Chapter 3
LYKOR
The landing should have been cleaner.
Lykor reappeared from the warp too high, overshooting Trella in the sky by twenty spans. A rogue wind shear hurled him sideways into a spiral, the earth yanking him down.
But Trella caught him.
He slammed into the saddle flat on his back, pain detonating in a jolt that ripped the breath from his lungs.
Tucked back into their mind, Aesar snorted. Then—uninvited—he slipped through their limbs, hauling them upright on the leather ridge with a precision Lykor didn’t possess. Fastening straps. Tucking heels. Rebalancing weight.
“I WAS GETTING TO IT,” Lykor muttered, wincing.
“Obviously.”
Aesar chuckled, patting Trella’s feathered neck as he crooned something nonsensical to her. Trella trilled in response, wings sweeping wide.
Aesar had been restless all week, starved for wind, for open sky. Flying the dracovae ranked among the few indulgences Lykor let pass unchallenged. Letting him lead here cost nothing—except the illusion of control.
But being in the sky this way carried no triumph. Not when flight came stolen, borrowed on another’s strength.
With Aesar steady and neither of them fighting for dominance, Lykor rolled their shoulders and snatched at their Well, tearing open a portal to the south. Aesar had flown to the rangers’ scouting line a few days prior, close enough to glimpse the mountains of the Dreadspire Range.
Trella sliced through the rift in a single wingbeat. On the other side, the desert gave way to stone, the horizon rupturing in black peaks leading into the Crackling Maw.
The instant they broke through, a telepathic link slammed into place. Lykor flinched as the breach tore through his skull, jaw locking to brace against the violation he could never dislodge.
Another presence slid into his thoughts, his defenses long since stripped. The king had seen to that, leaving his mind carved open for command.
“I’ll handle it,” Aesar said, already moving to intercept.
“IT’S FINE,” Lykor ground out. “I DON’T WANT TO FUCK AROUND RELAYING MESSAGES. JUST LET YOUR brOTHER TALK TO US BOTH.”
“As you wish,” Aesar murmured, retreating.
“You’re late,” came Vesryn’s voice, bludgeoning straight into their thoughts. No finesse. No tact. Just brute mental force. Knicking down the door where Kal would’ve slipped sideways, bypassing Lykor completely to whisper straight to Aesar.
Lykor turned, glaring as the prince descended in a wide arc on Naru. The dracovae’s scales reflected the sun like volcanic glass, feathered wings cutting against the vast blue. Fully shifted in his druid form, Vesryn leaned low in the saddle as Naru banked.
“YOU’RE AWARE I HAVE OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES ASIDE FROM GALLIVANTING AROUND THE REALMS,” Lykor replied flatly.
“But here you are,” Vesryn drawled, “brooding a mile up while we begin the first perimeter sweep.”
“AND EVEN AT THIS HEIGHT,” Lykor shot back, “I’M STILL NOT SPARED YOUR FLAPPING TONGUE.”
“Then fly faster.”
Lykor gritted his fangs as Aesar shifted forward on Trella before he could add more. Trella surged forward, her body heaving with each wingbeat. She slid into formation beside Naru, their strokes rolling in tandem, shadows sweeping across the broken earth below.
Lykor squinted against the sun as the prince angled toward Zaeryn, his flight captain.
She rode a steady current at the head of the rangers’ formation, her chestnut dracovae cutting clean lines through the sky.
Vesryn dipped Naru lower to join her, folding into the flight of riders stitched across the horizon.
Tugging at the pulse behind his eyes, Lykor sharpened his dragonsight, catching the shimmer where the mountains split the sky. The Dreadspire Range ruptured from the earth in jagged splinters, peaks clawing skyward until the far eastern ridges broke apart and spilled into the ocean.
They’d been scouting out of the desert for days, portal jumping forward with every dawn, charting lands on Kaedryn’s maps—centuries outdated by the scars of the Great War.
And now at last, the edge of the Crackling Maw loomed, lightning fissuring above the peaks.
Somewhere beyond those storm-cracked fangs, Skylash waited, bound in her crystal chains.
Or so Cinderax claimed.
They weren’t here to breach her prison today. Not until their forces could fly without falling. Not until someone strong enough could hold the sky—and its lightning—back.
Lykor refused to dwell on whose wings would bear that burden.
Something darted past Trella’s flank, a flicker in the corner of Lykor’s vision. She trilled low, long neck curling to glance behind.
Lykor stiffened and turned with her—just in time to see a shape drop onto her croup, wings folding, eyes gleaming.
Cinderax.
