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A GOLDEN CROWN

ELYRIA

He looked like he was sleeping.

If it weren’t for the blood growing cold against Elyria’s skin, she might have thought he was.

She was soaked in it, a thick layer of red coating her hands, pooling in her lap, creeping up the bandage still wrapped around her arm. There was so much of it. Too much.

Bile rose in the back of her throat.

This wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be.

This couldn’t be how it all ended.

He promised. He swore that he wouldn’t be the cause of her pain again.

He lied.

Elyria’s vision blurred, her racing mind going still and silent as she searched for that golden thread, that warm, familiar tug in her chest, that thing that had led her to him time and time again. She’d used it to pull him back from the brink before, and she would do so again.

It wasn’t there.

She could barely breathe. She knelt, frozen fingers slackening where they clutched the black fabric of Cedric’s tunic. She should’ve been sobbing, screaming, something.

She did nothing, felt nothing.

Only the void of him.

She looked at the dagger lodged in Cedric’s lifeless chest, saw the river of red pouring from the crimson jewel in its pommel. It was as if it were painting his body with the lifeblood of all who had come before him—died before him. The lives lost to the Crucible.

She barely noticed the aurora starting to undulate in the sky above, ribbons of swirling color weaving, dancing, condensing, until they formed a single beam of rainbow light that descended on the pedestal in the center of the amphitheater.

Elyria lifted her head as the light faded, her eyes falling on what was left behind. The thing that Cedric gave his life for. That all who had taken on the Crucible gave their lives for.

The crown.

Only it wasn’t a crown.

Not quite.

The cracked remains of Elyria’s heart plummeted into her stomach as she stood and approached the pedestal, dripping hands fisted at her sides. What sat on the blood-red velvet was something like a crown. A golden crescent, sharp spires topped with radiant gems...that abruptly came to a stop just as it started to curve around.

Incomplete.

A fragment.

“What is this,” Elyria whispered, lifting a red-stained finger as if to take it. She didn’t. She let her hand drop limply back to her side. The very thought of touching the half-crown made this all too real.

She was still hoping that it wasn’t .

“Is this what all this was for?” Her voice was hoarse, hollow. Aurelia had to be listening. “You push us through your trials, watch us fall, break, bleed...and for what? To wield a broken crown? To win half of what was promised?”

“I’m sorry.” The celestial’s voice came from behind, a chorus of whispers on a phantom wind.

Elyria’s head snapped toward the source of the sound, a bitter laugh searing her throat. “You’re sorry? ”

Aurelia’s hood was down, her aurora-streaked hair shimmering in the starlight. The galaxies in her eyes swirled with something that might have been sorrow as she passed Cedric’s body, and rage lit up Elyria’s chest.

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry,” she spat. “Don’t even look at him.”

“I take no pleasure in what occurred here tonight, Elyria Lightbreaker,” said the celestial, though even as she spoke the words, Elyria could sense a kind of lightness to her voice. A relief that hadn’t been there before.

“Your Crucible has been completed,” Elyria said, eyes narrowing. “Your useless prize won. Are you not free? Your sentence commuted? Your spirit unbound? Let’s get on with it, then. Tell me how to get out of here, how to get back to Kit and the others, and how all of us can leave this place. You can even keep your shattered crown. I don’t want it.”

Aurelia’s answering sigh was a symphony of emotion—longing and resolution and, unfathomably, irritation. But she did not speak, and her refusal to respond had Elyria’s inner shadow rearing back. She was done with this. Done with the Crucible and the celestials’ games. Done with cryptic non-answers and half-truths.

“On with it,” she pressed. “Give me your final instruction, and you can go. I want you to go.”

“Until the One True Crown is claimed, I remain bound to this plane,” said Aurelia.

“Fine, I claim it. Happy?” Elyria flung her hand out to pick up the half-crown. The instant her fingers wrapped around one of its pointed spires, her blood began to sing, her nerves lit on fire.

She gasped, dropping it back on the pillow.

“How?” she hissed. “What is?—”

Elyria cradled her hand to her chest, fingers tingling. When she looked down, she saw they were not covered in red anymore. Neither was she. Her pants, her blouse, her vest, previously dark and slick with blood, were pristine. As if the mere act of touching the crown had burned away all evidence of Cedric’s sacrifice.

She blinked, unwrapping the bandage from her arm to see her skin completely healed, all remnants of the burns from when she’d calmed Cedric’s flaming form gone. It made her feel empty. Like the last trace of him had been erased.

The sheer power in that single touch made her dizzy.

“Now you see why only one truly worthy could be allowed this privilege,” Aurelia said.

