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THROUGH THE FIRE

CEDRIC

Cold.

He was so cold.

And yet, heat was everywhere. Cedric could feel the flames licking his skin as the cottage burned. He didn’t know where the man had gone, the wielder of shadow and blood. The one who’d torn his beautiful, kind mother from this life. There were no bodies. Not the mangled, charred intruders. Not Cedric’s father, bloody and brutalized on the floor.

Cedric wasn’t even sure his own body was there. If it was, it was no longer the six-year-old frame he’d been trapped inside, unable to speak his thoughts or move of his own accord as he relived the worst night of his existence .

Cedric was alone.

Cold and so, so alone.

And then, suddenly, he wasn’t.

A voice stretched through the haze—soft, lyrical. It wove between the crackling flames and wisps of smoke. Familiar. Comforting in a way that made Cedric’s raw nerves settle for the first time since this nightmare began.

“You’re all right,” the voice murmured. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

Cedric’s head throbbed. He closed his eyes, but the images of what he’d just seen—the memories—were seared behind his eyelids.

Soft singing filled his ears, cutting through the phantom screams in his head. He didn’t know the song, but as he felt a hand on his back, moving in slow, concentric circles, Cedric’s thudding heart calmed ever so slightly.

“We need to move,” said the voice. “Can you get up?”

He pulled at the edges of his thoughts, trying to weave them together into some sort of sensible mass. Each time he thought he might have pinned one down, it slipped away.

The voice became sterner, more severe. “Come back to me,” it commanded. “You’re stronger than this.”

Cedric couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t even lift his head to look in the direction of the voice. He was worried that if he did, it would disappear too. He didn’t want it to. There was something about it. It tugged at him, a golden thread tied to something deep in his chest.

Something else was tugging at him too. Not in his chest but at his arm. Both arms. Someone was pulling at them, yanking them up. “By the stars, get your ass up and move , Cedric!”

Oh, the voice was mad now.

Cedric’s heart pounded in his chest as he slowly lifted his head, blinking away the sting of smoke. His blurred vision took in the figure attempting to lug his heavy body across the smoldering cottage floor. Small, strong hands gripping his wrists. His eyes traveled up slender arms to the waves of golden hair draped over each shoulder.

For a moment, he dared to hope. Dared to believe that somehow, impossibly, his mother had survived. That she was here, now, calling to him, pulling him from this nightmare .

And then a sweet almond scent cut through the noxious smell of embers and ash, and Cedric jolted up.

Because those weren’t his mother’s golden waves. It was the firelight reflecting off the hair cascading down the figure’s shoulders. And those were wings looming behind her head.

His vision clearing, reality slammed into Cedric with a cold, hard edge. It wasn’t her. Of course, it wasn’t her.

It was Elyria.

Relief surged through him, dizzying and disorienting—a wave that hit him so suddenly he barely had time to take a breath. She was here. She was okay. And for one bewildering, baffling moment, that was all that mattered.

Something between a gasp and a laugh escaped Cedric’s mouth as he lurched to his feet. She dropped his wrists, a small sound of surprise slipping from her lips as she backed up until she was outside the cottage. Cedric followed, his fingers outstretched, reaching out as if he needed to confirm that she was really here.

The Revenant was here.

Jagged, raw mistrust suddenly clawed its way up from deep in Cedric’s gut. Why was she here? How did she find him? Was this another trick of the Crucible, another part of this hellscape? Had this stars-forsaken trial not broken him enough already?

The hand he’d reached toward Elyria clenched into a fist. His pulse spiked. His mind reeled. The whats and hows and whys all ran together in a muddy, thorny mess. And at the center of it all— her .

Cedric’s gaze snapped to her. “You,” he hissed. “This was you, wasn’t it? You did this.”

Elyria’s green eyes widened, something Cedric thought looked strangely like hurt flashing across her face. It lasted only a fraction of a second, however, and her typical cool, defensive mask was back on before Cedric could be certain of what he saw.

“What in the deepest quarter of hell are you on about?” she said, her mouth twisted in a scowl.

“I—” Cedric’s voice trembled with the weight of his confusion. Was it the Revenant he’d seen? Was it her ? “I heard your name.”

“So you’ve mentioned,” she said drily, though her eyes went to their surroundings as if trying to piece together where they were, what she was missing.

“Don’t play innocent,” he snarled, moving further into her space.

She compensated with an immediate step back, her wings vanishing with a wisp of magic as she narrowed her eyes at Cedric. Like she didn’t want him getting too close to them.

“You think I’m involved in this ?” She waved an arm at the smoldering cottage behind Cedric. “That whatever twisted nightmare you’ve been living is my fault?” Her voice was like ice. “I just fought through my own trial—quite literally. Even if I had the energy or the inclination, how in the four hells would I be able to mess with yours?”

