Chapter 20
JASSYN
Jassyn watched Rimeclaw disappear into the pale frost rising through the trees. The quiet barely had time to settle before Lykor’s voice broke it.
“You don’t agree.”
Jassyn sighed, dragging a hand down his rain-slick face, fatigue sinking deep. “Maybe you offered Rimeclaw something noble by giving him a choice. It was…” He hesitated, studying the severe lines of Lykor’s expression. “It was what he wanted.”
It was exactly the kind of peace Lykor gave everyone but himself. He offered endings so others wouldn’t have to suffer them. Jassyn wanted him to reach for something of his own first—to rest without armor. To stop bleeding for the world as if that were the only way he was allowed to exist.
Jassyn almost let the quiet close over them, but the question burned too bright to ignore. He let it rise because he needed to know.
“Did you even want his gift?” he ventured. “Or did you ask because it was strategic?”
Lykor’s jaw tightened, wings rustling before folding back tight.
“If I’d been thinking only of strategy,” he said, voice flat, “I would’ve cut him down—eliminated the risk before he could lead the king to us or twist his power against our people.
” He shook his head, the tension in his shoulders easing.
“Foolish not to. But I wanted him to have another chance.” His gaze dropped to the rain pooling at their feet. “The way you freed me.”
Jassyn glanced away, the base of his wings itching against his soaked leathers. “Maybe it was hard for me to agree with,” he said quietly, blinking away rain from his lashes. “But I understand.”
“I don’t want to kill him,” Lykor murmured.
His eyes flared faintly as he extended his claw. Water gathered in his palm, rippling once before hardening into ice—a dagger, its edge catching the light.
“But people like us don’t get the luxury to want,” he said, turning the weapon over in his claw. “Not while we’re surviving.”
He let the dagger fall. It struck the ground and shattered, ice scattering across the roots.
“But surviving should be more than enduring,” Jassyn insisted. “It’s choosing what to live for too.”
He cast his awareness toward the earth and reached for the broken shards. The pieces trembled, then lifted, hovering above his palm in the rain. But he didn’t shape them into another blade.
Instead, he drew beauty from the wreckage.
Lykor silently watched as a blossom unfurled above Jassyn’s hand—frost-petaled and fragile, more suggestion than symmetry.
Jassyn held it a moment longer before letting it melt, water slipping between his fingers. Some things weren’t meant to last, but that didn’t make them less worthy of choosing.
“Then maybe…” Lykor trailed off. “If we’re still standing at the end. Maybe that’s when we get to choose.”
Lykor’s gaze found Jassyn’s and lingered, tracing the lines of his face before dropping to his mouth. Jassyn’s chest cinched with a heated ache, the quiet tragedy that Lykor didn’t believe he was allowed to want anything unless it served something else.
Jassyn nearly said it aloud, that he didn’t want Lykor to crush a future before it could bloom. Instead, he reached out. A single touch, fingers grazing the edge of Lykor’s claw.
Lykor didn’t pull away, though a twitch betrayed the urge. For a breath they simply stood as rain fell between them, restraint trembling like a held note.
Then Lykor exhaled and stepped back, tucking the moment away before it could become anything more. He flexed his wings, flinging water from the marbled blue.
“Do you sense where the prince and Fenn wandered off to?” he asked, voice rough again, already sliding back into duty. “We should find them before they provoke those following Rimeclaw.”
Jassyn nodded, delving inward until the bond tugged faintly east. He turned toward the shredded canopy, where light bled through the tear Rimeclaw had carved.
Lykor’s gaze lingered on the place where the flower of ice had melted before finding Jassyn’s again. He tipped his head toward the torn treetops. “Think you’re up for a second flight?”
Jassyn’s pulse kicked against his throat. “We barely left the ground last time.” The words rasped before he swallowed. “I’m not sure that counts as flying.”
He could’ve sworn Lykor bit back a smirk. “Then let’s see if you’re ready to.”
Without another word, Lykor broke into a run, scales plating his arms. His wings snapped wide, the membranes cracking through the rain like thunder.
Sensing both the dare and the invitation, Jassyn shifted fully as he followed—boots slipping in the mud, heartbeat pounding against his ribs. Wings pumped with each stride as he gathered speed, until at last he leapt into the updraft.
