Chapter 7
LYKOR
“Stop!”
A taloned claw seized Lykor’s wrist, wrenching him away from the prisoner slumped in chains.
Concentration disrupted, Lykor staggered back from the intoxicating rush of magic, blinking rapidly to reorient himself in the interrogation chamber. His eyes slowly came into focus in the dim torchlight.
Essence boiled under his skin, scalding his Well. His senses crackled like a lightning-charged tempest, chest pounding with an ocean’s worth of power. He sucked in a breath against the overwhelming surge of magic threatening to burst through his ribs.
Baring his teeth at the intrusion, Lykor ripped his arm out of Kal’s grasp. Lykor’s power ignited alongside his rage. Shadows blasted around the room, the darkness disintegrating where the magic touched the gold woven into the walls.
Fenn, one of Kal’s brood—and one of Lykor’s lieutenants—drew Lykor’s attention with his colossal height as he shifted nervously behind his father’s shoulder.
Claws shoved into his cloak pockets, Fenn’s crimson eyes volleyed between them.
The pair must’ve heard the screams when the elf roused in the middle of the siphoning.
Ice clung to their fur overcoats. Lykor presumed they’d recently finished a patrol shift on the tundra’s surface.
Favoring the customs of the wraith’s younger generation—those born in their fortress—Fenn wore his frivolously long hair tied back, decorated with intermittent strands of thin obsidian braids.
Rings and studs trimmed the points of his ears, designating his rank.
As Fenn’s eyes widened, Lykor followed the lieutenant’s gaze.
The female rider was dead.
And she was no longer an elf. The warrior hadn’t survived the transformation to wraith.
Dispelling his shadows, displeasure churned through Lykor. Reaping her power too hastily, he’d squandered the opportunity to harvest information.
Kal’s voice dropped to a shaken whisper. “What have you done?”
Ignoring his captain, Lykor swiped disheveled hair out of his eyes. Torchlight glinted off the silver strands. Lykor stilled. Silver instead of black. Back to Aesar’s original hue.
Mind ablaze with curiosity, Lykor tried to elongate his fangs. Nothing happened. He ran his tongue along even teeth, detecting no trace of his sharpened canines.
Assessing the power in his Well, Lykor inhaled sharply, snared by surprise. His only intention had been to siphon the elf’s magic, augmenting his current abilities in the process. He didn’t consider that she might possess the innate talents that the king had severed from Aesar.
With all eight abilities returned, they were an arch elf. No longer reduced, their form unchained from the suspension between elf and wraith. Lykor glanced up at his captain, now standing a head shorter than Kal and Fenn—restored to Aesar’s elven height.
Lykor idly wondered if he’d have to maintain an illusion to distort his appearance in front of mirrors. If he saw Vesryn looking back, he could only guess that the coercion would trigger him to kill himself. I DOUBT THE KING ANTICIPATED THIS.
Inspecting his fingers, Lykor released a disgusted scoff. Despite reversing to an arch elf’s body, the skeletal claw stubbornly refused to shift back into an elven hand. He’d somehow known he’d never escape the reminders of the dungeon’s horrors.
Kal’s talons clacked as his claws clenched at his sides. “This isn’t the way.”
Lykor barked out a laugh, an expulsion of air at the useless objection. “The wraith have no advantages.” Yanking a burst of force from his Well, he snatched his gauntlet from the ground and shoved the armor back onto his fucking claw. “I won’t hesitate to drain Essence from every stars-cursed elf.”
“You’d be turning innocents into wraith.” Kal’s scarlet glare blazed with fury. “That crime would make you no better than the king.”
“And what gave you the impression that I care? Perhaps I’ll redistribute power like Galaeryn always spoke about.” Lykor took an aggressive step closer to his captain, driving a gauntleted finger into Kal’s chest. “Except I’ll give the elves’ magic back to the wraith.”
Before Kal could argue, Lykor diverted him with a sarcastic taunt. “Don’t you prefer gazing upon this elven form, anyway?” Sneering, Lykor gestured to his moonbeam complexion, plucking at his hair, silver like frosted starlight. “Isn’t this how you remember Aesar?”
Kal retreated a step, landing next to Fenn. “Aesar would never steal power.”
Fenn placed a claw on his father’s shoulder, talons tensing against Kal’s cloak. A warning. Possessing more sense than the captain, the young lieutenant averted his gaze, keeping silent.
“Perhaps Aesar’s weakness was why he fractured in the dungeons.” Lykor rolled his shoulders, haunted by the impression of those golden spikes Galaeryn had impaled into his spine so long ago. “None of us would be here if I didn’t suffer all that fucking torture on his behalf.”