Cedric wasn’t listening. His mind was spiraling, pieces of the nightmare still bleeding into reality. He touched his hand to the scar on his lip, and when he drew it back, blood stained his fingertips.

Everything hurt. His lip, his mind, his heart. It was all too real, too fresh, too painful. And she was here. Standing right in front of him. The final piece in a puzzle he didn’t understand, but that he knew he needed to solve. Like the trial itself was telling him that her being here was wrong.

Something inside Cedric snapped. Fury rose in his chest, hot, searing, ready to burst free. The overwhelming mix of relief, confusion, and betrayal erupted.

Deep, deep inside, he might have known she wasn’t responsible. She wasn’t there. It wasn’t her. But she knew something . She must. And he would get it out of her one way or another.

He lunged at her.

“What are you doing?” Elyria hissed as she dodged his attack. “I am not your enemy, you absolute plonker.”

The line stirred something in Cedric’s memory. He ignored it. Pivoting in the dirt, he charged at her again.

She countered with a sharp jab of her elbow to his side. “Stop this!”

The move didn’t hurt Cedric, but it did cause him to stumble. He caught himself on the trunk of a nearby tree, then spun to face her, teeth bared. “Stop lying to me!”

“You’ve completely lost it,” she said, eyes blazing. “I’m not?—”

“Then tell me why !” Cedric’s voice cracked as he threw a punch, his fist meeting the air when she ducked and rolled to the side. “Why is something inside me telling me that everything is tied to you ? Did you orchestrate it? Did you lead them to us?”

Elyria’s breath hitched. “You still think I’m behind your family’s deaths.” It wasn’t a question. “Is that what this place showed you? Made you relive?” Her eyes flickered with something that looked like pity.

He hated it.

Cedric’s hands trembled.

Her voice softened. “It wasn’t real, Cedric. Not this time, at least. Whatever this place showed you, it’s trying to break you. Don’t let it.”

Cedric touched the mana token hanging around his neck, and Elyria tensed as if bracing for another attack. But as suddenly as it came on, the fight drained out of him.

He ran a finger down the smooth front of the token, tracing the lightning-like streaks in the stone. “I’m not sure I know what’s real anymore.” His voice cracked. “How do I know you are real?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice quiet. “Sometimes I don’t even know if I’m real. But even if I had an answer”—she breathed a laugh—“I somehow doubt there’s anything I could say that would convince you. You just have to trust.”

“Trust you ?”

“Trust yourself . And yes, ideally, trust me while you’re at it.” She raised her hands, palms out in supplication. “I know how impossible that seems, believe me. But trust is a blade sharpened on both sides. It can cut, yes. It also protects.”

Cedric’s shoulders slumped, her words slicing at the chaos in his head. It wasn’t enough to clear it. “I don’t know how,” he said.

Elyria shifted her weight as if she meant to go to him, then thought better of it. “We start small then. One simple truth. If you believe nothing else in this world, Sir Thorne, trust what I say next.”

She inhaled deeply, like some grand confession was about to fall from her lips.

Cedric held his breath.

“I. Don’t. Want. To. Be. Here. Anymore.” She punctuated each word with a clap of her hands, her face the epitome of petulance.

A choked laugh broke from Cedric’s throat .

The corner of Elyria’s lip quivered. “So, we don’t have to like it—we don’t even have to like each other.” She paused, daring him to respond to that obvious bait.

He held his tongue.

With a small sigh, she continued. “But I don’t think I’m getting out of here without you. After all, this is your show, so to speak. I wouldn’t even know where to begin finding a way out. What do you say?”

“Fine,” Cedric muttered, pleased to find his hoarse voice hid the amusement he felt. “But if you?—”

Elyria cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Yeah, yeah. ‘If you betray me, I’ll make you regret it.’ Something like that, right?”

He wanted to smile at that, though he couldn’t manage anything more than an exhausted exhale. Still, for the first time in what felt like hours—days, months, years—something light blossomed in Cedric’s chest.

He and Elyria were bruised and battered both, each treading dangerous waters. But something had shifted.

It wasn’t trust—not quite. But a truce, fragile and tentative.

It was a start.

“You’re not alone in this, Cedric,” she said, as if in answer to his very thoughts. Her voice rang like a bell, rinsing away the final traces of cloudiness in his mind.

“And if you still feel like throwing punches,” she continued, “save it for whatever’s waiting in the next trial. Or for Belien’s smug face.” She gave him a playful whack, her forearm connecting with his shoulder.

Then she winced, a breath hissing from between her clenched teeth.

“What? What is it?” Cedric asked, his words coming out in a frantic jumble that was far from how he’d intended.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

But Cedric didn’t miss the way her hand twitched toward her forearm, the way her brow pinched in pain.

