Chapter 14 #2
Lykor’s nod was little more than a jerk of his chin.
“Venom settles differently in everyone,” Fenn mused, idly spinning a ring in his brow. “When I bit Jassyn, he went all breathy and silent. The princeling just got louder. You?” His fangs flashed, quick and sharp. “Half the odds you’ll keep your dignity. Half you won’t.”
Lykor scowled. “If I act like the prince did—”
“If you do,” Jassyn cut in, “no one else will be here to witness it.”
Breath leaked in a slow hiss between Lykor’s teeth. He didn’t look at Jassyn. Didn’t glance at Fenn. As if sheer refusal to meet their eyes might conjure distance where none existed.
Lykor did the only thing left to him. He yanked his tunic over his head and threw it aside. Spine taut, shoulders squared in defiance, he crossed the hollow and pushed himself up onto the waiting platform like a condemned man stepping up to the noose.
“Just get it over with,” he ground out, perched on the edge as moss-veiled vines creaked beneath his legs.
“You might want to lie back,” Fenn offered, sauntering over.
“No.”
Jassyn lifted his hands, and the earth obeyed. Vines stirred behind Lykor, braiding into a cradle that caught his spine and braced his weight.
Staring ahead, Lykor dug his fingers into the roots weaving around him, every muscle coiled to the verge of rupture as Fenn leaned in close. Heat radiated off him, but a shiver chased it, raising the hairs along Lykor’s skin before the bite ever came.
He didn’t breathe as Fenn’s fangs breached the slope of his neck—a clean puncture, stinging faintly. Pressure spread like a second heartbeat, pulsing from the base of his throat.
Lykor didn’t flinch or blink. But somewhere deep, he recoiled, fighting the primal urge to rip free.
Fenn withdrew as the venom slid in, cold and silken. Painless. A velvet numbness unfurled through his chest, fanning outward until thought and flesh dissolved into a haze.
Lykor’s eyelids fought the drift. His heart slowed, every beat heavy as stone.
Through the fog, he caught Jassyn’s low voice. “I’ll touch your mind if I need you,” he murmured to Fenn. “Keep Vesryn busy. But don’t let him wander far.”
“Quality bonding time. Got it.” Fenn’s voice curled with amusement, his footsteps already fading.
With a twist of his wrist, Jassyn drew on the earth. The foliage from earlier wove a cocoon of living green that sealed the chamber, drowning it in twilight.
Suspended upright in root and moss, Lykor realized this must be what execution felt like—not in the strike, but in the waiting. The silence before the blade.
Breath shallow, his limbs hung heavy, as if draped in sodden cloth. Still, he forced his eyes open, blinking against the blur that gathered like water over drowning eyes.
Jassyn turned toward him, a halo of Essence whirling around his hands. “How do you feel?”
Tongue like lead, Lykor swallowed thickly, Jassyn’s voice the only thing mooring him to breath and bone.
“Like I’ve been turned to stone,” he slurred, the words dragging slow.
His gaze slid to where Fenn had vanished from the tree.
“Can’t fathom why that lot bites each other to feel this way on purpose. ”
Jassyn’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t comment. “Once I begin,” he said as shadows laced between his fingers, twisting with strands of crimson mending light, “I can’t stop until it’s finished. If you need it, I’ll have Fenn send you the rest of the way under.”
Lykor managed a nod, though it felt more like the thought of one than true motion.
“I’ll be with you through every breath,” Jassyn said. “If anything surfaces—whether it’s pain or the past pressing in—tell me.” His voice caught, barely, but steadied again as his eyes held Lykor’s. “I won’t let you vanish in the dark.”
Heat stung behind Lykor’s eyes, and he dragged in air through his nose, fighting the urge to look away. It sounded like a promise, and worse, like one he almost wanted to believe. Pride snapped its fangs, begging him to snarl, but his chest betrayed him, burning with how deep the vow struck.
“When I’m finished,” Jassyn continued, “your spine will bear your wings. Without pain or lingering scars. I’ll rebuild strength where you need it to fly.”
Fly. The word snagged in his thoughts. Flight meant more than wings. It meant tearing loose from the king’s chains, hammered cruel and permanent into his bones.
“And if you do this wrong?” The question slipped out before Lykor could stop it, hoarse and vulnerable.
Jassyn didn’t flinch. “I won’t.”
Lykor exhaled something that tasted too much like surrender. He could carry agony. Every pain had shaped him, scar by scar. What threatened him now rose from the ache of wanting, a wound he had no armor for.
Jassyn didn’t know it, but he wasn’t only rebuilding a spine. He was risking something far more ruinous in giving Lykor the shape of hope.
“I’m ready,” he said at last, the words raw and yielding.
“I’ll turn you over with the plants now,” Jassyn murmured, lowering his palms to the living platform.
Lykor closed his eyes. “If I say anything stupid…”
“I’ll purge it from my mind.”
He tried to scowl, but it faltered, lost beneath the quiet unraveling. He’d been flayed by magic. Broken. Tortured. But never undone like this. This was exposure without violence, tenderness he had no shield against.
And somehow, it unmade him in ways pain never could.