Chapter 45
LYKOR
Lykor ripped Essence from his chest, wrenching mending and shielding from his Well like tearing sinew from bone.
He stripped his power down to what survival in the mountain prisons might demand—rending, force, portaling—shedding the rest to tilt himself closer to a wraith, where he could access cloaking and warping at will.
His frame lengthened, senses twisting as his vision sharpened. Night bled through his flesh as the transformation painlessly slid into place, shaping him like a shadow.
Across the druids’ armory, Vesryn froze, his knife hovering above its sheath at his hip. He stared at the severed abilities, two globes of light orbiting Lykor like captive stars.
Lykor bared his fangs. “Have something to say?”
Leather whisked as Vesryn slid the blade home. “I didn’t expect you to rip Essence out like that. Even for you, it’s a little…dramatic.”
Lykor rolled his neck until a crack raced down his spine, his body settling into its altered form. “It’s strategic,” he growled, flinging the talents at the prince. “Augment your power. Keep mine until we return.”
Vesryn pursed his lips but complied, fingers flexing as he pulled the orbs of mending and shielding into himself. He shuddered when the abilities sank under his skin, light flaring in a flash through his veins—a sliver of Lykor’s power now branded into his Well.
An amused hum stirred in the back of Lykor’s mind as Aesar surfaced, tugging their eyes toward the rows of weapons where Kal was cramming yet another blade into his boot.
“I DON’T SEE WHY WE NEED TO STOCK AN ENTIRE ARMORY ON OUR BELTS,” Lykor muttered, sensing the argument Aesar had primed, “BUT IF YOU INSIST, MAKE IT QUICK.”
“We don’t know what waits in the mountain,” Aesar countered. “Eighty years is a long time. If we’re lucky, no sentries. If we’re not—”
“WE STILL HAVE RIMECLAW’S POWER,” Lykor snapped.
“In any case,” Aesar replied dryly, slipping deeper into their limbs before steering them toward Kal, “I’ll ensure we have more blades than fingers to hold them. If the stars favor us, it’ll be a clean extraction. But I know you—your hunt won’t end with freeing the prisoners.”
Kal glanced up as they approached, binding his golden hair back with a strip of leather. “I see you still glare the same even as a wraith.”
Lykor ignored him. “I’d prefer silence and stealth,” he growled, though Aesar had already begun arming them with his glaives. Lykor sneered at Kal’s belt, bristling with blades. “Tell me—how do you plan to sneak when your armor announces you louder than your mouth ever could?”
Kal’s grin hooked wider. “You’re all charm this morning. Jassyn is missing out.”
Lykor didn’t answer, but the look he leveled at Kal promised he’d abandon him in the mountain if he made so much as a whisper in those tunnels.
Aesar slung an equipped bandolier over their shoulder, and Lykor gritted his fangs, focusing on what he could still control—calculating the weight of steel, anticipating the scuff of boots on stone, the creak of leather, the way even a breath might betray them in the dark.
Anything to drown out the name still ringing through his skull.
He should never have opened his mouth and let Jassyn fly into the Maelstrom without him. The image of him out there—wind-lashed and unreachable—gnawed deep beneath Lykor’s ribs.
By now, Jassyn had to be nearing the coast with Serenna and Fenn. And Cinderax, if that fragile little firestarter was worth the weight of his scales at all. Lykor strangled the dread before it could scrape open anything he wasn’t ready to bleed from.
The armory air pressed in close, stale with oil and worn steel.
Asharyn’s wind clawed through the open windows, dry and choked with dust and distant shouts.
Outside, wraith, druids, and rangers fell into ranks as Bhreena barked orders.
Perhaps forty in all. The best they had, and yet too many boots.
Too much noise. Too much risk. But Aesar was right—no one knew what horrors waited in the mountains, what shape Galaeryn’s torments might’ve taken over the years.
Lykor knew the bowels of those dungeons better than anyone, having endured two decades rotting there with the wraith while the realms forgot them. He remembered the stone answering his screams, the silence fraying his mind.
But the only way forward was to portal back in. Better him than Jassyn trying to fulfill the agreement with Daeryn’s people himself.
As much as Lykor loathed to admit it, they needed Daeryn. And that Bhreena too. Their aid might spread like contagion, bringing others into their fight, peeling soldiers from the king’s clutches one by one until the tide turned.
Kal’s voice cut through the murk of his thoughts. “You sure about this?” Then more carefully he added, “Is Aesar?”
Lykor’s teeth locked as Aesar cinched a strap on their vambrace. “We’re going.”
Kal stepped closer, breathing into his space. “That place didn’t break you. It broke him.”
Their fingers stilled over the final buckle.
“And if you walk back in there,” Kal pressed, “you’re dragging him with you. Whether he’s ready or not.”
Aesar’s grip on the leather faltered, tension rippling down their spine. Lykor seized control, crushing the flinch before it could rise.
“He’ll be safe,” Lykor hissed, rounding on Kal. “I can lock him so deep in our mind he won’t even remember he exists.”
“Don’t,” Aesar whispered, the single word landing sharp. “Let me do this with you. You’re not the only one who wants vengeance.”
