Chapter 24
SERENNA
“Only the rarest cuts for the ravenous,” Fenn announced, brandishing a chunk of meat dripping with blood. “Our little fire queen’s first feast.”
From her seat beside Vasharax on the tiered steps above the canal, Serenna turned at his voice. She wrinkled her nose as the hatchling trilled—a low, throaty sound that could’ve been either approval or hunger. Probably both, since it was her first meal.
The dragon’s molten eyes tracked the meat’s sway, pupils narrowing to slits as if the whole world had shrunk to that single crimson mass.
“Don’t lose your fingers,” Serenna warned as Fenn crouched to Vasharax’s level, offering the heart like a royal tribute.
Orbs of druid fire hovered around Asharyn’s market. Behind him, floating lanterns skimmed low over the turquoise canal, their glow shimmering across mistpetals that drifted along the water like scattered stars.
Smoke coiled through the warm twilight from meat searing, herbs crackling, and sugar melting somewhere down the promenade. Laughter threaded through the haze, glancing off the sandstone.
Cushions had been arranged along the weathered steps leading to the water. Vasharax’s tail thudded against one as she lunged, snatching the strip from Fenn’s talons—fangs snapping just shy of skin.
Fenn chuckled and sprawled beside Serenna, stretching his legs down the steps.
Serenna sighed, grateful she’d already had dinner back at the palace. “Should I even ask what she’s eating?”
Vasharax braced herself, talons pinning the meat before she tore in. Sinew snapped from a savage shake, blood streaking her snout. She huffed through flared nostrils, then dove in again, ripping a piece loose.
“Sandspawn racer,” Fenn said, waving toward a spit where something enormous turned over the flames. “The Scourge of the Dunes. Brought it down myself.”
Serenna cast him a sideways look as he leaned back on his claws, smugness practically radiating.
“Oh, is that all?” she teased, knowing full well a story would follow. “No near-death brush with glory? Or was it carrion by the time you stumbled upon it?”
Fenn clutched his chest. “Carrion? She-elf, I have standards.”
Serenna rolled her eyes as a grin spread around his fangs.
“You would’ve screamed, by the way,” he went on.
“Especially when a lizard the size of a sandstrider”—he nodded toward the hump-backed beasts drinking along the canal—“burst out of the ground. Spits just as far, too. My squad spent the entire week baiting one in the canyons with fermented palm fruit. When we finally lured it out today, the fiend doubled back and slimed us—same stuff the druids bottle for their desert-visions.” Spinning a ring in his ear, he chuckled.
“I warped fast and it missed me, but some of the others were flying halfway across the plains on a spirit quest before we caught them.”
Vasharax released another croaking chirp, claws sinking back into the heart as she tore at it, steam curling from her talons.
“You managed all of that in the few hours since you returned from the jungle?” Serenna asked, raising her brows.
Fenn shrugged. “Had some free time. Seemed like Jassyn and your princeling had the arrival of Daeryn’s people handled.
Pretty sure Lykor was glowering somewhere in the thick of it while they settled everyone in.
Figured I’d make myself useful and help the druids hunt something fit for a celebration. ”
Serenna’s gaze swept the square, where the city’s hum rose around them. Vesryn’s rangers, Kaedryn’s druids, Lykor’s wraith, Centarya’s magus, and the newcomers—Daeryn and his warriors—all gathered for the evening festivities, though distance still lingered between them.
She hadn’t been surprised to learn that Jassyn’s healing in the jungle had worked. But the hollow-eyed soldiers returning with him and the revelation of Rimeclaw had come as a shock.
Now, music drifted around the market—flutes, drums, and palms striking rhythm—threaded through with low conversation. A celebration for Vasharax’s hatching and the arrival of more children of earth and starlight.
Wraith and druid children warped between merchant carts and the sandstriders resting on folded limbs, chasing one another beneath the floating firelight.
It sounded like joy as laughter spilled across the stones.
Maybe it was. But Serenna still sensed unease as she studied the tension coiling through Daeryn’s shoulders and the wary glances his second-in-command Bhreena cast toward the druids, as though they expected the city to turn its spears on them before dawn.
Trust would have to be built from both sides. But if this small force could break free from the king’s clutches, it gave Serenna hope that her brother might find a way out too.
Having finished devouring the heart, Vasharax licked her talons clean, then nosed at the sand where blood had pooled, chuffing for any last traces.
A whistle cut through the noise behind them. Serenna turned to see Koln weaving through the gathering, long hair swaying with his swagger, his eye patch flashing in the firelight.
