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A BAD HABIT

ELYRIA

Golden eyes hovered on the fringe of Elyria’s awareness, glimmering like stars through a fog. They beckoned her—familiar, distant. A dream she struggled to cling to, to hold, only for it to slip through her fingers like water.

Evander .

Elyria’s eyes flew open.

Her head pounded, a steady, walloping beat that echoed throughout her body, reverberating off her bones. Whether it was due to her fresh head injury, having overspent her magic, or the sheer amount of cider she consumed before the brawl broke out, she couldn’t say.

Most likely, it was a combination of all three.

The pounding grew louder, each drumbeat wiping the lingering images from her mind as her skull throbbed in rhythm with a nearby clanging. Someone was banging on the bars of their cell.

Someone who clearly yearned for a swift death.

Elyria groaned as she rolled onto her back, her body aching from the unforgiving stone floor beneath her. This was not her first time in a cell. Hells, it was likely not her first time in this cell. Which is how she knew not to think about whatever might be coating the stone, about who might have been in here last, and what they did while they were. She knew not to think about how long her face had been pressed to the somehow simultaneously sticky and slimy surface.

She knew not to think about whatever that smell was.

She closed her eyes again. She wanted to go back inside her head, to the visions of Evander that had now come upon her twice. She wanted to gaze unendingly into those luminous eyes, to feel his bronze skin under her fingers, to see his black-and-gold wings shimmer as she lay on her back, his strong body moving over her.

How many nights had she sought solace at the bottom of a bottle, hoping for exactly that? Drunkenly prayed to see him again, even if only as a ghost?

Why was she finally being blessed with it now?

As if in answer, Elyria’s mind was awash with images again, only the warm memories of the past were nowhere to be found this time. Instead, she saw only agony. Evander writhing in pain, dark veins creeping from his golden eyes. His beautiful wings, shredded, black blood pooling on the ground.

Elyria’s eyes shot open, blinking rapidly to stop the wetness that had begun to gather.

What the quartered hell was that?

“Oi! Lightbreaker’s awake!” a rough voice from a neighboring cell whisper-shouted. “How’s the head, Rev?”

The words bounced around noisily in Elyria’s skull; she winced but didn’t answer.

“What’s the matter with her?” another voice asked. Smaller, lighter. Curious.

“Dunno. She weren’t in such good shape when they brought her in.”

Elyria focused on the ceiling directly above her, keeping her gaze locked on a crack in the stone until her eyes began to burn, and she was forced to close them again. Blessedly, she was met with the black of the back of her eyelids and not another nightmarish depiction of her former love. She kept her eyes shut and tried to block out the world.

“Perhaps she is ill,” the small voice said.

“Couldn’t be too ill, not with the fight she gave ‘em,” said someone new, a third speaker. “Did you get a look at that one guard? Nose bleeding like a faucet, shiner blooming ‘round one of her eyes.”

Pride unfurled in Elyria’s chest at the description of what her singular punch had done to Taryn’s face.

“Should we be talking about this?” The small voice was barely more than a whisper. “About her, right in front of her?”

“She’s asleep again, innit?” the first person said. “Not too impressive, if you ask me.”

“Noctis damn you, watch your tongue, man! You’re talking about the warrior who took down two dozen men at the Battle of Luminaria on her own.”

“It was three dozen, at least.” The small voice again. “And they weren’t just men. They were cultists. Malakar’s own.”

Someone sucked in a sharp breath. “Humans are bad enough on their own, but cultists? They’re a special breed of dark.”

“ Sanguinagi .” The word came from a new voice that could only belong to a nocterrian—somehow simultaneously soft and hard, masculine and feminine. “Blood mages.”

“Still a stars-damned bloody nuisance, even today, thanks to Varyth fuckin’ Malchior at the helm.”

“Heard some members of the Cult of Malakar got picked off outside Crystalfell just the other week.”

“They made it that far into Nyrundelle? Four hells.”

A few moments passed in tense silence. Elyria’s skin prickled under what she felt suddenly sure were multiple gazes focused on her.

