Chapter 26
LYKOR
Asharyn’s lake glared bright beneath the afternoon light, a mirror of ruthless blue.
Dust scuffed with every step as Lykor strode toward the shade cloth pitched over the pier, where the factions would meet.
The canvas snapped in the wind, a thin veil of order stretched over what would undoubtedly be an uneasy gathering.
As if they could pretend unity might be forged from the wreckage Galaeryn left behind. Sit and feign consensus, knowing ink and oaths would never be enough to build anything worth surviving.
A night had passed since he’d grudgingly portaled Daeryn’s band of rabble to the city, and already the promise of an alliance felt too clean. Too quick. Like peace conjured from smoke, not cost, doomed to vanish before it had even taken shape.
When Kaedryn had realized that Jassyn had gathered a force of over fifty children of earth and starlight, the claws on her wings had twitched so violently that Lykor had half expected her to launch into the sky.
The druids hadn’t merely stared.
They bowed. Scraped. Groveled in panicked reverence.
Guildmasters had scrambled to house them—opening estates, carving out quarters for this nameless force with too much myth in their bones. And through it all, Jassyn had stood at the center, as if he’d already delivered the druids’ salvation.
Prophecies and omens meant nothing to Lykor. Or the fact that they’d doubled the number of those who could wield Essence and earth. He believed in pattern and consequence. And he saw the pattern in how every eye lingered too long on Jassyn, the consequence of them already seeing him as a symbol.
“THIS IS GOING TO BE A FUCKING DISASTER,” Lykor muttered to Aesar.
“What could possibly go wrong?” Aesar said, lounging in his library in their mindspace. “Especially with you there, keeping the peace.”
Lykor ignored the jab. “I DON’T TRUST DAERYN. OR THAT BHREENA.”
Aesar swung a leg over the couch arm. “You don’t trust anyone except the male beside you. So nothing new there.”
Lykor scowled but didn’t argue. No point.
Walking beside him, Jassyn’s curls caught the sun, a black so deep they shimmered with a hint of blue. They’d grown longer these past few weeks, nearly brushing his jaw, tangling loose around his throat. Lykor remembered the feel of them, soft against his fingers when he’d pulled him close.
Jassyn turned, only slightly, but enough to catch him watching. Their eyes locked, and heat flushed through Lykor’s veins, hot and helpless.
He couldn’t pretend his body had forgotten that kiss. Not when the claws on his wings betrayed him, reaching toward Jassyn. Lykor clenched his jaw and nearly dispelled them out of spite, if only to erase evidence of the wanting.
“Do you feel different with Rimeclaw’s gift?” Jassyn asked, gaze drifting to the azure leather of Lykor’s wings.
“No,” he said automatically. Then paused, letting himself sense the change, the tidal pressure in his chest.
“But water feels…” Lykor exhaled through his nose, staring at the lake. “Still. Not burning like Cinderax’s flame. More like the world’s gone quiet.”
Feeling ridiculous for voicing it, he couldn’t meet Jassyn’s eyes.
They both kept their wings shifted—a quiet ritual of discipline, conditioning for strength and balance, keeping flight muscles accustomed to the weight.
Sun struck the membranes, kindling warmth through the tension in his shoulders. Even the talons at their tips unfurled in slow surrender to the heat.
Aesar snorted in his head. “You call the druids lizards, yet you might as well be basking like one.”
Lykor kept the eye roll to himself, scowling down the pier to the gathering people. “What do you think Bhreena will do first?” he muttered to Jassyn. “Draw a blade or shove fire down someone’s throat?”
Jassyn followed his gaze to where Daeryn and Bhreena angled toward the tent, their silhouettes stark against the sunlit lake.
“I can understand why she’s nervous,” Jassyn murmured. “They’ve abandoned the king. Now they’re surrounded by us and outnumbered. All they have are promises we haven’t proven we’ll keep. And if we fail to free their kin, that trust could die with those in the prisons.”
Lykor grunted. “Well, I don’t trust her.”
He bit his tongue before the rest could slip out. Jassyn’s reasoning always sounded so scorching calm, as if peace were something to summon instead of bleed for.
And if that was true, then what the fuck was he, except a weapon no one reached for once the fighting stopped?
They passed a pair of younger druids. One dipped his head to Jassyn, tense and awkward, as if reverence and fear had tangled on the way down.
If Jassyn noticed, he gave no sign. A few quiet words passed between them—Jassyn asking after the druid’s wings, an injury from the canyon drills, Lykor assumed.
