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ABSOLUTION

CEDRIC

At first, there was nothing.

Not the biting cold, not the dull numbness of death, not the weight of the blade in his chest.

Just a quiet emptiness.

Oblivion.

And then, there was light.

A flicker, distant at first, a firefly dancing in a faraway field. It flew closer, grew stronger, brighter, until it was everywhere. Searing warmth poured through him, heating his blood, setting his veins alight. And he felt himself being pulled back into his body, a tether fastening him to this world.

Cedric gasped, a ragged breath filling his lungs.

He wasn’t sure if he was alive. It wasn’t like before, floating in that murky in-between. This time, Cedric was certain beyond a doubt that he had died.

His eyes flew open. He blinked against the blinding brightness of the world, ribbons of gold and silver flashing in his vision. His heart beat a slow, steady rhythm beneath his ribs. And there she was, trembling hands pressed to his chest, her face hovering above him, eyes wide and wet with tears and disbelief.

“Elyria.” Her name broke from his lips like a prayer.

She didn’t move. For a second, Cedric wondered if this was a dream—a single moment, frozen, for him to remember. His final gift before passing into the Hereafter. Then, without a word, Elyria pulled him into an embrace, her arms snaking around his waist, locking behind him.

Real.

She was real.

And he was back.

He coughed, clearing the lingering stain of death from his voice. “We must stop meeting like this. Eventually, you’ll have to stop saving me,” he murmured.

Elyria’s laugh was broken, choked with relief as she lifted her head just enough to look him in the eye. “No,” she said, a trembling smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “No, I don’t think I will.”

Cedric wrapped his arms around her, drawing her back into place, her face cradled where his neck and shoulder met. He pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, holding her as tightly as his recovering strength allowed, the feel of her grounding him, knotting that tether in his chest, binding him to the here, the now.

The last time he’d touched her like this, it had been a goodbye.

For several long moments, neither of them said a word. They simply sat there, tangled in one another, taking in breath after breath. And finally, not because he wanted to, but because he had to, he looked down.

Cedric’s brow furrowed as he peered at the place where he’d pierced his own heart. There was a hole in his tunic where the jewel-hilted dagger should still be embedded in his chest, but that was all. No scar. No blood. No pain. All he felt now was that smolder of his inner flame, its embers crackling back to life .

“How?” he asked. “I died. I should be dead. I was dead.”

“I know,” Elyria whispered. “I felt you go.” She unhooked her hands from his waist, and it was only then that Cedric noticed she had something clutched in one of them. Static sparked in the spot where the pointed spires of the crown grazed against his tunic as she drew it up to show him. “I guess even half of a celestial-forged crown was enough to pull you back from the brink.”

Well past the brink , Cedric thought with a shudder, before her words registered. “Half?”

Elyria sat back on her ankles, holding the half-crown in her lap, and Cedric saw the places on either side where the crescent of gold was broken, its edges jagged and sharp.

“Yes, half.” A chorus of voices rang out behind them, and Cedric turned to look over his shoulder at the white-robed celestial standing there. Aurelia’s gaze was fixed on the two of them, the galaxies on her skin swirling, churning—agitated. “And though I delight in seeing you breathing once more, Cedric Thorne, this should not have been possible.”

“What do you mean?” Elyria asked, her tone guarded, hackles raised. Like she was afraid Aurelia would take him from her. The thought made the corners of Cedric’s eyes prick.

Aurelia looked truly baffled, her brows drawn together tightly over her star-filled eyes. Cedric had a difficult time reconciling the thoroughly human expression with the celestial’s otherwise otherworldliness.

“I do not know,” Aurelia said, her layered voice strained, like it pained her to admit as much. “I cannot explain how you are alive.”

Elyria stood, helping Cedric to his feet before turning to face the celestial. “The crown has done this before.”

Cedric’s gaze flicked between Elyria’s face and the half-crown, the faintest buzz of power pulling him toward both in equal measure. It took a moment for her words to sink in. Who else had the crown brought back to life?

“A miracle never before seen, and never since replicated,” stated Aurelia. “As well as a moot point. None of my siblings nor I predicted what would happen when Daephinia’s power split the crown, but the Shattering is long since past. And with only half of it here, half its power held, I am at a loss for how this”—she gestured to Cedric—“is possible.”