The dragon shook out his scales and padded closer, each step winding in a sinuous coil. He fixed Lykor with a look so brazen it might’ve been ancestral judgment—if judgment came in pint-sized flames.
Narrowing his gaze, Lykor asked, “Any insight about what we’ll face ahead?”
The wind shifted, hitching Trella’s left pinion. She raked the draft, feathers flaring to scrape the sky. The saddle lurched and Aesar corrected their weight—continuing to exchange thoughts with Vesryn—but the twist shot pain down Lykor’s spine to his knees.
He glared over his shoulder at the dragon. “And sit somewhere else. I’m not dislocating my back to speak with a pocket-sized lizard.”
Cinderax’s eyes pinned to slits. Then he puffed his chest and opened his jaws.
Lykor had a heartbeat to react before the fire hit.
Scales rippled across his skin as flames slammed his side, the heat blistering enough it would have peeled ordinary flesh. The blast glanced off the armored plating, but his leathers hissed, reeking of charred hide.
Snarling, he reached back and snatched Cinderax by the frills on his neck.
“If you scorch another set of my armor,” Lykor growled, dragging the little bastard up by the scruff, “I’ll dice you into ribbons and feed your entrails to Trella. Don’t think she’d refuse.”
Cinderax flailed—claws slashing, wings flapping, fangs snapping with all the fury his tiny body could muster. Hissing croaks spilled from his throat. Might’ve been a proper roar. If he weren’t so fucking small.
Lykor hauled the writhing beast forward and dumped him onto Trella’s withers.
The whelp sprawled in a tangle of wings and limbs, then righted himself, coiling atop her spine like nothing had happened.
“Your tantrums are tedious,” Cinderax rumbled into Lykor’s mind, licking one claw with reptilian disdain.
Lykor’s fingers tightened around the saddle. Another druid gift—hearing dragons when they allowed it. Too often, in his opinion. One voice in his head proved intrusion enough.
“I heard that,” Aesar clipped, still focused on steering the dracovae beneath them.
Ahead, Vesryn and Naru carved a line toward the highest ridges. Beyond the Dreadspire’s reach, the world blackened into a wall of clouds chained to the sky, veined in endless lightning.
Cinderax blinked slowly as Lykor refocused on him. Maroon eyes, the color of his wings, carried the depth of an elder wyrm trapped in a whelp’s body.
To Lykor, he was still the stars’ cruelest joke. A hatchling. But the memories festering in that skull were useful fragments of an older age, and the right questions could unseal that vault.
When he’d asked why Serenna heard a dragon’s voice before receiving the boon, Cinderax sifted through his ancestral knowledge and claimed the Heart of Stars had bridged her mind—not to him, but to another.
“What do we need to know about what’s ahead?” Lykor pressed again.
“Skylash is beyond those peaks,” Cinderax said, releasing a lazy puff of smoke. “And as noble as your steeds are, they won’t survive two wingbeats in the Crackling Maw.”
That meant Trella couldn’t fly into the storm.
Which meant neither could he.
“Because of the lightning?” he asked, though he already knew.
“Precisely.” Cinderax cocked his head, eyes glowing with amusement. “You’ll need your children of earth and starlight to bend the skies and guide the path—which Kaedryn already told you.”
Lykor scoffed. They barely had thirty among their number who’d manifested the earthen powers—some of the academy’s former initiates turned wraith by the king, and a handful of Jassyn’s rebel magus. Fewer still could direct it with purpose, let alone twist a storm to their will.
“Fine,” he muttered as Trella caught a thermal, climbing higher. “And once Skylash is free, her lightning will be ours to wield?”
“It doesn’t work like that.” Cinderax vented steam from his nostrils. “Your greed runs as deep as your Aelfyn forebears’. Ever reaching. Ever frothing for every boon.”
“I don’t want power,” Lykor growled. “I want the advantage. There’s a difference.” Then flatter, he concluded, “So scalebound—druids or whatever the fuck you want to call us—can only harness one element.”
“And only if the Warden of the line deems you worthy,” Cinderax said with a chuff. “Dragons don’t share. Some of us don’t take kindly to drifters—those who leap from boon to boon. You harness one gift. One element. And you’re already claimed by fire.”
Lykor’s lip curled. Fitting that he was shackled to a temperamental cretin like Cinderax. A sharper insult itched on his tongue—about offending real dragons—but he swallowed it. No sense provoking the lizard while he was actually coughing up something useful.
Ahead, the rangers strung their line across the terrain.
Trella skimmed the sweep’s outer rim, high enough for Lykor to watch the scouts, yet low enough to feel the mountain gusts batter her wings.
Below, warriors dropped from their dracovae like plunging seabirds, wings flaring as their mounts wheeled above.