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33

MAKING FRIENDS

ELYRIA

Get it the fuck together, Lightbreaker.

Elyria was half a heartbeat from slapping her palm clear across her own cheek in the desperate hope that it might mean smacking some sense into herself. What was wrong with her?

She could still feel the ghost of her power throbbing in her chest, as if ribbons of shadow were wrapped around her heart. They’d been in place ever since she’d used them to drop Belien Larkin to his death. She didn’t know how to get them to loosen.

Elyria was a killer. Many times over. That was a fact. And despite her best efforts over the decades, killing with the shadow was certainly nothing new.

Killing with her shadow felt different.

It’s not as if the crazed sorcerer didn’t deserve it. He’d careened over the edge of sanity so fast it was a miracle that he didn’t take more of them down with him. She didn’t doubt that the others would have made the same call, the same choice, had they been able to act just a little faster.

But there was still something momentous about the seconds after Belien struck Cedric.

Because when Elyria saw him fall, her power didn’t overtake her. It wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction, the result of shock or self-defense. She wasn’t being ruled by desperation or guided by the whims of her inner darkness.

She was in total control.

It was a purposeful, conscious choice she’d made. To hurt. To kill. To protect.

Her heart had beat an uneven rhythm as she’d wielded her shadow like a deadly rope against Belien with one hand and held onto something else with the other. That golden thread that started somewhere in her chest and led straight to that infuriating, confounding, reckless fool of a knight. A thread that had pulled taut when that crimson lightning bolt struck his heart—strained almost to the point of snapping.

A thread that she refused to let go of.

She would not let him go. And after she released Belien into the depths of the labyrinth’s chasm and sealed the ground overtop, she turned all her focus inward and tugged on that thread.

He would not die today. She would make sure of it.

And so, she did.

Zephyr said she didn’t understand how he had survived the hit, how he hadn’t passed instantly into the Hereafter.

But Elyria knew. Knew that there was something other about this thing between the two of them. A bond that could have been forged with whatever they went through in the Trial of Spirit or could have simply been placed there by whichever celestial seemed to love fucking with Elyria most. And she couldn’t deny its existence anymore.

Even if she could barely look Cedric in the eye now.

What the fuck is wrong with me? her inner voice reiterated, a haunting, judgmental refrain that accompanied her as she wandered toward the campfire.

She fisted her hands at her side. “I don’t see through you. I just see you.” Elyria groaned inwardly as she recalled what she said. She didn’t even know where that had come from. Thraigg’s interruption could not possibly have been more timely. On the infinitesimal chance they did end up getting out of the Crucible alive, she owed the dwarf the largest mug of cider The Sweltering Pig offered.

Elyria caught Kit’s eye as she approached the other champions around the fire, immediately scowling at the haughty look on her friend’s face. Kit saw too much. Saw everything. And that knowledge only caused that bud of guilt in Elyria’s chest to grow.

A bud that might very well bloom into a fully grown plant of misery any second if she didn’t stop looking at Gael. The flamecaller was still hugging her knees to her chest, eyes pinned on the dancing flames in front of her. Her undamaged wing fluttered listlessly behind her while what remained of the other was bandaged against her back.

The sight of her twisted Elyria’s insides. She knew she wasn’t exactly responsible for her losing her wing, but it was partly her fault that Gael was like this. There was barely any sign of that fiery fae she’d met in Castle Lumin. Between losing Paelin in the second trial and now her wing, Elyria feared for whatever thoughts were brimming under that head of wine-red hair.

“Can’t imagine this damned maze will stay idle forever.” Thraigg’s gruff voice carried from where he and Cedric stood, and something in Elyria’s gut clenched. Had the knight recovered enough to move on yet?

With a quizzical look, she sought out Zephyr on the other side of the fire. The sylvan responded as if reading the question in Elyria’s eyes, nodding gently. “Once he woke up, the rest of his injuries began healing remarkably well. More quickly than I would have thought. He should be more than ready to move on. And I think we all should—soon.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” said Cyren, his voice lacking its usual teasing lilt as his wary eyes went to Gael.

As did Kit’s. “Is she going to be able to...” she started to ask, putting voice to the question Elyria was sure they were all wondering. Cedric’s injuries healing was one thing, but whatever was plaguing Gael seemed to be another entirely. Was she going to be able to pull herself together? To go on?

Cyren’s brow furrowed. “I’ll keep an eye on her,” he said quietly. “But we all know we can’t stay here.”