“I’ve secured a cluster of those spinebenders you asked about,” he called to Fenn, raising a potted plant in one claw while balancing three heaping plates of food on the other arm.
Barely giving Fenn enough time to shift aside, the broad-shouldered wraith dropped onto a cushion beside him and set everything down with a thump.
Serenna blinked at the plant. The cactus bulged in lush, swollen segments—smooth and tapering to blunt points where beads of clear sap glimmered along each seam.
Their shape left little to the imagination.
Brazenly indecent and obscenely suggestive, the green stalks nearly compelled her to look away yet dared her to stare at the same time.
“Already de-spined too,” Fenn noted, nodding in approval at the absence of thorns.
“Are you two taking up decorative gardening?” Serenna asked sarcastically. “That thing looks like it should be behind a closed door, not paraded around in a glazed pot.”
Face splitting into a mischievous grin, Koln tipped his chin toward a druid lounging on the tailgate of a wagon, plucking a tune on a lute.
“The merchant didn’t believe me when I said the spinebender does more than soothe sand chafing.
Their name for it was dull—something like ‘sunsalve.’ Anyway,” he continued, adjusting his eye patch, “he stopped me before I could demonstrate the more creative applications Fenn and I discovered.”
Fenn snorted. “You’re already banned from the palace gardens. Drop your trousers in the market next and they’ll exile you before the moons rise.”
Koln elbowed him and raised one claw to tick off his talons. “Cures sand rash and cools sunburn—which the druids do admit. But it also aids with…loneliness, if one’s only companionship happens to be self-provided with a calloused palm.”
Serenna groaned, pressing a hand to her face. “That’s indecently specific.”
A low noise rumbled from Vasharax’s throat as she prowled closer to inspect Koln’s latest scandal in plant form.
Fenn bumped Serenna’s shoulder. “Fortunately, some of us don’t have to go scavenging for desert sap to find smoother company.”
Serenna pursed her lips as Koln reached for the cactus, scraping a talon into a divot where a thorn had been.
A droplet of clear liquid welled, catching the firelight before he smeared it between thumb and forefinger.
“If you’ve got an eager partner, apply a little to wherever’s getting the attention.
Or to your own favored equipment. Doesn’t matter.
Warms on contact, makes you slicker than a greased eel, and—”
Serenna cleared her throat, sharp enough to cut him off. “And why, precisely, did you bring that phallic monstrosity over here?”
Fenn didn’t miss a beat. “Not ‘phallic monstrosity’—spinebender,” he corrected, rolling a lip ring between his fangs. “It’s medicinal and recreational. Truly the most versatile plant in the desert.”
“Whatever,” Serenna huffed, catching movement out of the corner of her eye.
Vasharax lowered onto her haunches, tail flicking in a slow, deliberate sweep.
Serenna lunged forward and snatched the dragon before she could pounce on the plant.
Vasharax hissed an indignant croak, talons pricking skin deep enough to draw a wince before Serenna shifted into scales, plating her arms for protection.
Fenn was already cackling. “And we didn’t name it spinebender for nothing, she-elf. Koln had me braced against a palm tree seeing stars before he even lined up. Walked crooked the rest of the night.”
Serenna couldn’t decide whether to splutter or gape. “I thought what happened at the Oasis stayed at the Oasis!”
In her arms, Vasharax mimicked her outrage with a piercing shriek. A puff of smoke curled from her snout, sharp with the scent of bloody meat.
Fenn circled his tongue around the point of a fang. “Can’t say you weren’t invited.”
Koln barked a laugh and reached for one of the plates he’d brought. “Relax. This plant isn’t for us.” He nudged the pot with the toe of his boot. “Figured it’s about time someone helped Lykor unclench. We’re just providing the supplies.”
Serenna’s jaw went slack, her gaze sweeping the plaza until it caught on Lykor. Or rather Aesar, judging by the way Kal’s arm was slung around his shoulders. The pair drank nectared wine from copper mugs, shaking with laughter as Vesryn gestured wildly through a story.
She turned back to Fenn and Koln, horror and intrigue warring behind the question she wasn’t sure she wanted answered.
Fenn caught the look and grinned wider, tipping his chin toward the far side of the canal.
It wasn’t the roasted dune lizard his eyes had landed on, but Jassyn—seated near a fire, half wreathed in its glow.
Zaeryn had claimed a cushion beside him, her silver braid brushing his shoulder as she leaned in close.
Around them, a dozen others had scattered across the steps, orbiting the quiet gravity at their center.