric could feel the lingering sense of unease belying her tone. He laid his hand over hers, his next question lingering unspoken in the silence: Why not?

She answered anyway.

“It’s been a wholly separate sort of blessing, having my shadows be so quiet here. It isn’t the same as when I was there, when they were choked, cut off.”

Cedric swallowed down the bubble of anger that suddenly had his inner furnace simmering.

“They’re just, well, like I said: quiet. And it has given me the freedom to . . . I don’t know. Not feel the burden of them, the gift of them. To not have to think about them at all.”

He didn’t need her to elaborate further. Flickers of fear bounced down the bond between them, interlaced with sadness and gratitude and wonder and relief. How must it feel, he wondered, to have finally come to grips with her greatest source of strength . . . only for it to be turned against her, to become her greatest weakness?

“It isn’t,” she said down the bond, her voice firm, almost scolding. Cedric blushed, unaware he had been thinking so loudly.

“What isn’t?” he said, chagrin softening his voice.

“My shadows. My power. It isn’t my greatest weakness.”

“Fuck. No, Elle, that’s not what—I didn’t mean to insinuate—I wasn’t⁠—”

“You are.”

Cedric blinked. “What?”

“You are my greatest weakness. And my greatest source of strength. There was much that frightened me during my time with him—I’m not so foolish as to try to deny that. But there was really only one thing that truly tore into me, made me fear. And that was the thought of him discovering you. Who you are. Who you are to me. It’s what kept me going through countless sessions of him trying to cut his power out of me, what got me through the hopelessness of the nights that followed. It’s what caused me to go with him in the first place, without hesitation and without regret.”

She was sitting up now, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, hugging them against her body.

“Elle, I—” He didn’t know what to say. What could he say to that? Guilt was a leaden blanket pressing down on Cedric’s shoulders. He certainly understood what she was saying—he felt the exact same way about her. But to hear it spoken, to have it voiced . . .

“I’m sorry.” And there was no joke to be made about unnecessary apologies this time. It was necessary. He was sorry she had ever been forced to make the choices she had. He was sorry for the experiences she’d been forced into and the burden she carried still.

He was sorry he could not carry it for her.

“I know,” she said sadly. “I am too. But not sorry for you.” She leaned over and pressed her forehead to his shoulder. “I’ll never, ever be sorry for loving you.”

Cedric shivered, and it certainly wasn’t because it was cold. He wrapped one arm around Elyria, pulling her entire body closer into him. With his other hand, he placed his thumb under her chin, tilting it up. He looked at her, at the beautiful planes of her perfect face, just barely lit by the stars twinkling through the silent night. He took in the glossy gleam of her emerald eyes, the slight quiver of her full bottom lip. His fingers moved up the side of her jaw, then swept a few stray strands of periwinkle off her cheek, tucking them behind her ear.

Elyria leaned into his touch with a contented sigh, and Cedric’s heart swelled. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought maybe it was strange that he could see her so perfectly, so fully in the darkness. But he couldn’t really think about that now. Not when that glassy look in her eyes had been replaced with an intensity, a sudden heat, that had something sparking up the column of Cedric’s spine.

The neckline of her sleeping dress had fallen over her shoulder once more, highlighting the mark at the base of her neck—glittering, gleaming.

Beckoning.

Beaming.

Cedric’s groan was poorly suppressed, and Elyria immediately sat up straight. “What’s wrong?”

“Absolutely nothing.” He paused. “I just . . . Noctis take me, my eyes must be playing tricks on me.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, over the ache he felt pulsing there.

Elyria narrowed her eyes on Cedric’s face. “What makes you say that?”

He hesitated before answering. “I’m sure it’s just a trick of the light.” Then he winced inwardly. The light . . . of which there was currently none.

“Try again,” she said into his mind, the words soothing and accusing all at once.