Kit nodded. Zephyr made an eager squeak of agreement. Nox didn’t say anything at all, only continued surveying the group with the faintest hint of a smile on their lips, as if enjoying watching the way things were unfolding.

Elyria couldn’t figure the nocterrian out. Didn’t understand what they were doing here in the first place, let alone why they had decided to work with the rest of them so seamlessly. Just as Kit had warned, Elyria had felt their crimson eyes boring into her back on more than one occasion. And she still hadn’t had a chance to ask them what they were doing in that Coralithian jail cell to begin with.

Four hells, had that really only been barely more than a week ago? It felt like years had passed since then.

“Come on, let’s get going,” Elyria said, more to herself than anyone else. The command wasn’t met with any resistance. The others began gathering their scant belongings—weapons, bits of food, the various vials and tins Zephyr had used on Cedric.

The sylvan also helped Cedric back into his armor, though one look at the mangled remnants of his cuirass—the metal of his chestplate scorched and blackened around the hole where Belien’s blood magic had struck—and the knight deemed it unsalvageable. Elyria hated the way her chest tightened seeing the physical reminder—proof of just how deadly the blow had been.

Gael remained motionless by the fire until Cyren knelt beside her and placed his palm on her shoulder. Only then did she turn and acknowledge him, getting to her feet and extinguishing the fire with the wave of a hand. All while not saying a single word.

As a group, they filed out of the cavern, following the singular tunnel in the only direction it went, its luminescent walls lighting their way. Logically, Elyria recognized that they must have been going back the way they came—it was the only path—but nothing about the tunnel felt familiar. She grimaced thinking about how much the labyrinth must have shifted and changed while they warred and rested in the cavern.

Elyria felt strangely bereft without the familiar weight of her staff on her back and found herself brushing the hilts of the twin daggers strapped to her legs on more than one occasion. As if she needed the reassurance that she wasn’t unarmed.

A silly thought, she recognized, as perhaps the most powerful magic wielder present. Wildshaper and nightwielder, both. She wondered how many others like her there were in all of Arcanis. It wasn’t a pompous, ego-driven question. Just one born of curiosity. She’d spent so long burying half of herself. Now that she had finally given that half the freedom of acknowledgment—started to embrace it, even—she suddenly wanted to know more about it. Wanted to know everything.

They’d only been walking for a few minutes when Elyria felt that unfortunately familiar rumble. The grinding sound of shifting stone followed, and then the walls began to shake. Before their eyes, solid stone shifted until the path ahead was no longer a path at all, but a fork in the road. Two twin tunnels unrolled before them, equally dark, equally bare. There was nothing to differentiate them, aside from the fact that one lay to the left and the other to the right.

“Great. Now what?” Kit rolled her shoulders back as she glanced down each tunnel.

“Anyone have a particularly gifted sense of direction?” Elyria asked.

“Zephyr had a keen nose for where to go when we were in the arena,” Cedric offered.

“We figured that out together.” Zephyr ducked her head, as if unsure of what to do with the compliment. “Besides, I can think of at least one person with the skills required here.”

She looked at Thraigg, who stepped forward with a grunt. He stroked his chin thoughtfully, the decorative beads in his beard jingling as he placed a hand on the wall. After a few moments, he said, “This way,” and pointed down the right-hand tunnel.

“How do you know?” Cyren asked, tucking Gael behind him as if he expected some fire-breathing monster to come charging out of the tunnel Thraigg chose.

“The dwarven people are blessed with stone sense,” Zephyr said, her light, high voice steady and matter-of-fact.

At the looks of puzzlement the sylvan received from multiple members of their party, she went on to add, “Really? Nobody knows? ”

“We don’t much bother spreading it around,” Thraigg said with a shrug.

Zephyr sighed. “Well, would you like to educate the group, or shall I?”

Thraigg chortled heartily and gestured for her to continue.

“They can...Well, it’s sort of self-explanatory, isn’t it? They can sense the stone. Feel it. Hear it. It’s not unlike wildshaping magic.” She looked at Elyria with an odd expression. “The stone speaks to him, in a way, and so he can sense where it might change, end, lead.”

“Stone sense, nightwielding, telepathy...” Cyren’s shoulders heaved with a dramatic sigh as the group ventured into the right-hand tunnel. “Anyone else feel like revealing their secret power to the rest of the class?”

“If only,” Kit said with a snort.

“Wasn’t a secret.” Thraigg let out a grunt of amusement. “Not my fault ye’re all so uncultured ye don’t know boots from beard when it comes to my people.”

