Chapter 22
JASSYN
The jungle blurred around Jassyn as he dove between whipping vines, each wingbeat flinging mist and shredding leaves behind him.
Rain slashed through the canopy, hammering until the leathery membranes hung heavy with water.
He tucked one wing to slip through a gap, spreading the other wide to balance, skimming a branch hard enough to peel its bark.
Reaching out with his awareness, he tore the forest open.
Vines and leaves parted in a breathless rush, wind carving across his face as he dropped into the clearing.
His boots slammed into the mud, the jolt knifing through him as he landed before the male who held a fistful of fire, standing at the axis of it all.
Blades turned in unison, a ring of steel glinting with lethal intent. Essence surged like stormwater breaching a dam. Fire coiled after it, flaring bright from every side. Power rippled through the air, taut as wire, thrumming and ready to snap.
Jassyn raised his palms slowly in a silent plea for restraint.
The leader’s eyes—hazel ringed in gold—widened as they flicked over Jassyn’s wings, catching on the glint of dragonsight still burning in his gaze.
Jassyn blinked, dispelling the draconic pupils before they could rattle this elven-blooded male further.
Lykor warped down beside him, shadows trailing like smoke. A heartbeat later Fenn appeared, materializing with the prince in tow.
The jungle fell still. Vines hung motionless and even the drops of rain seemed to be listening.
“We didn’t come to fight,” Jassyn said, dispelling his wings. He met the leader’s gaze, nearly his height, steady in the slow cascade of water. “We’ve already spoken with Rimeclaw, the dragon leading you, and—”
“Rimeclaw?” The male’s brow creased. “That beast has a name?”
“He does.” Jassyn kept his voice level, offering more. “He speaks to those who can hear him. Like us. The scalebound. Druids.”
A curse fractured across the clearing. The female Lykor had marked as second-in-command twisted on her knees, Essence crackling as she hacked her magic against the shadows Vesryn still had binding her limbs.
“You know who they are!” she hissed through her teeth. “Prince Vesryn and the others. General Elashor said traitors are worth more breathing.”
The leader’s gaze snapped to the prince, then swept over the others behind Jassyn—quick, assessing, measuring threat. Fire wreathed his fists, and when his eyes returned to Jassyn, calculation had replaced caution.
“I know your face too,” he said, voice gone flat. “Jassyn. Another traitor to the crown.”
Heat spiked up Jassyn’s spine, instinct flaring against what this stranger presumed. “I won’t answer for choosing freedom over servitude.”
Fury seethed through his chest, hungry to guard the fragments he’d clawed from the wreckage. He wasn’t theirs anymore—no longer bound to the capital, no longer ruled by their collars.
But before the beastblood reacted and he said anything else, Lykor stepped ahead of him, voice dripping menace.
“Enough pleasantries,” he growled, wings rustling.
Shadows roiled around his frame like thunderheads on the verge of breaking.
“I could raze this little war band to rubble without blinking.” He prowled closer to the leader, eyes burning.
“So shut up and let him speak. Test us, and die on your knees.”
Jassyn held still as the threat hung in the rain. He allowed the silence to stretch until it spoke for him, letting Lykor become the sharper threat and draw every gaze. A shield daring the force to strike him first, just to give Jassyn the space to be heard.
The leader straightened, dispelling the flame as he folded his arms. “Release my people,” he said coolly. A test, not a request. “And maybe then, we’ll listen.”
Lykor didn’t move. Neither did Vesryn, who still held half the camp shackled in shadows.
Jassyn turned, eyes meeting Lykor’s first, imploring restraint before moving to Vesryn’s. A wordless look that didn’t ask but told.
Somehow, that was enough, though he hadn’t truly believed it would be.
Vesryn exhaled through his nose and the darkness slipped away—unraveling from bound limbs, releasing those on the forest floor.
The leader glanced over his shoulder as his companions rose. The female with the auburn braid stalked to his side, her scowl cutting across the glade. Essence shimmered faintly around her. Contained, but only just.
They outnumbered Jassyn’s small group over tenfold. Yet despite being trained, armored, and disciplined, fear clung to them like the rain on their steel. He caught the subtle recoil, the way their hands shook, Essence flickering as fingers hovered near weapons.
A girl, scarcely more than a child, drifted closer to a female who might’ve been her mother. A young male kept glancing toward the trees—maybe watching for Rimeclaw, or perhaps plotting a way to flee.
This was no army hungry for blood, only one bracing against what might lay ahead.
“You already know me and Vesryn,” Jassyn said, then gestured to the others. “Fenn. And Lykor.”
Silence followed the last name. A few soldiers exchanged uneasy glances while the female with the braid only sneered. The leader’s expression hardened as his gaze slid over them, thumb grazing the stubble along his jaw.
“Strange company,” he murmured. “A wraith. Exiled princes. Lykor…caught between.” Hazel eyes, sharp and searching, returned to Jassyn and lingered just long enough to make him want to look away. “And a half-breed whose bloodline helped build the king’s empire.”
