Starlight Reckoning of the Dragons

Chapter 1

LYKOR

They were taken.

Cinderax’s words split through Lykor’s skull.

The dragon lay where he’d collapsed in Asharyn’s courtyard, smoke curling from his nostrils. Beside him, a Heart of Stars sat half-buried in the sand, fallen from his jaws.

But Jassyn hadn’t returned.

Neither had Fenn or Serenna.

Lykor shoved to his feet, wings snapping shut as he scanned the southern sky.

Empty.

He’d already known it would be.

Around him, Asharyn’s square writhed with the aftermath of the mountain prisons. The freed rushed into the arms of Daeryn’s shamans, parents reaching for children with shaking hands and broken cries.

The sound of their relief scraped against him while Kal’s blood dried along his jaw.

Lykor reached inward.

Aesar didn’t answer.

He’d gone silent after that final crunch in the Bramblemaw’s fangs, retreating so deep into their shared mind that even Lykor’s thoughts couldn’t reach him.

Kaedryn, leader of Asharyn’s druids, moved at the center of the knot closing around Cinderax. She scooped the fallen Heart of Stars from the sand while her people steadied the dragon, bringing water in clay bowls.

Lykor’s pulse battered his ribs, but when he spoke to Cinderax, his voice came out too calm. “Who took them?”

“There were ships,” Cinderax rasped in his mind. “I assume they were sent by the elf king you spoke of.”

Ships.

The Cerulean Sea. The Maelstrom. The route Jassyn, Serenna, Fenn, and Cinderax had taken to retrieve the Heart of Stars.

A direction to hunt.

Before Lykor could press for more—numbers, star bearings, anything—the crowd shifted around them.

“Lykor!”

Vesryn shoved through the square, his braid half-unraveled. He forced druids aside, draconic eyes emerald and wild.

“Something’s wrong. I can feel it through the bonds.” He clutched the shaved portion of his skull. “Serenna and Jassyn are hurt. They’re untethered. Moving. I can sense them. I—”

Jassyn was hurt.

That was all Lykor heard.

He seized the prince by the shoulders, talons biting through armor. Vesryn’s gaze flicked past him—to Cinderax returned alone, to the Heart of Stars cradled in Kaedryn’s claws, its crystalline surface bright and useless in the sun.

“A portal,” Lykor snarled, the words tearing out of him. “Open a fucking portal to them. Now.”

“I—” Vesryn’s breath punched out in a rush. His eyes glazed over, tracking paths only he could see. He turned west. Then south. “They’ve been split up. I can sense Serenna and Fenn…”

“And Jassyn?”

Vesryn went still.

Lykor’s grip tightened until leather creaked in his claws. “Jassyn.”

Vesryn’s hand flew to his head. A primal sound ripped from his throat as his knees hit the sand. Flames erupted from his wings, veined down his arms, and spilled from his palms. Heat cracked through the courtyard as magic poured from his skin, unbound and screaming.

Sand fused to glass beneath him. Druids recoiled. Freed prisoners stumbled back, shielding their faces from the blast.

Lykor didn’t have time for this. Vesryn was the only one who could follow the bonds.

Lykor hauled on his druid gift.

Rimeclaw’s tide answered, water erupting from his fists.

He gritted his fangs and drove the stream over Vesryn’s body. The force of it struck hard enough to buckle the prince’s wings, drowning flame. Fire hissed back through the torrent, fighting every inch.

Lykor forced more water down.

Steam burst around them, rolling over the sand. Druids and prisoners vanished behind the boiling veil until there was only Vesryn’s burning shape and Lykor planted before him, driving the flood over the fire.

At last, the flames guttered out.

Lykor grabbed the prince by his soaked leathers and yanked him upright. “Just. Open. A. Portal.” His voice shook around the one name he couldn’t afford to break on. “Jassyn—”

“He’s gone,” Vesryn whispered.

The words punched through Lykor’s ribs, leaving no air behind.

“What do you mean gone?”

Vesryn shook his head. Water streamed from his silver hair, thinning ash into dark rivulets down his face. “The bond. It’s…” His words came out hoarse. “It’s gone.”

“Because he was retethered.” Lykor’s breath turned to thunder in his ears. “Right?”

“I don’t know what they did.” Vesryn grabbed at his hair, yanking hard enough that strands tore free. “I only know what I felt. The bond severed. Completely.”

Lykor staggered. His grip on the prince fell away, wing talons cracking as they clenched into fists.

“They could’ve drained his power,” he said.

The numbness in his voice frightened him more than the words. His gaze snagged on his own skin, glinting indigo in the sun. Before the raid on Galaeryn’s mountain prison, he’d given two Essence talents to Vesryn so he could walk in the dark as a wraith.

Power could be siphoned.

A body could survive the theft.

Sometimes.

“That would break the bond,” Lykor insisted. “If they turned him into a wraith.”

