Page 22

21

BLOOD & IRON

ELYRIA

The entire world was darkness.

Not the comfortable, starlit dark of night.

Not the warm black that graces one’s vision from behind closed eyelids.

An endless void that crawled into Elyria’s skin, through her bones, permeating every inch of her being.

Her darkness.

She strained her senses, trying to get a feel for, well, anything. She felt solid ground beneath her feet. Smelled iron and smoke in the air. Heard the soft patter of rain hitting dirt.

Where had the Crucible sent her ?

And where was he ?

She pushed that thought away as quickly as it came, refusing to give the nagging sense of worry any more space in her mind. Cedric was likely back in that stony chamber, gloating over how right he’d been to discourage her from touching the mirror. Or perhaps he was stewing with annoyance, irate that she’d figured out how to move into the next phase of the trial—even if it was by accident.

The thought very nearly brought a smile to her lips.

But the suffocating blackness would not allow even that small comfort. Shadows closed in tighter. They gripped her, clung to her, held her, tore at her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t?—

The dark shattered. And she was no longer in a lightless prison but standing in an all too familiar place.

Her stomach twisted as the acrid scent of smoke, sweat, and iron grew stronger, filling her nostrils, burning her eyes.

No. Not here.

Castle Lumin towered over her, a sentinel at Elyria’s back as she stood in front of the gatehouse, rain falling in sheets, slicking down the loose strands of periwinkle that had come free from her braid. It dripped into her eyes as she stared straight ahead, refusing to turn, refusing to look. She didn’t want to see what she already knew was there.

The rest of the castle garrison, brave men and women—her friends, her comrades—littered the blood-soaked earth in front of her, at her back, at her side.

Not again.

Some of the soldiers groaned, tried to move, tried to stand. Others clutched at the blood-red crystal arrows jutting from their chests and thighs, trying to stem the bleeding from the sanguinagi weapons. More of them were utterly still, expressions vacant, eyes unseeing.

This isn’t real. This is a memory, she told herself. Just a memory.

Pain lanced her side—sharp, searing. She looked down to see the red shaft of an arrow protruding from her hip. Felt the wet warmth blooming, sticky on her fingers as she drew her hand away from the wound.

It felt real.

A memory shouldn’t bleed, she thought.

This was something more.

Every nerve in her body screamed at her to run, to leave, to get out .

But she couldn’t.

Not then.

Not now.

Like then, there was just Elyria and the last flickering embers of her wild magic. She was all that stood between Malakar’s dark army and the castle behind her. Between them and the queen.

Shouts cleaved the air. They were coming.

The ground rumbled as she clenched her fists, summoning the dregs of her power to the surface.

She was going to lose. She knew this. She’d already lost once.

But just like last time, she also knew she would fight to keep the enemy from breaching the castle. She would fight to her last breath.

Elyria raced forward to meet the cultists before they could swarm the injured garrison. Crossing her forearms, she conjured a shield of vines and roots to hold at her side. It immediately met a wave of crystal arrows.

Gritting her teeth, she dug her heels into the ground, holding herself steady against the onslaught of blood magic. She waved her free arm. Rocks flew through the air, crashing into cultists’ heads, hands, chests. Vines snaked out of the ground, wrapping around legs, snapping ankles, buckling knees.

But there were too many of them.

And her magic was...it was nearly gone. A kind of coldness crept through her veins, chasing the wild light of her power. She had used too much.

Elyria screamed as a red blade skewered her shoulder, the dark grin of a sanguinagi cultist rising over her. The wolven face of Malakar’s sigil on his chest glinted as he shoved the sword in deeper, further. It burned. It tore at her insides, her own blood fueling the dark magic of the conjured weapon—strengthening it.

She fell to her knees. The sanguinagi laughed, a low, menacing sound. He twisted the blade. The cold spread to Elyria’s chest.

Unable to maintain the magic that cloaked them, her wings rematerialized. Just in time for Elyria to fall on top of them, too weak to adjust, to avoid crushing one at a terrible angle.

And even though she knew —knew that this was what really happened, that this was how it ended, that she was reliving the inevitable—Elyria Lightbreaker did not want to die.

It was the last thought she had before she did.

Light.

Blinding, white light washed over Elyria. It burst across the battlefield—a tidal wave of brilliant energy that rolled over buildings and soldiers and cultists alike.

Elyria knew this light. Recognized it. Remembered it. Floating above her own body like a specter, she watched the Shattering happen all over again.

Queen Daephinia sacrificed herself in a final bid to rid the world of Malakar’s evil once and for all, shattering the Crown of Concord and unleashing its power across Luminaria. A power so pure, so mighty, so explosive that, for a moment, it felt like hope.

It wasn’t.

Elyria had failed to protect her queen.

And as quickly as the light had appeared, it was suddenly sucked back into the castle, as if it had never been there at all.