For one breath he floated between falling and flying. Then the sky caught him, wind slamming beneath his wings as he rose through the gap in the canopy.
A rush of winter air tore past Jassyn’s face as he cleared the treetops with Lykor, the world blurring in green and white.
His stomach clenched as mountains rose around the pocket of jungle, pale and snowy through the mist. A stubborn shard of fear still whispered that he’d plunge, that the sky would reject him and the earth would yank him down.
But Lykor had been right.
When he shifted into dragonsight, the world bent and the horizon unfurled.
Depth lost its menace.
The drop became distance.
And the sickness of height settled as his balance found the wind. The ground no longer waited to devour him as it shrank away, drifting harmlessly below.
For one fierce heartbeat, wonder eclipsed fear.
Then the beastblood stirred.
It seethed in his veins, louder with every wingbeat, sharpened by the clarity of his altered sight. Almost ravenous for a direction. Or a target.
And with each draft of sky, control thinned, some primal urge coiling through him.
Let go, it seemed to whisper.
As he followed the bond toward the prince, Jassyn’s gaze strayed to Lykor skimming the air beside him—all power and precision, born to command the sky as they soared above the jungle.
The sight ignited something feral beneath his ribs. Locking his jaw, Jassyn forced the wildness down. He’d surrendered to hunger after healing Lykor, nearly losing himself.
Not again.
He exhaled, reaching for what he could control. The air thickened at his call, pressure bending until the currents softened, reshaping to gently cradle their descent.
Jassyn slowed above a snarl of treetops where the bond’s pull flared brightest, a living sea of green stretching unbroken below.
He beat his wings hard, body tilting upright as he fought to hover. Each stroke shuddered through his shoulders, boots dangling above the canopy. Muscles burned, but he held—barely—and glanced toward Lykor.
Arching a brow, Lykor only waited.
Right. Fenn and Vesryn had probably clawed their way through like animals. But he and Lykor didn’t have to.
Jassyn reached for the trees, sinking into the pulse of the earth. With a whisper of intent, he coaxed the branches apart, the foliage folding back like a living gate.
They dropped through the opening and a broad bough caught them high above the forest floor. Jassyn’s boots hit moss slick with rain, and the branch dipped under his weight, pitching him forward.
Before gravity could claim him, a hand snagged his arm. Lykor released him when he steadied, as if the gesture had meant nothing at all.
Jassyn let go of the earth and the jungle sealed overhead, leaves rustling shut. Before he could locate the prince, the world around them blurred.
He flinched as a veil settled over him—mist without weight, shadows without Essence. Fenn’s cloaking, he realized, drawn tight like an invisible net around them all.
Further along the branch, he spotted Vesryn and Fenn crouched low on their heels, wings folded, attention pinned to the ground. The prince raised a finger to his lips, then pointed toward the clearing.
Jassyn followed his gaze and stilled as the scene unfolded below.
A soldier stoked a fire while another drew a blade across a whetstone. Others conversed as they stirred pots, pitched tents, and moved with a practiced ease—the rhythm of survival so ordinary it might have belonged to any camp.
As they worked, Essence shimmered around the clearing. But the hum of the earth also thrummed in Jassyn’s chest as the warriors coaxed flames higher and repelled water from gear.
From a distance, they could’ve passed for content. Obedience polished into loyalty.
As he watched, he noticed that this unfamiliar force bore no traces of Centarya or Kyansari. These soldiers were from somewhere else, though—judging by the way they wielded both Essence and earth—they were elven-blooded shamans like him.
Jassyn exhaled slowly, breath shuddering out of his lungs, unsettled by the calm.
That could’ve been him down there, if fate had cleaved differently.
If the realm had chained him a little longer.
He could see himself among them—mending minor aches from the road, pouring tea from a kettle, casting his compliance toward someone else’s war.
Rimeclaw’s voice haunted him still. That the king’s armies weren’t bound by devotion, but by the fear of losing what they loved.
Their families.
That was the thread to fray. They had to get this right.
The prince’s telepathic link coiled through Jassyn’s thoughts, a ripple through water. A heartbeat later, he sensed Fenn’s and Lykor’s minds braided into the connection.
“We counted more than fifty down there,” Vesryn said. His wings twitched behind him, the clawed tips catching on a branch above.
“More scout their perimeter,” Fenn added.