“My uncle was on the battlefield on the day of the Shattering,” one of the previous voices resumed. “Said it was near a lost cause—Malakar had already taken the castle. His cultists overwhelmed them. Queen Daephinia’s forces had all but given up. Until her. He didn’t see her on the field, but he saw what she left in her wake...”

Elyria stopped trying to keep track of who was speaking. It hardly mattered. She wished they would all cease entirely. She just wanted quiet .

I could make them be quiet , she thought idly. Confident that the baffling, unsettling visions had passed, she reopened her eyes and let them drift across the grime-covered stone ceiling, then down the bars of her cell.

A small sylvan girl in ragged clothing that revealed patches of green skin along her arms and legs stared wide-eyed from the cell to Elyria’s left. Two fae men shared a large cell next to her. The three of them were locked in their continued discussion of the Revenant’s ancient exploits.

Opposite them, a nocterrian with skin the color of the midnight sky sat alone, legs crossed. Their eyes were on Elyria, but they had a vacant look to them, lost in thought as they absently stroked one of the majestic, curved horns protruding from beneath their pitch-black hair. The darkness inside her stirred slightly. She shoved it back down.

A sign hung on the wall next to the nocterrian’s cell, directly across from Elyria. “NO MAGIC,” it said in large, red letters. Below the words was a crude drawing of a stick figure being struck by lightning.

Alas, Elyria didn’t think that being zapped with a counterspell would do much to improve the state of her pounding head. With a sigh, she sat up, delighting in the terrified squeals of her gossiping neighbors as they realized she was awake. Perhaps there was some benefit to the persistent myth of the Revenant.

Sadly, it wasn’t enough to keep her fellow detainees from starting up their conversation again after a few minutes—in harsh whispers this time, though Elyria stopped listening anyway. She had more pressing concerns.

Where were Raefe and his men? Had they already been questioned? Released? Though the thought made smoke erupt from her ears, it would hardly surprise her. Tartanis had a lot of influence in Coralith. Beyond it, too. A well-placed bribe—or a better-placed threat—and his men would be back on the streets to terrorize at their leisure once more.

Elyria rubbed her temples, assessing herself. She noted with frustration she still wore her shredded leathers. Which was to say, she wore barely anything at all.

No wonder everyone was staring.

Peeling back a few scraps of scorched leather, Elyria took stock of the mess that was her legs. The long, puckered lines that ran up the side of each limb were already well on their way to healing. In time, she thought that they might fade to near nothing. But it was the map of scars emblazoned upon her thighs that had her sucking in air through her teeth.

The bubbling blisters that had crisscrossed her skin had hidden the majority of the damage when she checked herself in the tavern, so she hadn’t noticed then. But Raefe had burned her deep. And when Elyria had thrown that weak bit of healing magic over her legs to take the edge off the pain, she hadn’t realized she was setting the marks in place.

Now, with the blisters gone and the burns partially healed, these scars were part of her. Getting rid of them would entail flaying the very flesh from her legs and having a healer regrow it from scratch.

Elyria found herself wishing she had done a lot more to Raefe than shove a few vines down his gullet.

Slowly, the voices around her rose in volume, though her fellow detainees had wisely stopped discussing her so openly now that she was upright. Elyria began to pace. She wondered how long she would be down here this time. She felt it unusual that no one had come to speak to or check on her yet.

On the one hand, she had attacked a member of the city guard.

On the other, the guard in question was Taryn .

The woman was horrid. Elyria hadn’t missed the glances exchanged between the rest of the guards as Taryn railed at her. Disapproval. Judgment. Irritation. She wasn’t sure if it was aimed at herself or at Taryn, who, by their captain’s own admission, was hardly behaving as an honorable member of the city guard should.

A wave of pity washed over Elyria as she spared a thought for the rest of the guard, putting up with Taryn and her sanctimonious bullshit day in, day out. Then she wondered how they would feel if they knew what Elyria had been saving them all from by taking Taryn’s bait.

Humming quietly, she paced the length of her cell, making a song out of counting each pass she made. Finally—just as her count reached one hundred and seventy-three—a guard approached.

“About damn time,” Elyria said with a sing-songy flourish, her mental tune spilling out.

The guard chuckled as he unlocked her cell. “I think it’s time to find a new hobby, Elle. This is becoming a bad habit.”