Chapter 4
LYKOR
“Please!”
Saundyl’s voice cracked through Asharyn’s courtyard.
Lykor didn’t blink. He kept the rending taut across the square, chains of shadow wound tight around the female’s throat.
More human than elf, she stood with dark hair hanging in twisted clumps, matted from the mountain prisons.
Dirt streaked her cheeks, the sun sharpening the bloodless pallor of someone dragged from a cell into light.
Her arms locked around an infant, both of them shackled by his shadows.
Saundyl collapsed to his knees in the sand, still dripping from the water Lykor had forced down his throat. “Don’t—please…”
The words meant nothing. They wouldn’t change what came next.
Lykor kept one hand raised, the noose of power obedient, his attention on Saundyl. “Where. Are. They.”
Silence clenched like a fist. Kaedryn and the magus had started sorting through those freed from the prisons while he and Vesryn were out at sea, but a handful of families still lingered in the courtyard, unclaimed and waiting for the guildmasters to decide where they belonged.
The druids had begun to gather again, eyes wide and crimson bright.
No one spoke.
Essence flared through the rift Lykor had left open to the ship. A storm of stolen talents hurtled from the void, spheres of power spinning in fractured orbits. They told him what Vesryn had done before the prince crossed the threshold.
Smoke still coiled around Vesryn’s wings as he stepped from the dark, his mouth set in a hard line.
Lykor had expected hesitation. Refusal, perhaps, when asked to do what Galaeryn had done—plunder Wells and name the theft necessity.
Instead, Vesryn stood with soot blackening his hands, his fingers trembling before they clenched tight.
Lykor sealed the rift, and both he and the prince dispelled their wings. Vesryn’s gaze roved over the courtyard—to Saundyl on his knees, the female snared across from them in shadows—before focusing on Lykor.
His eyes blazed emerald. Unflinching.
Vesryn would do what needed to be done. For Jassyn. For Fenn and Serenna.
Good.
The prince wouldn’t slow him down.
Vesryn strode to Lykor’s shoulder, close enough that the Essence orbiting him prickled like static before a strike.
Lykor focused on the male crumpled at his feet.
“My–my orders were to send all traitors to Elashor,” Saundyl stammered.
“So you do remember where you sent them.” Lykor crouched on his heels, bringing his face level with the elf’s. “If I have to ask where they are again, you’ll choose who dies first.”
Saundyl’s eyes flew toward the female and child.
“I sent them to the portal waystations,” he said, too quickly, the words tripping over one another. “I didn’t oversee the dispatch to Elashor myself.”
“That tells me nothing.” Lykor shoved to his feet.
“Elashor…” Saundyl swayed on his knees, sand pasted to his soaked armor. “He’s spread thin. Campaigning across the new lands. I don’t know where. He moves often—”
Lykor lashed another whip of shadow toward the female.
Saundyl flung himself forward, fingers clawing at Lykor’s boots.
“Please. I don’t know where Elashor is. I only know the transfer orders go through Kyansari.
Portal schedules. Soldier rotations. Artifact ledgers.
Prisoner manifests. Reports back to the king.
All of it.” His breath hitched. “If Elashor moved your people again, the record will be there. I don’t—”
Lykor kicked him off. “The capital?”
The most fortified city in all the realms. And this sniveling prince of Vaelyn was pointing him straight at Galaeryn’s throne.
Too convenient.
Either Saundyl had given him the truth, or he was steering Lykor into a trap.
Lykor flicked a glance at Vesryn, but Vesryn shook his head. “I don’t know which direction they were sent. I lost sense of them before…”
He didn’t finish. Didn’t say before the bond with Jassyn snapped.
“They were alive?” Lykor demanded. “When you portaled them?”
Saundyl nodded, frantic. “Yes. Please. My family—I told you everything I know.”
“Not enough.”
Lykor stalked across the courtyard toward the female and child. He’d noticed the weakness the instant he dragged Saundyl into the square—the way the male’s face had gone slack with terror at the sight of them.
That was where to twist the knife.
The infant’s cheek was tucked to the female’s shoulder, one tiny hand reaching blindly for the rending coiled at her throat. Before those fingers touched the shadows, Lykor unwound the nearest thread—just enough to keep his magic out of reach.
Behind him, Saundyl’s voice broke. “Take me instead!”
Lykor halted. Frost cracked across his knuckles, fingers curling into fists. Slowly, he turned.
The prince of Vaelyn had thrown himself forward again, hands outstretched.
“Your life only matters while you’re useful,” Lykor growled. He leveled one talon at the female and child. “Theirs do not.”
