Chapter 7
SERENNA
“Wings,” Ayla said as she snapped her fingers.
Serenna flinched and shifted before the Starshard could force it.
Bones cracked one by one up her spine as her wings tore free. The initiate uniform Ayla had commissioned pinched where the slits had been cut too narrow, fabric sawing into tender joints as the violet membranes stretched taut.
Since their return the day before, Ayla had given Serenna and Fenn no reprieve. Between rounds of questioning, menders had sealed their wounds only so the interrogation could continue, each answer pried out under the threat of Serenna’s lightning searing Fenn’s chest or his fire scorching her skin.
Ayla sniffed as she circled, inspecting Serenna’s wings.
Serenna fixed her attention on the windows overlooking Centarya. Beyond the glass, morning sun struck the water pouring from the portal above the Spire, gilding the endless fall as it spilled over the island’s edge.
She glanced away before her mind could turn the rift into a way out.
These quarters had once belonged to Vesryn, though the room had been gutted of his presence. His dragon sigils were stripped away along with his armor and Aesar’s books he’d salvaged from another life.
Only crimson remained, an erasure that didn’t need blood to call itself conquest. The color claimed the furniture, walls, and tapestries, each marked with Ayla’s sigil—a shrike clutching her Starshard diadem in its talons.
“I have the perfect use for you,” Ayla mused, drawing to a halt in front of her. “My forces need live training. They’ll learn faster facing creatures that can summon flame and storm and shift into this…” Her lip curled as her attention returned to Serenna’s wings. “…beast form.”
Serenna went still before her face could betray her. Live training. That meant Fenn too. The last she’d seen of him was the night before, vanishing into Taryn’s quarters across the hall, his Starshard in his sister’s grip—both prisoners kept close.
“And if you survive,” Ayla continued, “you might even be worth keeping.”
Serenna swallowed. Ayla knew enough now—dragons, hatchlings, Asharyn. Their secrets had been extracted piece by piece, each answer given to keep their own power from being turned against the other.
But Ayla was still here, hoarding what she’d learned instead of delivering it to the throne.
“Why haven’t you told the king Rimeclaw kept his gift from him?” Serenna asked before caution could stop her. “Or sent Elashor to Asharyn?”
Ayla’s lip curled. “I’ll give the king what’s valuable when I choose. As for our sire…” She stepped closer, Serenna’s Starshard gleaming at her throat while the gem in her diadem caught the morning sun. “The less he knows, the stronger my position.”
The shape of Ayla’s ambition sharpened. The king might’ve put an heir in her womb, but he’d denied her a place in Kyansari. So Ayla had made Centarya hers instead. And Serenna and Fenn remained unsurrendered, weapons the queen hadn’t yet laid at the king’s feet.
Ayla smirked. “Careful. You look dangerously close to having a thought.”
Her fingers clamped around Serenna’s Starshard.
Serenna’s first step launched out of her. Then another. She stumbled toward the door before her balance caught, the gem yanking obedience through her limbs. Ayla followed close behind, shoving a hand between her wings to steer her from the chambers.
Guards lined the corridor in Kyansari plate armor, but Ayla’s shrike stamped every tabard.
Conquered uniforms. Rebranded loyalty.
The door across the hall swung open on silent hinges. Fenn stepped out behind Taryn, wings shifted like Serenna’s.
Serenna halted, her fingers curling at her sides, trapping the impulse to reach for him.
She knew it was still Fenn. But at the same time, it wasn’t.
Every piercing had been stripped away, every stud and ring torn from his face until he looked presentable for court. His golden hair, no longer the wild cascade she knew, had been bound into a single warrior’s braid that pulled his features sharper.
And his eyes…
His eyes were wrong, twin skies where fire should’ve burned. All traces of wraith had been scoured from him, replaced with the arch elf they’d decided he should’ve been all along. The gold at his throat matched hers, smothering the bond between them to nothing.
His name pressed against the back of Serenna’s throat, but she swallowed it.
Fenn didn’t speak hers either. His wings twitched behind him, the clawed tips reaching for her before they clenched tight.
“Walk,” Ayla hissed.
Serenna obeyed before the Starshard could clamp down.
Fenn and Taryn fell into step behind them. Armor clattered as their escort began the long descent—five hundred winding stairs circling down the Spire.
They walked.
Down and down.
Serenna counted the marble steps to keep herself from glancing back at Fenn.
The need to touch him ached through her fingers, to find his pulse under altered skin. To prove the body behind her still belonged to him despite the golden hair and those ocean eyes.