But it had touched her. And in the singular heartbeat after Elyria breathed her final breath, that light doused her wings, seeped into her wounds, crawled into her veins. It expelled the sanguinagi’s poisonous magic, erased its touch. It healed her injuries, cast out death .

One moment, Elyria was a wraith—watching, listening, waiting. The next, she was yanked back into her body, flesh and blood once more. The air was thick with ash as she gasped, struggling to breathe anew, to swallow the life-giving breaths she’d just been without.

It wasn’t raining anymore.

Elyria bolted to her feet, eyes wild. She hadn’t remembered what it felt like when she came back to her body. Hadn’t remembered the thrum of energy in her fingertips, the racing beat of her heart. It was all foreign. She’d disconnected from herself, even if just for a few moments, and now everything felt discordant. Strange. New.

A battle cry came from Elyria’s back. She turned, eyes widening as members of her garrison were getting to their feet, the enemy’s crystal arrows crumbling into pieces.

She gasped, realization barreling into her. The power of the crown had washed over every injury on the battlefield. The soldiers had been healed too.

Still, not everyone rose. Save for Elyria, those who had died remained dead. She didn’t know why she was the exception. The timing of her death? Was she just that lucky?

Or perhaps she was very, very unlucky.

Because that’s when she saw it. The shadow. The darkness. The silky, smoky wisp that came from the castle, from the same place where that healing light had originated. It slithered between Arcanians and cultists, newly engaged in battle, unaware that the war was already over. Daephinia and Malakar were both gone. Their soldiers fought over ghosts.

“Stop!” she tried to yell. Her voice and body didn’t cooperate. She didn’t quite know who she was trying to stop anyway. The soldiers, immediately back to bloodying each other even after being given a second chance? Or the darkness, which continued sliding between bodies and over the damp earth. Searching. Hunting .

For her.

Elyria gasped as it latched onto her. As black tendrils coiled around her legs, her arms, up her neck, and finally, dove into her mouth. She felt it slide down her throat, spread through her insides. It was like drowning in ice. Suffocating in tar.

Shadows poured into her, filling her with a grim, heady power. It was all wrong. The darkness seeping into her veins with whispered vows of strength and greatness— wrong . The way it gnawed at the edges of her resolve, promising vengeance— wrong . The way somewhere, deep inside, a part of her relished it— wrong .

Elyria—past and present—screamed inside her head, helpless as the shadows smothered her, buried her. She watched in horror as her limbs moved of their own accord, dark magic swirling in her open palms. She stalked through sets of battling soldiers, shadows pushing them aside until she found him.

The one who killed her .

He was fighting one of the soldiers from her garrison now. Elyria recognized the girl—a fellow fae she’d bunked next to for a short time. A new, bloody weapon glowed in the sanguinagi’s hands as he brought it down against the soldier’s shield.

Elyria cried out in her mind again, but it did nothing to stop the shadows from shooting out of her hands. Did nothing as they wrapped around the Arcanian soldier, flinging her aside. Did nothing to prevent the gruesome crunch as the soldier collided with the gatehouse wall.

The darkness didn’t care. It narrowed its focus on the cultist, whose eyes were wide with shock. Like he didn’t know whether he should be grateful for the assistance or run as far and fast as he could from the dark creature in front of him.

He chose wrong.

And as the cultist approached Elyria with a cautious expression, she felt the shadows swirling around her arms tighten and condense, solidifying into a gruesome black sword.

Raw, jagged edges ripped through the cultist’s flesh and muscle like butter as she thrust it into his chest.

He fell limply to the ground, still impaled on Elyria’s blade. She planted her boot on his shoulder and shoved him off with a kick.

It wasn’t enough. The darkness was not satisfied.

Elyria was a passenger in her own body as she charged, wings flaring, into the thick of the battle. She slashed, she squeezed, she raged.

She killed.

A dark tendril wrapped around the throat of a sanguinagi who was accosting a soldier. Elyria clenched her fist, cinching the shadow tight. The soldier cried out in shock as the cultist’s head fell from his body.

With a flap of her wings, Elyria was in the sky. The shadows took the shape of barbed spears. She hurled them into the battlefield below.

As if somehow the darkness knew which side of the war it had latched onto, it focused on the cultists. But it wasn’t careful. It was imprecise.

And it was merciless.

Elyria could do nothing but watch as innocent soldiers were caught up in her bloodlust.

Screams sounded—some in defiance, others in surrender—but the darkness did not care.

She couldn’t stop.

She didn’t want to stop.

“What . . . are . . . you . . .” The cultist’s words were wet, barely audible through the blood that gushed from his mouth.

The voice that answered was not hers. “I am death and retribution, reborn.” She twisted the shadow blade piercing his chest. “I am the Revenant.”