Not particularly caring for being spoken about as if he were not present, Cedric cleared his throat. “It’s been nearly two centuries since you and your siblings created the Arcane Crucible, since you locked this piece of the crown away in your Sanctum. You have admitted twice now that there are things beyond the knowledge of even your celestial family. Is it truly so impossible to think that the crown—even just half of it, as you say—might have been changed by this place?”

“He has a point,” said Elyria.

“High praise,” responded Cedric, and humor sparked in those green eyes.

“It makes a certain sort of sense, don’t you think? The blood of many lost lives poured from the dagger after the”—Elyria glanced at Cedric, jaw tight, eyes no longer sparkling—“sacrifice was made. Is there a chance that the magic of all those lost within these walls went to the crown?”

Aurelia pursed her star-kissed lips, seeming to contemplate this. “It is...possible,” she conceded after a few moments. “And I would confer with my siblings to determine as much but, alas, I remain unable to do so.”

“Answers would be nice,” Elyria said, inspecting the piece of the crown in her hands like it was the first time she was really looking at it. “But either way, it seems as though whatever magic this thing may or may not have been holding onto has been spent. Feels empty. Sorry about that.”

She tossed the crown up in the air, let it spin, and then caught it between her nimble fingers. Cedric could’ve sworn he saw Aurelia flinch. He also knew that Elyria wasn’t sorry at all, and the thought had the fire in his chest flaring with an absolutely inappropriate sense of pride.

“Wait, why are you unable to confer with your siblings?” Cedric asked, eyes darting back to the celestial.

“Oh, right. You were dead during that part,” Elyria said, the solemnity in her eyes belying the flippancy of her tone. “Evidently, despite our conquering of the Crucible, our fair Arbiter here is not yet free. She needs the crown to be united in order to escape from this place.”

Aurelia nodded. “ A shattered crown shall be united, a sundered land re ? — ”

“Yes, yes, we get it,” Elyria interrupted. She was acting more and more like her old self with each passing moment, and Cedric couldn’t have been more thrilled to see it. “Until the One True Crown is claimed, blah, blah, blah. No freedom for you, no filling the Chasms for us. We understand.”

“All right then,” said Cedric, suppressing the laugh that threatened to bubble up from his gut. “If this is but one half of the crown, dare I ask what happened to the other?”

With a sigh, Aurelia made a sweeping gesture with both arms. “If only I knew. It was given to the mixedborn princess.”

Cedric frowned. “Princess Selenae? But Daephinia’s daughter was killed in the same assassination attempt that took the king’s life. You must be mistaken.”

“I am not.” The chorus of Aurelia’s voice took on a dark quality. “Do not take my admission of lacking total omniscience to mean I do not know the truths of this world, boy.”

Shame burned in Cedric’s cheeks. Perhaps he was letting Elyria rub off on him. He’d forgotten that, for all her faults and mistakes, even if her power was diminished, he was still in the presence of a celestial. The Guardian of Balance. One of the Five. A goddess of starlight and ruin.

“But surely if Selenae had survived, the queen would not have sundered the realm as she did,” Elyria said, voice sharp. She clearly had no such qualms about continuing to disrespect the star god before them. “I do not understand.”

Aurelia’s eyes narrowed. “The queen believed her daughter had been killed, yes.”

Elyria and Cedric waited for her to continue.

The celestial’s cosmic gaze softened, a brief flash of something like regret passing across her starlit face. “Malakar’s purpose in enacting the Great Betrayal was to wipe out the royal family so he could take control of the crown. His strike against his king was as swift as it was brutal. And in the chaos that followed, the princess could not be found. The destruction had been so great, you see. It was easy to think that Selenae, no more than eighteen winters old?—”

“Meaning she was just a child,” Elyria said to Cedric. He nodded, suppressing the shiver that ran across his skin as she whispered her explanation in his ear. His knowledge of mixedborns was limited, to be sure, but he was aware that they fell somewhere between their two heritages when it came to their growth. Meaning Selenae could have been the equivalent human age of anywhere from six to sixteen, depending on how much she took after her mother.