“ Yer people ,” Cyren said in a disastrous impression of Thraigg’s accent that had Elyria choking back a laugh, “absolutely keep secrets. It’s why your smithing skills have remained unmatched throughout the millennia. Why do you think the rest of the realm is always clamoring for dwarven-made steel?”

Thraigg grinned as he reached up to clap the fae on the shoulder. “That’s just good business.”

The group ambled along, the walls continuing to shift every so often, Thraigg stopping each time in response— sensing where to go next. Elyria couldn’t help watching Gael out of the corner of her eye as they went. The flamecaller was little more than a specter, face blank, steps slow and measured as she shuffled along behind Cyren. Elyria’s chest ached at the sight, and she found herself purposefully falling to the back of the group. As if she needed to put physical distance between herself and Gael—the embodiment of her guilt.

She hadn’t meant to hurt Gael.

She had meant to hurt Belien .

She felt guilty about both for different reasons.

And she didn’t quite know where that left her.

Dawdling several yards behind the rest of the champions, Elyria trailed one hand along the luminescent walls.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Tenebris Nox stepped out of a shadow and took up pace next to Elyria, startling her.

“Don’t do that,” she said with a scowl.

Nox lifted their hands in supplication. “Sorry, old habits.”

“And feel what?” she asked.

“The magic trapped in the labyrinth walls,” they said.

“Trapped?”

“Trapped, placed there. Pick your phrasing. But I am relatively confident that it wasn’t always like this.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“Shadows talk,” they said. “You’ll see.”

“Stop doing that too.”

“What?”

“Fixating on my...” She gestured to herself, waving her arm up and down her front. “All this.”

“I’m fixating?”

She levied a pointed look at them. “?‘Why don’t you use your shadows, Elyria?’ ‘You’re a nightwielder, Elyria.’ ‘Your shadows are strong, why don’t you try them on the wall, Elyria?’?”

Nox chuckled. “Fair point. But I’d still hardly call that fixation. It is simply...interesting to me.”

“What is?”

“You have all this power at your literal fingertips yet are so reluctant to use it.”

“Who says I don’t use it? Hells, you saw what happened back there.”

“Yes. But was it not reluctant?”

Elyria’s fingers twitched, her jaw clenching. “So?”

“So, nothing. I’m merely an interested observer. One who knew you were something special from the second they hauled you into that cell back in Coralith.”

“What were you doing in that jail anyway?” Elyria asked, eager to derail the track that this conversation was currently on .

The nocterrian ignored her question. “I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was then, but there was something. And now I know. It was that shadow of yours, talking to mine.”

Elyria didn’t know what to say to that.

Nox released a long breath. “I can’t think of the last time I met a non-nocterrian nightwielder.” Elyria caught a flash of white fangs, evidence of some amusing thought flitting through their mind, before they went on to say, “Finding you out here almost feels like it was designed by Noctis himself.”

“Out here?”

“So far from Nocterrum.”

Elyria made a noncommittal noise. “Many of us shadow-wielding fae running around your homeland then, are there?”

“No,” they said. “There are not.”

Whatever amusement might have been there before had been entirely chased away by a look so suddenly serious that it made Elyria want to immediately avert her gaze.

“Yes, well”—she cleared her throat—“speaking of Noctis, I’m guessing you’re about to tell me that I should be calling on the Warden of Shadows now, given my new magical affinity?”

They huffed. “I couldn’t possibly care less who you pray to. Though, your powers are hardly new, are they?”

“Did your shadows tell you that?”

They shrugged.

“Show me,” she said. It wasn’t a command, not exactly, but it wasn’t a question either. If Tenebris Nox was going to continue giving her shit about her own shadows, it was more than fair to ask for another demonstration of the nocterrian’s power.

Nox’s mouth tipped up on one side as they raised a hand, pulling a shadow from the wall. Unlike the misty tendrils or sharp ribbons that Elyria’s shadows seemed to prefer corporealizing as, Nox’s was more like...a mist. It wasn’t a wholly separate thing from the actual shadow where it began—simply a space the light failed to reach. But that space expanded, grew, and widened. It felt half like an invitation to see what lay within, and half a warning to stay as far away as possible.

“Fascinating,” Elyria said, lifting her hand as if to touch the shadowy mist as it crept closer. Then, just as quickly as it had come, it slunk back, folding into itself. She barely had time to blink before Nox’s shadow was gone—or at least, returned to its original state—once again nothing more than a pocket full of absence.

“I find you fascinating,” Tenebris replied.