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“Show me,” he demanded.

With an overly dramatic roll of her eyes, she acquiesced, sticking her arm straight out in front of her like a child .

Cedric’s eyes immediately went to the raw, pink skin on the underside of her forearm. Burned.

“How did this happen?” He turned her arm over in his hands, checking the rest of her for injury.

“Oh, I don’t know. Couldn’t possibly have been when I was trying to lug two hundred pounds of human deadweight out of a burning building, could it?”

Cedric wanted to retort, but guilt twisted at him. “I-I’m sorry.”

She waved him off. “I’ve had worse.” Her free hand flexed over her leg, like she was about to rub her thigh but stopped herself. She coughed. “Got it worse in my own trial, to be honest.”

She pulled a corner of her blouse out from her waistband, lifting it to reveal a line of smooth pale skin over her stomach.

Cedric cursed himself for the way his pulse jumped at the sight.

“What are you doing?” he said quickly, dropping her forearm like it was suddenly poisonous.

“Calm yourself, Sir Prude. I just wanted to show you where I...” She trailed off. “Huh. That’s odd.”

“What’s odd?”

“I got a nasty slice here when I was—” She paused. “I suppose it really was just all part of the illusion, wasn’t it?”

An illusion. But if her trial had been nothing more than an illusion—a compelling, mind-bending one, he was sure, but an illusion nonetheless—then why had his trial left her nursing a burn wound?

If Elyria was wondering the same, he couldn’t tell. No, she’d abandoned her own injury and was now running her eyes over Cedric’s body. Scanning him, inspecting him.

“Where are you hurt? Where are your burns?” she asked, a fervency in her voice that only made the guilt burrow deeper in Cedric’s gut.

He glanced at himself—checked his arms, his legs. His clothing was seared, scorched in places. He knew he’d felt the heat of the flames lapping at him. Yet, he couldn’t find a single mark, any sign of where the fire had touched his skin.

It made no sense.

The lines between reality and whatever this was blurred further. Cedric didn’t understand this trial, this test. What was the point of all this? Of any of it? How did this prove someone worthy of the crown?

“When I figure that out, I’ll let you know,” Elyria said.

Cedric ground his jaw. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. Releasing an exasperated breath, he raked his hand through his hair, pushing a stray curl from his brow.

Elyria watched him closely, some emotion he couldn’t identify on her porcelain face.

Cedric coughed. “How did you get here? How did you get out of...”

“Of my own personally curated nightmare?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not exactly sure. Helpful, I know.”

He snorted in affirmation.

“I just...I was there, I was surrounded by this—I don’t know how to describe it. This nothingness, this?—”

“—void.” The word nearly got stuck in Cedric’s throat.

A quizzical expression flitted over her face. “Yes, exactly. I had just...” She cast her eyes down, and Cedric thought—not for the first time—that she didn’t seem to be doing that well with this whole trust thing either.

“You had just . . . ?” he prompted.

She looked up at him. When her jewel-toned eyes met his, Cedric had to actively work at not tearing his gaze away. They were so full of pain, so full of vulnerability. In them, he saw years of pent-up agony, of loneliness. But there was also the tiniest glimmer of hope. Some new kind of peace he would’ve sworn wasn’t there before.

He didn’t know what to make of it.

Apparently, neither did she. Because the next thing he knew, she was barreling on as if nothing had happened.

“I fell through the void, or it sucked me into it, or something happened. And then I was here. But I’m not sure I’m supposed to be? All I know is I heard—” She cut herself off again.

“You heard me,” Cedric finished for her.

She nodded.

She’d heard him. She’d come for him.

He tried to sidestep how that revelation made him feel.

“Suppose you were able to get back to that void,” Cedric said with forced lightness. “Suppose someone knew where one was around here. Do you think it would carry us out? Take us back?”

“I think it’s as ridiculous and foolhardy a plan as anything else we might come up with.” She grinned. “Let’s give it a shot.”

So, with a final look at the smoldering remnants of his childhood home—the illusion of it, the reality of it—Cedric and Elyria set off into the woods.

Reaching the wooden bridge didn’t take long.

Working up the courage to jump off it did.

Every cell in Cedric’s body screamed at him not to do it. Told him this was the absolute stupidest thing he could do, and four hells, was he actually contemplating this, and didn’t he remember that this was still a competition? Shouldn’t he be more suspicious that she was trying to get him to leap off a bridge?

Sweat beaded at his brow, his heart thundering as they stood on the edge of that void, staring into the endless nothing. But ultimately, when Elyria’s hand wrapped around his, when her eyes met his with hope and, yes, trust beaming from them, Cedric leapt.