A child either way.

“—had perished alongside her father,” Aurelia finished. “And yes, she would have been but a child. A mix of her mother’s fae blood and her father’s humanity, Selenae was to be the embodiment of the peoples of Arcanis coming together as one. Born to rule over a united Arcanis.” She paused. “A balanced Arcanis. But that dream died when her father did, buried like so many things, under the weight of Queen Daephinia’s grief.”

A heavy ball of guilt settled in his stomach, and he tried not to think of what he knew happened to mixedborn children in Havensreach.

Elyria sucked in a breath. “So, if Selenae didn’t die alongside the king, then...”

“She was taken from the castle. Spirited away by one charged with her protection, a well-meaning soul who thought to save her from the fate that befell her father. Who knew how far Malakar would go to wipe out the one for whom the crown had been forged? Better to let him—let everyone—think she was dead. Only...”

“Only the queen’s grief was too great,” Elyria said. “Her actions too severe. And by the time it might have been revealed that her daughter was still alive, Daephinia had already ripped Arcanis apart.”

“Why would whoever took Selenae not reveal the truth to the queen?” Cedric asked, aghast. To think that this all might have been avoided had Daephinia only known the truth.

“The one who took her likely believed it necessary to keep her safe.” Aurelia drew a slow breath. “Surely, they feared what would happen if Malakar got his hands on her. Perhaps they meant to return the princess to her mother after Malakar’s defeat. But they could not have foreseen how deep the queen’s grief would run. Could not have imagined the madness of her actions.”

Elyria’s jaw flexed. “So, all of this—the war, the breaking of the world, the Chasms—was because of a single random person’s choice? Because someone thought hiding the princess would protect her?”

“Nothing is so simple as to come down to one singular choice, least of all an event so monumental it echoes through the annals of time. The princess’s caretaker chose to hide her away, just as Malakar chose to enact his villainous plan, just as Daephinia chose to wield her terrible grief.”

Elyria snorted, her hand tightening around the fragmented crown she still held. “Grief. As if that is an excuse to rage upon an entire realm. We all grieve.”

Cedric thought he saw her eyes flick to him once more, but it was too fast to be sure.

“Then you should know better than most how grief can make monsters of us all,” Aurelia said, another flash of that almost-human sadness touching her features.

Silence fell over the three of them for several moments before Cedric asked, “So the other half of the crown was given to Selenae?”

Aurelia nodded once more.

“And where is she now? Why has she not come forward? Why have we not heard a single thing about her all these years?”

“You ask the right questions, but I’m afraid I do not have the answers.”

Elyria shifted on her feet, her shoulders raised, eyes darting to the amphitheater stairs as if reminding herself where the exit was. “If there’s another piece of the crown out there, how do we know Varyth Malchior hasn’t already gotten his hands on it? How many people know about this?”

“None that I know of,” said Aurelia.

“Wonderful. Very reassuring.” Elyria scoffed. “How would you know? You’ve been trapped in here this whole time.”

Cedric inwardly braced for some sort of cosmic retribution to befall Elyria for her blasphemous attitude, but Aurelia just sighed. The celestial seemed...tired.

“The princess was well-hidden,” Aurelia said. “I do not think anyone could have?—”

“Yet somehow you expect us to find her? Find the other half of the crown, reunite it, heal the land, bring the dawn ?” Elyria hissed the last words.

Another multi-tonal sigh rent the air, and Cedric put a hand on Elyria’s back in a feeble attempt to calm her. He’d half-expected her to whirl on him and smack his hand away, but she just leaned into it with a deep sigh of her own. Like she was exhaling a breath she’d been holding for a long while.

“One piece will lead you to the other,” Aurelia said, voice placid and peaceful once more as she cast a pointed look at the crown piece clutched in Elyria’s hand. The swirling stars on her skin stilled, as though Elyria’s faltering anger had reset the celestial’s mood as well. “I suggest you take it one step at a time, starting with leaving this place.”

Her white robes billowed behind her as she turned and began walking. “Come, victors,” she beckoned. “I may not yet leave this place, but you have earned your freedom from the Sanctum. The others await. It is time for you to go home.”