The exchange didn’t strike him, but the looks on their faces did. Awe, bright and unguarded, eyes glowing as if they’d just met a legend made flesh.
And they weren’t the first. He’d seen it again and again during their stay in Asharyn. Too many eyes turning toward Jassyn with that same dangerous faith.
He hated it.
Not because they respected Jassyn, or believed in him. Because it made Jassyn vulnerable. A target.
Lykor had already pulled Fenn aside the night before. Doubled the guard around Jassyn and Serenna. Set wraith to shadow Daeryn’s people the moment they stepped into the city. Precautions stacked like shields.
Yet if Daeryn shared what he knew—information that might split the king’s agenda wide open—they might still have a chance to strike Galaeryn first. But if Bhreena had any say, Lykor had no doubt the knowledge would come wrapped with hidden barbs.
Even so, they needed any advantage.
Whether he trusted Daeryn’s people or not.
They left the pair of druids behind, resuming the sandy trek toward the pier. Lykor tracked those gathering ahead. Jassyn hadn’t spoken a word about Daeryn since that male had looked him in the eye and called him sire.
Aesar’s voice curled in the back of Lykor’s mind. “You’re really not going to ask how he’s handling it?”
Lykor wanted to. But part of him refused to scrape at wounds that hadn’t even begun to close. “NOT MY BUSINESS.”
“Stars, just do it.” Aesar threw an arm over his eyes. “The world won’t end if you care, you know. Lie to yourself and call it strategy if that helps.”
Lykor exhaled through his teeth, letting the comment slide. As they neared the beginning of the pier, he slowed and Jassyn drew to a halt beside him. Wind whispered over the lake, rustling the membranes of their wings.
He told himself not to ask. Jassyn didn’t need him prying. Not now when they both should stay focused on what lay ahead.
But the tightness in his chest didn’t ease as the memory rose unbidden. Jassyn in the jungle, standing too still, composure pulled taut across a break he wouldn’t let the world see, bleeding behind the mask of calm.
Serenna and Vesryn approached in low conversation.
Lykor had heard of their scouting secondhand from Fenn an hour before—sightings of the king’s fleet pushing closer to the Maw.
More details would have to wait until the Skyclaw Captain returned since he’d ordered Fenn to organize a deeper sweep of the marshes.
As they passed, Serenna and Vesryn glanced toward them, eyes keen with interest, but neither stopped.
“How are you?” Lykor asked quietly when Serenna and Vesryn drifted further down the pier. “With him.”
He didn’t say Daeryn’s name, but Jassyn followed his gaze.
Jassyn blinked, breath hitching slightly.
“I don’t know,” he said, dragging a hand through his curls.
“Do I speak to him—to all the others like him—and pretend sharing the same blood means anything?” He hesitated, wings shuddering as he shook his head.
“Or stay silent and keep pretending that line isn’t mine at all? ”
Lykor’s hand twitched, nearly reaching before he caught himself. He didn’t know what comfort would even look like between them. What gesture wouldn’t feel like trespass.
Yet the silence begged to be crossed. The weight Jassyn carried should’ve never been his to bear, and Lykor ached to take even a fraction of it. But he had no answers, no words that wouldn’t turn to ash on his tongue.
All he could do was stay near, stand between Jassyn and the next blow the world might throw.
And just as that helpless wanting began to take shape—too sharp to name, too soft to be allowed—Jassyn looked up.
The amber in his eyes caught the sun, and words rose before Lykor could stop them, burning the back of his throat as they left him, low and hoarse.
“You don’t have to carry it alone.”
A shadow fell across them.
Cinderax struck the ground in a burst of dust, wings snapping shut with a whip of air. Steam curled from his nostrils as he straightened, eyes locking on the shimmer of blue membrane behind Lykor’s shoulders before ticking to his face.
Unblinking, Lykor met the dragon’s stare. Every druid they’d passed had looked at him, perhaps curious, but Cinderax’s gaze burned with accusation. He sensed Aesar watching, quiet and observant, letting him face the dragon’s scorn without interference.
Lykor hadn’t explained the change. Not even when Kaedryn had asked after they’d informed her of Rimeclaw. Which was likely why this whelp stood at his ankles now, ready to demand answers.
“So. It’s true.” Cinderax prowled closer, tail slicing the sand behind him. “You’ve drowned my flame. Traded the embrace of heat for the taint of frost.”