Jassyn held still, though something inside him flinched. Even here—realms away—his face remained a seal of the elves’ dominion. Not a person, but a lineage. An unwanted symbol of everything he’d fought to escape.
When the leader spoke again, the edge in his words honed to precision. “And now you call yourselves druids, cloaked in ancient magic once spoken of only in treasonous whispers.”
The female cut in, flicking her braid back over her shoulder. “Do you realize the bounty on you? How much we’ll be rewarded for turning all of you in?”
Lykor bared his fangs. “Try it.” His wings flared, talons clacking together as though already measuring where to strike.
Frost cracked the ground below his boots and a flail of ice coalesced in his claw, shadows threading through the spiked heads. Before he could move, Jassyn laid a hand on his arm.
Lykor’s nostrils flared, muscles tense beneath his skin, but he held.
“I believe we might be able to help each other,” Jassyn said, letting the words fall like an offering rather than a threat.
Arms folded tight across her chest, the female’s glare didn’t waver. “I don’t like this, Daeryn,” she muttered. “You know the punishments—what that dragon will do. If we don’t hand them over and word gets out, they’ll strip our Essence. And our lives won’t be the only ones they take.”
Around her, others tensed. Glances sparked through the ranks, murmurs rippling beneath the rain, the air thick with what none dared to voice any louder.
Vesryn arched a brow. “By all means. Let’s see whose head buys the most favor.” He scoffed. “But we all know the truth. The only victor is the one wearing the crown.”
He swept a hand toward the clearing, voice turning cool. “I’ve never seen anything like this. A force trained with both Essence and earth?” His gaze narrowed as it passed over the group. “The capital and council kept knowledge of shaman power from me—even when I commanded Centarya.”
Daeryn met the words with silence, his face composed but not untouched. Jassyn recognized that emptiness—he’d worn it himself too many times to count. A defiant kind of survival, the sort that stilled breath and drilled the body to obedience until even feeling looked like it had vanished.
Something crawled out of the shadows of Jassyn’s memory, but he shoved it back down. He didn’t want to acknowledge the truth of its teeth. Whatever thread bound them didn’t need naming.
“I grew up in Kyansari,” Daeryn said at last. “Always knew I was bound for Centarya. Every half-breed is. But the earth woke…unexpectedly in me.”
He lifted a hand, and the rain answered. Droplets drew toward his palm, threading into a slender stream that coiled once around his wrist before hardening to ice. “The details as to why don’t matter,” he murmured, “but I froze a fountain in my mother’s courtyard when I was twelve.”
His mouth twisted as he closed his fist, crushing the ice to shards. “So they sent me north instead of to Centarya. A hidden place no one is permitted to speak of. For people like us—who could wield both.”
Jassyn frowned. A hidden place for those like him and Serenna. They’d been spared only because no one had known. Because their powers hadn’t manifested where others could see.
Daeryn glanced at the female beside him.
“We were taken one by one. From estates in Alari. From the human realms. From our families.” His eyes shifted to Fenn.
“All those ‘deaths’ and disappearances they blamed on wraith attacks?” He released a bitter laugh.
“That was the cover. Creating chaos while General Elashor’s forces smuggled us out. ”
“Tell him, Daeryn,” the female snapped as she whirled to face him, fury barely leashed. “Tell him who he is. Tell our people why you’re risking their lives. Why you hesitate to send him back to the capital in chains like you would anyone else.”
Jassyn blinked. The name struck harder this time, piercing through layers he’d packed like armor. Daeryn.
The way Daeryn stood—balanced on the edge of confession, refusing to look away—made the air tighten in Jassyn’s lungs, every breath feeling borrowed.
“My mother was an elven highborn,” Daeryn said quietly. “A councilwoman’s daughter.”
The words meant nothing. But the way he said them did.
Jassyn shook his head before he could stop the motion, as if he’d be able to force the truth back into silence by sheer refusal.
It couldn’t be this. This wasn’t his burden to carry.
“And when I heard the rumors,” Daeryn said, eyes locked onto Jassyn. “When word spread that you and the prince had broken free and walked out of Centarya alive, unshackled…”
“Say it,” the female hissed, interrupting him. “If you won’t, I will. Our people deserve to know who you’re protecting.”
Daeryn’s jaw flexed, but his expression didn’t waver. “Enough, Bhreena.”
Jassyn’s breath caught on every rung in his ribs. He barely felt the rain sliding cold down his spine, the ache from flight, or the hum of surrounding magic—everything lost to the roar rising inside him.
He didn’t want this. The echo. The name. The years it stripped without consent. Not here. Not now. Not with every eye watching, weighing, waiting.
Daeryn stood with a courage Jassyn had never dared to reach for. Rain ticked against armor. The silence between them broke on his next breath.
“You’re my sire.”