“THE SECOND YOUR LEGS TWITCH TO RUN, I’LL WALL YOU OFF. YOU WON’T EVEN HEAR YOUR OWN THOUGHTS.”
“I won’t break again,” Aesar said, voice quieter but bolstered. “You made sure we survived. Don’t take this from me.”
A low breath eased through Lykor’s lungs as he rolled his shoulders, testing the distribution of steel across his body. Then he shoved past Kal and slammed his palm against the heavy door, forcing it open.
Heat struck like a furnace. Asharyn’s dry breeze swept grit into his lungs, whipping through the streets where ranks gathered before the palace walls.
Vesryn was already waiting, arms folded, gaze fixed on the southern sky.
The direction Jassyn had flown.
Lykor halted beside him, snapping his fingers in front of the prince’s face.
Vesryn flinched, eyes jerking toward him.
“Are you ready?” Lykor demanded.
Vesryn’s jaw tightened. “I’m fine.”
“That’s…” Lykor scowled, the word trailing off. “That’s not what I asked.”
He studied Vesryn’s absurd hair, shaved on one side and braided over his ear on the other. Half the rangers and even a few of the wraith had taken up the cut, wearing it as if the prince’s style had become their banner.
A snide remark rose to Lykor’s tongue, but the sight—paraded as a symbol—stripped the words from his throat.
Symbols had teeth. Carried weight. Vesryn’s defiance, worn now by others.
And Jassyn, who’d become a living emblem of a rebellion Lykor had never believed could endure, was what he found himself beginning to hope for.
Lykor hated himself for asking the next question, but he needed to know. “Do you still sense them?”
Vesryn shook his head slowly. “They tethered themselves this morning. It’s the first time I’ve felt alone in my own head since…” His voice thinned, eyes flicking to Lykor before he forced out the rest. “They’re alive. I’d know otherwise. Even muted like this, I’d know if something happened.”
Lykor flexed his claw as a cold pressure coiled beneath his sternum. Delving his awareness into his chest, he seized the current coursing there. Frost surged over his knuckles until ice hardened into a gauntlet that hissed against the desert heat.
If Jassyn fell, Vesryn might feel the severance first.
But Lykor’s heart would be the one to stop.
“They’ll come back,” Lykor mumbled, watching water drip from his talons before the sand swallowed it. “And if they’ve already tethered themselves… Maybe they’ll be waiting for us in the palace by the time we return.”
The wind shifted as Kaedryn approached like a cloud draped in silks, her raiment trailing behind her.
“Keep this area clear,” Lykor ordered the druid leader as she joined them.
Kal fell in beside him, and Lykor jerked his chin toward the open space, scanning the courtyard.
“This is where we’ll return. Could be in waves, or all at once.
Depends what kind of pit Galaeryn’s allowed to fester while we’ve been gone. ”
Daeryn and Bhreena emerged through the ranks, their steps clipped with purpose as they closed the distance.
Vesryn slipped a knife from his belt and rolled the blade across his fingers, sunlight glinting off its edge. “How many of your people do you expect we’ll be bringing back?”
Daeryn rubbed the stubble along his jaw. “From those we know of? Fifty. But I doubt our families will be the only ones buried in the dungeons.”
Lykor turned away. It wasn’t Daeryn’s fault, but standing this close, he couldn’t unsee Jassyn in him—the quiet strength in the set of his shoulders, the tension flickering behind his eyes, the unruly curls framing a face shaped by the same blood.
A living consequence of elven cruelty, born of choices Jassyn had never been given the chance to make.
Bhreena stepped forward, coiled fury sharpening the line of her stance. “We rescue whoever we find and you won’t count their heads like livestock.”
Lykor’s lip curled. “I assure you, if anyone’s left behind, it’ll be over my corpse.”
Aesar murmured something low and cautioning beneath his breath—a useless attempt to steady him—but Lykor smothered his words.
“We’re prepared to handle the aftermath,” Kaedryn said, her voice smooth despite the strain Lykor had heard in it for days.
Asharyn’s resources were thinning, and they all knew it, but this wasn’t the moment for fractures.
“The scalebound and the magus are readying recovery chambers—water, healing, food. Whatever the freed might need.”
Lykor gave a tight nod. The city’s seams were already unraveling. They’d need to find another haven soon.
He flicked his wrist and Aesar tensed, but Lykor held firm as the portal tore open—closer to Bhreena than it needed to be. She sprang back with a curse, the rift throwing a band of shadow across her face.
“It’ll take a few jumps to travel the Wastes,” Lykor said, staring at the void widening before them.
Vesryn’s question came quiet at his side. “Where is it?”
Lykor glanced at him, but the prince didn’t lift his gaze from the ground.
“I never heard of any other dungeon,” Vesryn continued. “Just the prison in Kyansari, beneath the palace. If I’d known there was another place…”
Kal gripped the prince’s shoulder. “We can still make a difference for someone else. Let the past stay buried.”
“They’re carved deep in a mountain range north of the capital,” Lykor answered, studying the assembled warriors, reading resolve in their stances.
He didn’t elaborate. There was nothing more to say.
His stride carried him into the veil, back toward the nightmare that had forged him.