Chapter 19
LYKOR
Lykor watched Rimeclaw prowl away through the jungle, each heavy step pressing deep into the earth. Wood gone brittle from frost, trees groaned as the dragon moved, bark splintering.
Beside him, Jassyn said nothing, but the glance they exchanged struck like a flash of heat in the wintry air—a silent reprimand carrying more than words. Lykor could still feel the scorch of the question he’d hurled, that cruel demand about why Jassyn hadn’t chosen an ending of his own.
Whatever had passed between them hadn’t settled. Jassyn stood with wings braced, but his pupils relaxed back to round. Anger banked, not extinguished. Rain gathered in his curls, sliding along the sharp plane of his jaw.
Lykor didn’t expect forgiveness. Wouldn’t ask for it, even though some part of him still burned in its absence. Yet beneath the heat of their clash a colder feeling stirred, a painful knowing.
Maybe Jassyn didn’t see it yet, still tangled in mercy’s snare, mistaking compassion for salvation. But Lykor already knew what was at stake and the question wasn’t about mercy at all.
If they let Rimeclaw vanish now, they’d lose an edge. The kind forged in ice, not flame.
Letting the world fall away, he turned inward and slipped into the quiet space shared with Aesar. Pacing through his library, Aesar’s boots echoed through vaulted silence. He didn’t look up when Lykor appeared, simply halted mid-stride, the weight of understanding passing between them.
“It makes sense to try,” he said, meeting Lykor’s thought halfway. “We’re of one mind on this.” He flicked a hand toward the double doors, a gesture of consent and dismissal in one. “Focus on the dragon.”
The hush of the inner world dissolved as the jungle’s rain rushed back in, Rimeclaw’s massive form fading between the trees.
“You want to free him,” Lykor muttered. “Fine. But I’m not letting him vanish while there’s still an advantage buried under all that ruin—something he withheld from the king.”
Jassyn brushed damp curls from his lashes, eyes bright in the frosty mist as he met Lykor’s stare. He exhaled through his nose, the sound hovering between annoyance and reluctant acceptance. “If he withheld it from the king, what makes you think he’ll hand it to you?”
Lykor grunted, knowing Jassyn wouldn’t agree if he fully voiced the reason aloud. “Because I can offer him what Galaeryn never would.”
He flexed his wings, shaking water from the membranes as he studied the path Rimeclaw’s bulk had cleared through the jungle. “Could use someone watching my back,” he said, glancing at Jassyn. “If you’re ready to fly.”
A muscle feathered in Jassyn’s jaw before he dipped his head, pupils narrowing to slits for flight.
With a stroke so forceful it cracked, Lykor drove the air downward as the ground fell away.
The cold snagged under his wings like a blow, spinning him half-sideways before he righted, muscles locking hard against the drag.
The jungle tilted beneath him, white and green blurring past as he angled for Rimeclaw’s trail.
Jassyn followed close, a rush of heat at his side, wings snapping wide with more grace but equal force. Their wingbeats skimmed only a few paces above the ground as they swept under the frozen canopy, ducking low branches and threading between trunks split by ice.
For a breath, awe flickered at the flight. No warping. No borrowed power from Trella. Just muscle, air, and will.
Refusing the pull of wonder, Lykor pressed faster. And for once, the body that usually betrayed him didn’t falter.
He glanced across the narrow space to Jassyn—face set, teeth gritted, but holding steady—and that was enough. There was no time to dwell on the ache beneath gratitude, not with Rimeclaw stalking toward the lake like a storm rolling through the jungle.
Rain hissed down in glinting strands, steaming in the dragon’s wake. Lykor rose, wings shearing the damp air. He arced, then dove, drifting just above the dragon’s spine, each scaled ridge a blade of ice.
Angling into the beast’s path, Lykor dropped hard, frost and underbrush splintering beneath his boots.
Jassyn landed beside him, wings folding with a leathery whisk. Together, they stepped in front of Rimeclaw, barely shadows before a titan.
Rimeclaw halted, talons sinking into brittle loam, frost misting from his breath.
“I’ll make a bargain with you, dragon,” Lykor called up to the beast.
Beside him, Jassyn tensed. Rimeclaw’s crystalline eyes narrowed, cold light refracting from within.
“If we reclaim the Heart that binds you, you’ll have a choice—freedom…or the eternal sleep you crave.”
The words left him colder than the rain. He’d meant them as mercy, but they sounded like a sentence. Lykor didn’t look at Jassyn, but he felt the wordless judgment at his shoulder.
“If that’s truly what you want,” Lykor said more quietly, “I’ll see it done.”
Rimeclaw’s gaze lingered, unblinking. Then steam rolled from his nostrils, curling through the frost between them. “Do it now,” he growled. “End me before the tyrant turns my breath against the world.”
Lykor knew he should end the beast. End the threat. End the ache gnawing in his chest. But with Jassyn steady beside him, a colder conviction took root in his lungs.
Not yet.
Maybe he was a fool for it, but he wanted to believe the dragon could remember how to live once unbound.
“The bargain stands when this is over,” Lykor said at last. “Then you’ll have your choice.”
Rimeclaw’s gaze flared, fractures rippling through the frozen glass of his eyes. “Then speak your demand, whelp.”
Lykor unfurled his wings. The maroon membranes caught the dim light between branches, veined like stained glass hammered from blood and fire. The claws at the peaks clenched as if bracing for what he dared to ask.
“Your gift,” Lykor said. “The Tidecrasher’s boon.”
A rumble cracked through Rimeclaw’s chest, wind hissing through his fangs.
“You would cast aside the Emberhart flame?
Spit on fire’s crown,
To beg the sea for something drowned?”