Elyria’s neck prickled with irritation, the thin thread of her patience fraying. She recognized that it wasn’t a wholly rational reaction. She probably should have been excited by the nocterrian’s attention. Hadn’t she just been thinking how she wished to know more about her power? Well, here was a bona fide expert, a nightwielder who’d already expressed an understanding of the very magic she needed to learn about.

But she was not some specimen for them to be fascinated by. She’d spent enough of her life under the watchful eyes of others. And she just needed the space and time to start untangling her feelings from her magic.

Time she didn’t have, and space she wouldn’t get. Not in here.

“What is it that you want, Nox?” she asked, coming to a stop and turning to face them.

“What do you want, Revenant?” they asked in return. “Why do you keep holding back?”

“Leave it alone,” Elyria warned. “Whatever you may claim to know?—”

“I know more than you think,” Nox interrupted, their voice dropping to a whisper. The shadows around them seemed to flicker and grow darker as they spoke. “I could help you. We’re not so different, you and I. I know?—”

Elyria took a step forward, her own darkness rippling at the edges of her vision. “You think you know. Everyone thinks they know so much about the mighty Revenant. You don’t.”

“Don’t I?” Their magic surged again, swirling around them like a cloak. It pulsed , as if the shadow had a heartbeat of its own, as if it meant to cross the space between Nox and Elyria and weave itself over her.

Expecting exactly that, Elyria braced herself. Her heart racing, she waited for the cold grip of Nox’s power to blanket her, to tighten around her, to squeeze the breath from her lungs.

But that didn’t happen .

Because just as it seemed like this strange confrontation might spiral into something worse, Cedric’s voice cut through the air, calm but firm. “Everything okay back here?”

Both Elyria and Nox turned to face him. The knight stood a few feet away, his hand resting lightly on his sword hilt, his expression unreadable.

Nox took a step back, their shadowy aura receding. “But of course, Sir Thorne,” they said, sketching a bow that Elyria felt was undoubtedly mocking, but either Cedric didn’t notice, or he didn’t care. Not as Nox stepped back and let their shadow swallow them, reemerging farther down the tunnel where the rest of the group had continued walking, seemingly oblivious to what just occurred.

Elyria shook her head, her annoyance with the nocterrian warring with her fascination of seeing their nightwielding magic in action. She’d heard of the practice of shadowstepping, of course. Knew about it in theory. But prior to today, even in her two centuries of life, had never seen it herself. She wondered if that was something her own shadows could do.

“Making new friends all over the place, aren’t we?” Cedric said before she had a chance to follow that thought further.

The tension in Elyria’s shoulders eased—just slightly—as the two of them started walking again. “I don’t know what their problem with me is.”

“I’m sure I could come up with a few ideas.”

“Har, har, very funny.”

“I thought so.”

Elyria had a jibe on the tip of her tongue, but a cry of surprise slipped out instead. Cedric had stopped short, and she’d had to quickly brace her hands in front of her to prevent her entire torso from colliding with his back.

What this meant, however, was that Elyria was now standing with her two hands attached to Cedric’s unarmored back...and the hard muscles that lay there.

She quickly retrieved her hands, face reddening, but Cedric barely seemed to register the touch. He stared into the distance, his fist rubbing idle circles on his chest .

“What in the four hells are you looking at?”

He didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. Not as Elyria realized that mild embarrassment wasn’t the only thing causing her face to turn red.

The heat hit her in a slow wave—putrid and blistering. The scent of sulfur and smoke settled on her skin. Sweat immediately began beading on her brow as she and Cedric shuffled forward, squinting their eyes against the increasing brightness coming from ahead.

Elyria thought she might have heard Kit calling for her, not in a panicked, worrisome manner, but in a “hurry the fuck up, would you?” way. It was hard to know for sure though, when for a searing moment, all Elyria could see was the labyrinth’s latest obstacle.

And what an obstacle it was.

Kit, Cyren, Gael, Zephyr, Thraigg, and Nox were lined up at the end of the tunnel they’d been traversing, open air stretching overhead as if the group had finally emerged from the underground maze. Only, it wasn’t grass and blue skies and green trees that greeted them like at the beginning of the trial.

It was a lake, at least three hundred feet across and of a seemingly infinite width.

And it was on fire.

Elyria twisted her neck from side to side, trying to discern what they were supposed to do, how they were supposed to cross. There was no pathway. No bridge. Just an ocean of roiling flame.

And on the opposite side?

“Noctis take me,” Elyria said with a groan. “Another fucking gate.”