Somewhere past three hundred stairs, Ayla spoke. “Tell me where you found your artifacts.”
Another question. Another seam ripped open around one of the few secrets Serenna had managed to keep only because Ayla hadn’t thought to ask.
Serenna kept her eyes on the steps. “We found them on the other side of the world.”
Ayla’s footsteps didn’t falter. “Taryn,” she called back, pleasant as a request for tea.
Serenna tensed.
That was all it took.
Taryn would make Fenn the consequence for her defiance, forcing fire into his hands and making him watch while it burned.
Serenna could endure the pain. What she couldn’t survive was Fenn’s face afterward.
“An ancient dragon’s den,” Serenna said. “Turned into an Aelfyn tomb. The dead still had their Starshards.”
“How many?”
“Maybe thirty.” She wasn’t even tempted to lie. “I wasn’t counting.”
“And you bound yourselves to them by blood,” Ayla said, each word polished to a sneer. “Like thralls.”
The disdain came too easily to be ignorance. Ayla had been letting her knowledge show in glints, enough to lure.
“That’s how the druids use theirs.” Serenna slipped a question into the crack. “How is your way different?”
Ayla halted.
In one fluid motion, she swept the diadem from her brow and held it out. “Take it.”
Serenna hesitated, her gaze flicking to Fenn before she could stop it.
“If he’s that distracting,” Ayla said, “I’ll have you flay his face.”
Serenna snatched the diadem.
The instant her fingers brushed the Starshard, every joint locked.
Cold bit first, then burrowed deep. Ice flooded up her arm, deadening her shoulder, and the circlet slipped from her grasp before her hand could close around it.
Silver struck the marble step between them with a delicate clink and rocked to a stop.
“Pick it up,” Ayla said.
Serenna bent, but Ayla’s boot struck the circlet first, sending it skittering around the curve of the stairwell. It bounced from step to step before coming to rest on the landing below.
Serenna’s wings twitched before she followed.
She descended alone under Ayla’s watchful silence, step by step, then lifted the silver band with a shaking hand, careful to keep her fingers away from the gem.
On the climb back up, she didn’t look at Fenn.
Not while Ayla’s attention hovered like a hand over a hilt, waiting for any excuse to make him bleed.
Serenna thrust the diadem at her sister.
Ayla settled the crown on her brow and continued down. “I claimed my artifact,” she said, like the answer should’ve been obvious. “Filled the reservoir with my power. Forced it to answer me. It’s that simple.”
Numbness still hummed in Serenna’s fingers. She didn’t ask how.
They descended the rest of the Spire in silence. Behind her, the guards’ armor rattled with every step, a cage of moving sound.
By the time they reached the mess hall, Serenna’s thighs burned.
The chamber hadn’t changed, every bench and table waiting in the same arrangement. She’d just never expected to stand inside it again.
Ayla strode down the central aisle with her chin lifted, and Serenna followed at the distance her Starshard silently dictated.
Benches scraped as magus and initiates rose in unison, fists pressed to their hearts for their queen.
Their stares crawled over Serenna’s wings, tracing the violet sheen of her membranes before sliding past her to Fenn. He moved with every muscle held too still, violence banked beneath the elven skin Taryn had chosen for him.
“All initiates will attend this morning’s sparring,” Taryn called, her voice cutting across the hall. “The reavers and magus will demonstrate what you’ll face across the realms.”
She strode through the ranks as though command had always belonged to her. A former wraith who’d never earned a position in this academy, now ruling over those who had. Gifted an arch elf’s power. Proof that Ayla rewarded those willing to trade loyalty for a place at her feet.
Serenna scanned the ranks as Ayla swept through, but no allies remained. The few rebel magus who’d worked with Jassyn were already gone. Everyone left served Ayla, either by choice or by fear—and Serenna couldn’t tell the difference.
Sunlight stabbed Serenna’s eyes the moment they stepped into the open.
She blinked hard, vision flaring white as Ayla led them toward one of the four training rings cut into Centarya’s manicured lawns. Sand shifted beneath her boots, already warm from the rising sun. Magus and arch elf reavers filed along the perimeter—fifty of each at least, by Serenna’s quick count.
Ayla didn’t bother waiting for the initiates to finish assembling along the yard’s edge. She strode to the center of the ring, her guards remaining behind.
Taryn pressed in behind Serenna and Fenn, herding them forward to stand before Ayla.
“When we claim the new realms,” Ayla called, voice carrying across the ring, “you will face creatures who call themselves druids.”
She gestured at their wings without bothering to look.
“As you can see, they present challenges you haven’t trained for.”