Saundyl’s voice pitched higher. “I had no choice! I’ll tell you everything. Portal routes. Orders to mobilize the human army. The crater where Elashor is mining artifacts. Centarya’s defenses. The shamans in the north.” His hands shook in the air. “Just, please…”
He could’ve reached for Essence. For earth. Instead, Saundyl kept those empty hands raised, surrendering while his family watched. He swallowed. “Please don’t hurt them.”
Lykor ground his teeth until blood warmed the back of his mouth.
Behind him, Vesryn didn’t intervene. He could see the blade had been brandished, not swung.
And Saundyl offered to throw secrets down like it might buy his family time.
Lykor reached for Aesar in the space between them, where he should’ve been pacing through his library—furious enough to curse him, clever enough to know which parts were a performance.
But the library was dark, his mind a muted presence.
Aesar would’ve known what mattered. Which thread to pull. Which answer was useful, which was meant to mislead.
Without him, Lykor could only discern one thing.
None of it told him where Jassyn was.
Once, he would’ve painted the courtyard red for less.
A slice of shadows for a name. A fist for a direction. One scrap of truth torn bloody from a tongue.
But Saundyl had given him all he had. Useless or not, the male had offered every answer at Lykor’s feet, and slaughter wouldn’t change the truth.
Violence waited behind his ribs, cold and useless.
There was nothing left here to break that would bring Jassyn back.
Kaedryn cut through the crowd, wings half-fanned, and planted herself between Lykor and the female, a barricade of scales and crimson eyes. “That’s enough.”
Lykor’s lip curled. “So now you want to play ‘First Peacekeeper’? Where was that restraint when you strung us up as a welcome to your city?” His shadows writhed around him. “Move.”
“Cinderax is recovering,” Kaedryn said, her voice honed smooth. “The guildmasters are assembling. You and Vesryn are needed to speak in Jassyn’s stead.”
“I won’t rot in another one of your endless conclaves while our people are missing.” The words left Lykor before he’d made the decision. But once spoken, they burned too hot to take back. “Talk all you want. We’ll be razing the capital to find them.”
Vesryn drew up to his side, the silence between them saying more than any oath.
Kaedryn’s attention snapped to the prince, eyes flaring. “Surely you don’t agree with this. If we don’t free Veyrix in the Aetherveil—”
“Then organize yourselves.” Vesryn’s voice had gone flat. Emptied out. “You’ve survived a thousand years without us. You’ll endure a few days more.”
Kaedryn squared her shoulders, wings locked rigid. “We can’t afford to fracture.”
“There is no fracture,” Lykor growled, conscious of the druids pressed to the edges of the courtyard, tracking every word. “You carry on as before. I’ll find someone to speak for the wraith.”
“Zaeryn can represent the rangers,” Vesryn added. “Thalaesyn will speak for the magus. We’ll return when we reclaim our own.”
Kaedryn’s stare swept across Saundyl at Lykor’s feet, then the female and child bound in his shadows. Anger still burned in her eyes, but she flung her claws skyward and turned, silver hair snapping behind her as she stormed across the courtyard.
Finally.
One less problem between him and the capital.
“You.” Lykor’s voice cut across the square.
One of the magus halted. Nelya. Or Neyla. Lykor never remembered which way her name went. Didn’t care. Jassyn trusted her.
“Put this lot with the other prisoners from the Maw.” He jerked his chin toward Saundyl and his family. “Keep them tethered. Guarded. If we come back empty-handed, he’ll regret not drowning.”
Lykor released his magic, the shadows unraveling from the female’s throat.
Saundyl rushed to his family, gathering them against his chest as if Lykor’s rending might return.
But Lykor was already turning away, mind churning forward. Vesryn matched his stride, the spheres of Essence orbiting behind him. The plundered talents could be sorted and distributed later.
“We’ll need to regenerate,” Vesryn said. “Infiltrate the palace under cover of night. Find Elashor, or someone who knows where he is—if the stars are on our side.”
Lykor glanced at the sun bleeding low on the horizon. Only that morning, they’d raided the prisons.
The thought struck harder than the exhaustion. A lifetime had passed since Kal’s body had been crushed in the dark.
Black crowded the edges of his sight. The day’s cost hit him all at once, sinking teeth into muscle, tendon, and bone. The courtyard lurched under his feet, but Lykor stayed upright by sheer will alone.
“I don’t want to wait.”
Vesryn’s nostrils flared. “Neither do I. But if we rush—if we act in haste—we might draw the king out before we find Elashor. We need to plan this.” He shook his head, and the next words came quieter. “That’s what Jassyn would tell us to do.”
Jassyn’s name lodged between Lykor’s ribs like a shard of frost he couldn’t melt. He said nothing. There was nothing to say that wouldn’t crack him open in ways he couldn’t afford.