“I know what I’m surrendering,” Lykor said. No druid could bear two elements. “But if Cinderax is half as wise as he claims—with all that ancient memory caged in his skull—he’ll understand I’m not scorning his gift. This is necessity. Strategy.”
He stepped closer as Rimeclaw lowered his head, whether in curiosity or threat, he couldn’t tell. “Hundreds already burn with his flame. But none wield what you carry—the silence of water, the strength of frost.”
Rimeclaw’s stare sharpened, but the ice at his claws began to melt. His words coiled, venomous and low. “Why do you think you’re worthy to bear the sea?”
Lykor met the dragon without flinching. “Because I know what it means to have my mind chained—to serve Galaeryn’s will with no choice of my own.
” His jaw tightened as an ache settled through his wings, but he held firm.
His glance cut briefly to Jassyn. “I was freed, but I’ve never stopped defying him.
Even if your fight is over—if we shatter your chains—mine isn’t.
When we face him in the coming days, I’ll carry your legacy. If you’ll let it rise with me.”
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to narrow to frost and breath.
His.
The dragon’s.
And the perilous silence between.
Patience steeped behind Rimeclaw’s eyes as his gaze climbed from Lykor’s wings to his face, as if measuring what kind of creature dared to ask. Something ancient flickered in that crystalline stare. Doubt, perhaps. Or the first ripple of belief, stirring beneath silt and time.
Jassyn stepped forward, not quite interrupting, but breaking the stillness.
“Lykor isn’t abandoning fire for the sake of it,” he said softly, though each word rang with conviction.
“He’s choosing what the world needs. Balance.
” He lifted a hand, and a flame flared above his palm.
Rain slicked his skin, but the fire held, burning stubbornly against the cold. “Doesn’t the earth deserve that?”
For a moment, Lykor forgot the dragon. The sight of Jassyn standing there—defending a choice he didn’t believe in—pierced straight through his guard. As the flame flickered, Jassyn’s eyes found his, and gratitude flared through the cracks in Lykor’s ribs before he could tamp it down.
Rimeclaw exhaled, snowfall billowing between them.
Lykor waited. The offer had been made. The price already set.
When the dragon spoke again, his words no longer carried the bite of frost.
“I would not mourn that tyrant’s fall,
Nor would some who answered his call.
Promised riches, but wrapped in chains—
Their whelps, their lines, their legacies wane.”
He paused, steam rising in silvery tendrils.
“The mortals behind me march in dread.
Not out of faith, but fear instead.
If you would bear my boon, then wield it for them—
Change their course before my wrath is loosed again.”
A chill traced down Lykor’s spine as he folded his wings shut. “How are we supposed to help them? We’ve already been overwhelmed by their numbers once,” he said bitterly, recalling the fall of his keep. “Why tell us this? Of those who would turn against the king?”
Rimeclaw stared through the frosted trees. “Because I cannot fight him as I am. But those who follow me are few—conduits of earth and stars sent ahead to clear the way for the human army. The tyrant cages what they cherish most. Twist that thread, and their loyalty will fray.”
“Their children,” Jassyn murmured, barely louder than the falling rain. He turned toward Lykor, water slipping from his curls. “Remember what Serenna’s brother said in Vaelyn? Elashor took children from those with shaman blood to force compliance—Saundyl’s son among them.”
Lykor’s jaw tightened as the memory of the beach crashed through him—the roar of plundered Essence too vast to contain, the corrupting pull of wanting more. And Jassyn—always Jassyn—dragging him back from the brink.
He tried to look away, but those amber eyes snared him. Unguarded. Unrelenting. Seeing too much.
Lykor forced himself to return his attention to Rimeclaw. “And if they attack us on sight? If we even manage to cut their leash, what then? What keeps them from sinking their teeth into the hand that freed them?”
“I cannot say,” Rimeclaw rumbled, frost swirling through the trees like retreating surf. “Freedom is a sky I’ll never see. But you ask what comes after? Once the tyrant bends my will, I’ll move as he commands. I’ll freeze the seas and drown every vale.”
He paused, breath steaming in great plumes. “Until someone grants me silence instead.”
Lykor met his gaze. “I stand by what I said. When this is over, I’ll see it done.”
Rimeclaw growled. “Then tread carefully. The sea remembers what fire devours.” His talons flexed, frost cracking beneath them. “My regrets run deep. But if some fragment of my legacy must endure…then let it serve. Let my boon matter. Through you.”
Lykor inclined his head.
Rimeclaw drew a breath so vast it seemed to hollow the air itself. The jungle bent with it—ferns shivering, branches groaning beneath the pull.
Then, at last, the dragon exhaled a salt-laced mist. The vapor rolled toward Lykor, engulfing him whole.
Pressure rose through him like a tide rearing back.
Still for a heartbeat.
Then ruthless in its claiming.
He staggered as power surged through his lungs, rushed along his spine, and sank into the space where fire burned.
The flame guttered, swallowed by the hush. A drowning so calm it felt like an embrace.
Lykor’s wings twitched, the maroon of Cinderax’s gift bleeding into azure until the leathery membranes shimmered like sea glass, a glacial blue. His breath shuddered as Rimeclaw’s power settled, not fire this time, but flood.
He lifted a hand, instinct guiding the motion. From his palm, a thin stream of water rose and coiled into ice. Lykor stared, not surprised that the water obeyed, but by how natural it felt. As if some buried silence had stirred, waiting all this time beneath his rage.
Rimeclaw watched with the calm of something too ancient to read while Lykor let the ice melt between his fingers.
“I’ll wait in the lake,” he murmured, his words a soft thought. “Until he calls.”
The dragon shifted, the scales on his massive body creaking. With each step forward, frost ebbed away. Rain continued to fall, beading across his flanks.
But before a veil of mist and moss obscured him, he glanced back. “The next tide rises soon. Make certain you do not drown beneath it.”