If Jassyn had lived through it.

Anything but death.

Snow began to fall around him, his magic racing wild. Lykor’s claws shook, but he forced them still, the way he’d forced everything still since Cinderax returned alone.

Lykor reached inward again, vicious now, raking through the silence for Aesar—for the mind that could carve a path through panic. He needed him. Needed the clarity that found answers where Lykor found only throats, the voice that could make impossible odds survivable.

But Aesar remained silent and distant somewhere after Kal’s last scream.

Fine.

Lykor would find Jassyn his way.

Around them, the courtyard returned to motion. Druids carried water and food to the freed while Daeryn’s shamans clung to their returned families.

“Serenna and Fenn.” Vesryn coughed, clearing water from his throat. “They were retethered. The bonds weren’t destroyed, but—”

“Then open a portal to them,” Lykor snarled. If they found Serenna and Fenn, they could find Jassyn.

“I don’t know where they are now. I can’t sense them.”

Lykor gripped his arm. “Then get as close as you fucking can!”

“It’s too dangerous,” Kaedryn said, stepping across the burned, soaked sand toward them. “If all three of them were subdued, the two of you won’t stand a chance.”

Lykor scoffed. “We’re going.”

His attention cut across the courtyard, to the prisoners blinking at a sky they hadn’t seen in weeks, maybe longer.

“You have the Heart. And enough here to keep yourselves occupied.”

“She’s right,” Cinderax rumbled, lifting his snout. “We need to find Veyrix in the Aetherveil before—”

“Then organize the search.” Lykor bared his fangs. “We’ve already mapped the flight paths. Vesryn and I are going after your scorching First Keeper of the Ember Accord. Or does the title you forced on Jassyn mean nothing the moment saving him costs you something?”

Kaedryn traced the Starshard inlaid into the jewelry on her palm, light breaking across the gem’s facets between her talons. Her gaze flicked toward the silent guildmasters gathered behind her.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” she said, quieter now. “Despair is driving your vengeance. We need to plan—”

“Then plan,” Lykor hissed through his teeth. “But don’t waste breath trying to keep us here.”

Vesryn opened a portal and stumbled through without a backward glance.

Lykor flexed his wings and stalked toward the rift.

Cinderax’s voice snared him just before he crossed the threshold. “If you follow them now, you may be flying into a trap. You might not return.”

Lykor glanced over his shoulder. “You assume there’s anything for me here.”

He followed the prince into the void.

Open sky struck him on the other side.

Lykor’s scales locked into place, his gut pitching before his wings caught, but he barely felt it. Dragonsight sharpened the world below, waterlogged scars of marshland streaking beneath his shadow as he angled toward Vesryn arrowing ahead.

“This is as close as I could get,” the prince said telepathically, the words as hollow as Lykor felt. “I don’t know how far it is to the sea.”

“THEN WE’LL PORTAL JUMP UNTIL THE WORLD RUNS OUT.”

Wind sheared across Lykor’s wings as he tore open a rift along the horizon.

They fell into rhythm.

Portal. Flight. Portal again.

Leagues vanished without a word crossing between them. Each rift was a refusal to stop, every wingbeat a decision not to think.

Lykor caught the glow of Vesryn extracting Essence from his chest. Globes of light spun free and drifted toward Lykor like summoned stars.

He extended one claw, reclaiming the shielding and mending talents that he’d given to the prince. Power sank back into his Well, and his body reshaped around the return. Half elf, half wraith—the form he claimed as his own.

Turquoise waters unfurled below, fractured by islands and crescents of sand. The sea gleamed, vast and endless. Indifferent.

Lykor saw none of it.

His world had narrowed to the seam where sea met sky. To Jassyn somewhere beyond it. Out of reach.

Alive, because Lykor had chosen that truth and would believe nothing else.

He drove his wings harder, punishing the air as if distance were an enemy he could conquer.

White sails pierced the horizon.

Lykor met Vesryn’s eyes. A nod passed between them before they ignited Essence.

Shadows erupted. Fire wreathed Vesryn’s wings in a burning halo as frost sheathed Lykor’s fists. Together, they split the sky, descending on the fleet like a storm.

Smoke reached them before the wreckage fully took shape.

Ships listed half-sunk in the water, hulls cleaved below the surface. Broken masts dragged charred sails through the waves while blackened beams jutted from the surf, carrying the stench of scorched timber, melting pitch, and blistered bodies.

Jassyn. Fenn. Serenna.

They hadn’t gone quietly.

The surviving ships clawed free of the carnage. One, larger than the rest, scarred but seaworthy, sailed beyond the sinking line with soldiers scrambling over the rigging and Essence whirling bright along the rails.

“SECURE THAT LEAD SHIP,” he ordered through the link the prince still had latched between them. “I’LL DESTROY THE OTHERS. NO ONE ESCAPES THROUGH A PORTAL.”