“I didn’t scorn your gift.” Lykor’s wing claws clenched as he glared down at the dragon, a creature of compact fury and smoke. “And my loyalties haven’t changed.”
Cinderax snapped his fangs. “I don’t take kindly to seeing those marked by the Betrayer in my presence. It’s a disgrace.”
“Betrayer?” Lykor’s question rolled low. “Rimeclaw may speak in riddles and half-formed thoughts, but he has no desire for Galaeryn’s chains. Or to linger in this world at all.”
A rumble built deep in Cinderax’s chest. “I do not speak of what he is now. I speak of what he chose when it mattered before the Great War.”
The air between them trembled, heat and cold colliding. Lykor flicked a glance toward Jassyn, catching the same mirrored wariness. Whatever this was—some history long buried—reeked of blame and blood.
Cinderax’s tail lashed again. “A thousand years ago, Rimeclaw forsook his kin and offered himself to the Aelfyn. Claimed it was for peace.” The leathery fringes along his spine lifted.
“But my ancestors—and the elemental Wardens—named it for what it was. Hunger. He coveted their starlight. And in that greed, he shattered the balance.”
Steam spilled between Cinderax’s fangs. “He never gave the Aelfyn the scalebound gift—if that was ever his aim. But he bowed, and that was enough for them to forge the first leash. To learn how their Heart of Stars could bind us completely.”
“None of us were there,” Lykor growled. “We don’t know what Rimeclaw faced when the world broke around him. And if you’re seeing through your ancestors’ eyes, how do you know their memories aren’t twisted by bitterness and blame?”
Cinderax’s pupils flared molten, but Lykor didn’t stop. “Maybe he surrendered for the wrong reasons and hated himself for it. Or maybe”—Lykor’s voice dropped—“he did what no one else had the spine to do. Something he knew would ruin him just to buy others time.”
He crossed his arms, unsure if he was defending Rimeclaw or himself. “There’s more courage,” he muttered, “in living with what will haunt and break you than in dying proud and saving no one.”
“Intent doesn’t cleanse consequence,” Cinderax hissed. He stepped closer, smoke coiling beneath his claws. “You may carry Rimeclaw’s boon and feel the need to defend him, but do not pretend to understand what he set in motion. The world bleeds because of him, and we were born in that blood.”
“The past is ash,” Lykor bit out, the talons on his wings tightening. “I’ve no interest in debating a war long burned. I made my choice. I won’t apologize for it.”
Wind caught his words, scattering them like sparks.
He met the dragon’s glare and let the silence stretch before adding, “And maybe it’s time you stopped speaking with your ancestors’ tongues.
This is a different world. If we’re going to survive what’s coming, think for yourself instead of echoing what’s already dead. ”
Cinderax bared his fangs, but the snarl didn’t land. The leathery fringes on his crown fanned out, yet the heat in his gaze cooled, measured and smoldering.
“You still speak with fire for one touched by frost,” he said at last. “That alone makes you dangerous. Perhaps even worthy of a rekindled flame, should you ever come to regret the chill in your bones. But don’t mistake fire for favor.”
He paused, claws flexing and leaving shallow grooves in the sand. “I won’t trust a dragon unraveling at the seams—who let the stars brand his scales and watched the sky burn. He allowed himself to be used. And didn’t fight.”
Lykor had no words left. He wondered if Rimeclaw had stood the same way once—accused, and too tired to defend himself. The quiet cracked open around them, before Jassyn shifted his weight beside him.
“Rimeclaw isn’t mad,” Jassyn said. “He’s haunted. None of us can truly understand the shape his sorrow takes.”
He adjusted one of his bracers and something in Lykor pulled taut at the sight. That he still wore them.
“He begged to die because he knows he’ll be used again,” Jassyn finished softly.
Cinderax was silent for a long moment. His gaze drifted between them. First to Jassyn. Then to Lykor. Then back again.
“His regret won’t stop what’s coming.” A thread of steam curled from Cinderax’s nostrils.
“Still…” he murmured, voice edged with something almost like amusement.
“If the two of you keep standing like this—one righteous, one glowering, but side by side—then maybe what lies ahead isn’t hopeless after all. ”
Cinderax glanced toward the tent, where they’d be among the last to arrive if they lingered any longer. “When the world fractures again,” he added, “fight like this. Back to back. Flame to frost. It may be the only thing that survives.”
With a flick of his tail and a rustle of wings, he launched into the air and glided down the pier.