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My name, spoken by Elionn, and yet he isn’t speaking alone. It echoes, layered with a thousand others sharing his throat.
The crystalline cocoon pulses once more, light surging to a blinding peak before plunging into sudden, breathless silence.
Darkness falls so completely I think I’ve gone blind. The absence of light, of sound, of sensation is absolute.
One heartbeat.
Two.
Three.
My vision returns in fragments, the chamber now lit only by a soft, steady glow emanating from Elionn himself. The wild pulsing has stopped. The crystal has fallen silent. Even the air changes, becoming clearer, lighter, as if a storm has passed.
Elionn watches me still, those strange prismatic eyes unblinking. One arm emerges from his crystalline prison, reaching for me with fingers splayed in invitation.
Behind me, Kelaros curses. “Do not touch him.”
I ignore him as Elionn’s extended fingers curl, beckoning me closer. His lips part again, but this time what emerges is not my name but a single, perfect note that hangs in the air between us, and words flood my mind.
Take my hand.
Join me.
Let us become one.
21
A HEART FOR A COURT
AMALIA
Istare at Elionn’s outstretched hand, at the impossible colors flickering through his irises, shades no human words can name.
The Court breathes through him now, ancient and hungry, peering out from within the prince I came to save.
“Elionn?” I whisper, his name swallowed by the vastness of the chamber. “Are you in there, princeling?”
His fingers curl again to beckon me closer.
Instinct screams, don’t touch him. I shift back a step, but the floor bucks beneath me, the crystal plates grinding together to shove me forward.
The walls bulge inward, the ceiling lowering until the air itself becomes heavy. My next step back meets resistance, the air thickening to the consistency of honey around me.
“What do you want from me?” I snarl, forcing my heels down, trying to resist the pull.
In answer, sigils blaze to life on the walls and floor, symbols I’ve never seen burning with opalescent fire. The light floods every crevice until reality itself turns thin and brittle.
“Kelaros, what’s happening?” I shout, but a high, ringing note overwrites my demand, vibrating through my teeth and skull.
Another joins it, then another, swelling into a song powerful enough to overwhelm my senses.
No, not music. An ancient, terrible language claws at my consciousness.
“Opal Court,” I hiss through clenched teeth, “I didn’t come for you.”
My sithean stone pulses faster, keeping time with my frantic heartbeats, with the song filling the chamber, with the shallow breaths tearing from Elionn’s throat. His body remains half-encased in crystal, chest struggling to expand within the prison that both preserves and transforms him.
The court shoves me another step closer. Sweat beads on my forehead, salt stinging my eyes.