Black smoke coiled around Elyria’s feet, tendrils of living night snaking up her body. “ Privilege ? What privilege? To walk alongside death as it comes for the people I care for? You say I must be worthy if I am standing here, but he was worth more.” She jerked her head toward Cedric’s body, still laid out on the cold amphitheater floor.

“He paid the ultimate price, and it didn’t mean anything in the end. I might be able to leave this place, but it won’t be with the prize we sought.” Her voice cracked, sorrow coming in relentless waves that crested over her broken heart. Cedric, Evander, Gael, Cyren...even Leona and Belien, Paelin and Alden and Brandon and every champion who’d ever been lost to this cruel place, unknowingly in pursuit of a prize that didn’t exist.

That flash of celestial power that Elyria felt was just that—a flash. A taste. A fragment. It wasn’t whole, wasn’t complete. Her shadows closed in around her, wrapping her in a dark cocoon as if trying to shield her from this reality. Elyria couldn’t seal the Chasms with half a crown.

Blinking back tears, she asked, “What was the point of any of it? Why did you tell us the crown awaited when you knew this was all there was?”

“The crown does await,” Aurelia said, starry eyes glazing over. “ A shattered crown shall be united, a sundered land restored .”

Elyria’s jaw tensed, her nails carving crescents into her palm from how tightly she clenched her fist. “Stop,” she said. “If I go years without hearing another word of that stars-damned prophecy, it’ll still be too soon.”

Aurelia didn’t seem to hear her. Didn’t seem to care. “ A severed people shall be made whole. ”

“I said, stop. I don’t want to hear it.”

“ Or fall to darkness once more, ” the celestial continued. “ So will they reclaim the One True Crown, wielding its terrible ? — ”

“Fuck you! Fuck your prophecy!” Elyria exploded, cutting off Aurelia’s recitation with a scream. Shadows shot in all directions, knocking the pedestal over, the crown bouncing on the floor with a riotous clang before rolling to a stop near Cedric’s body. The sight of it, with its shattered edges and its mocking glint, so close to him—the physical, visceral reminder that his sacrifice had been in vain—drove her into motion. In a heartbeat, she was next to him, one hand pressed gently to his chest as she knelt to snatch the crown up and fling it away.

But again, when she touched the gilded surface, a surge of power shot through her like a bolt of lightning. Raw, pure, overwhelming. Her hand shook, her fingers clenched around the crown. A strangled cry poured from her lips when she realized she couldn’t release it. It was as if the golden spires were fused to her.

Neither could she pull her other hand from Cedric’s body. It was pinned flat against his chest, power surging through her like a conduit.

Magic rippled in her blood, pulsed beneath her skin. She let out a whimper when the dagger lifted from Cedric’s chest, pulled free by the otherworldly power coming from the half-crown.

Life thrummed in her veins. She had never felt anything like this. Nothing could compare. Nothing came close, not even those seconds outside the labyrinth, with the blood of the other champions roaring in her veins, with Cedric directing his magic through her. Then, she’d felt powerful, alive. Like she had every thread of magic at her fingertips, like she could bring it under her command.

This was different. Elyria couldn’t control this magic.

She was this magic.

She was the birth and death of every star, the darkness born in shadow. She was life and she was light.

She knew this light.

A memory pricked at the furthest reaches of Elyria’s mind— blinding white light bursting across a battlefield, a tidal wave of energy rolling through bodies and buildings.

And that’s when she felt it.

Deep behind her ribs, wrapped in her shadows, buried in her grief. A tiny, fragile flicker.

A tug .

Elyria’s breath caught. Her fingers tightened around the metal of the crown, somehow searing and numbing, hot and cold at once. Her shadows stretched out, covering Cedric’s body, dark tendrils weaving around him. Searching. Reaching. Not for a golden thread—that bond was gone, it had snapped when he died—but a tether, spun from the darkest part of her, seeking that whisper of light.

It was here. It had to be.

Her heart pounded in her chest as she leaned closer to him, her whole body shaking under the weight of the celestial force roaring in her veins. “Please,” she begged. “Please.”

And there it was—that flicker, the final ember, the last echo of Cedric’s light, buried deep within him. Elyria grasped it with all that she had, all that she was, and she tugged .

Vaguely, she thought Aurelia might have been speaking—yelling, cursing, screaming—at her. Elyria didn’t hear it. She could feel the magic start to wane, that cold exhaustion spreading in her veins, like the star-blessed power of the crown was making her burn out twice as fast.

She didn’t care. Not as her shadows surged, twining around the pair of them, wrapping the piece of the Crown of Concord in ribbons of black. They encircled that small, fragile flicker inside Cedric, coaxed it, nurtured it, pulled it to the surface.

And just as that coldness spread to her chest, burnout having almost fully consumed her...she felt it.

Not a flicker, but a spark.

A pulse of warmth.

A golden tug.

A gasp of life.

And a beating heart.