Glancing around the interrogation chamber, irritatingly dim now due to loss of his wraith sight, Lykor seized Essence.
Angling his awareness toward Aesar’s sleeping presence, he tapped into Aesar’s knowledge.
Rummaging through his memories, Lykor flicked his wrist, igniting the room with white illumination, a talent he hadn’t had at his disposal before.
Fenn cringed, shielding his eyes from the sudden wave of blinding light.
“Let me talk to him,” Kal demanded, his pupils swallowed by his crimson glower.
Shadows combusted from Lykor, answering his fury.
They all wanted their prince. Even the elders, Kyansari’s citizens who Lykor had delivered from the prisons after the king had reduced them all to wraith.
No one wanted him, the one who’d survived for them.
Protected them. Endured all the torments for them.
A chain of darkness lashed out, wrapping around Kal. Lykor yanked his captain to him, reaching up to snatch Kal’s throat.
“Do you know where your precious Aesar is?” Lykor hissed in Kal’s face, dragging him down to eye level.
“He’s drifting. Thinking he’s still plunging to his death.
Taking the coward’s way out.” Lykor squeezed, the metal joints in his gauntlet squealing.
Shadows mobbed like ravens, spinning in a gale. “He won’t be coming back.”
Lykor’s eyes flicked to Fenn, who was nervously chewing on a lip ring in the same aggravating habit as his father. He eyed the rending but didn’t retreat, scaled boots scraping against the stone floor as he shifted his weight.
Kal gritted his teeth, fangs elongating. “Aesar was trying to save us from you,” he gasped in a strangled breath.
“About time you’ve finally accepted that I’m not Aesar.” Lykor flung Kal away, sending him stumbling. “It only took a fucking century.”
Disappearing, Kal warped before he fell. He reappeared next to Fenn, lurching on his feet to regain his balance, the intricate braids in his midnight hair swinging.
Lykor jerked his head in command toward the wraith in chains. “Lieutenant, make yourself useful and clean up this mess.” With a pull of force, Lykor yanked an iron key off the wall, hurling it at Fenn with his power.
Fenn plucked the key from the air. Always eager to prove himself, he obediently busied himself with freeing the chained prisoner.
“How can you bring yourself to steal Essence from another?” Kal questioned, catching his breath and rubbing the indents in his throat. His eyes darted to his son and then to the dead rider. “After the king plundered from all of us? And from you, how many times?”
“I won’t hesitate to return Galaeryn’s terror tenfold.” Lykor pivoted on his heel to leave. “Better that we pillage Essence from these half-elves he’s bred before he can amass more power,” he growled over his shoulder.
Lykor stomped through the cell-lined hallway and back up the stairs, footsteps echoing against the stone. Even if it meant succumbing to the consequences—turning into a monster like the king—Lykor had no reservations about embracing the same darkness to be the protector the wraith needed.
Obviously never predicting their escape, Galaeryn had boasted his ambitions while Lykor had been at his mercy. Powerless to stop the king, Lykor steered his thoughts away from what he knew of Galaeryn’s plans.
He envisioned the obsidian door to the chamber Galaeryn had tortured him in. In the safety of his mind, Lykor had stowed all of those horrific memories, concealing them to shield Aesar. Vacating his thoughts of the king, Lykor shoved everything back into that harrowing room.
“What happened to the male who led us from the prisons?” Kal asked, storming up the stairs behind him.
Lykor didn’t waste his breath on a reply.
“This vengeance against the king is polluting your judgment.” When he caught up on the landing, Kal snatched Lykor’s arm.
“How many deaths will it take before you see that?”
Lykor rounded on him, erupting. “Aesar is the reason so many died!” His voice crashed around the stairwell. “He meddled by sounding the retreat. Those deaths are on him.” Lykor ripped his arm out of Kal’s claw. “By now, they’ve extracted our location from the people he abandoned!”
Frustration immolating like a dry stack of kindling, Lykor twisted, smashing his gauntlet into the wall instead of Kal’s face.
The stone cracked and shattered. Splintered rock chips tumbled down the stairs in a spray of dust. “Aesar’s intervention compromised the safety of our fortress.
” Lykor’s chest heaved with the cataclysm of his fury. “He’s ruined everything.”
Kal’s eyes shied away from Lykor’s face before he bit out his words. “What’s your plan then, Lykor? You put everything at risk by insisting on that attack in the first place!”
“The elves forced my hand!” Lykor snarled, flinging out an arm. “You’re supposed to be our military expert. Why else would they gather a human army on top of constructing that island? They’re coming for us.”