Chapter 8
JASSYN
Jassyn had always hated heights.
Entrapment was worse.
In his own flesh. Bound to Farine’s claim.
At the Drowned Spires, he stood on an ancient platform anchored to the lake’s surface, the glass under his boots revealing a submerged city below.
Towers rose through the crystal around him like a half-buried crown while deeper spires vanished into the gloom.
Essence hummed through the Aelfyn palace, sealed beneath a thousand years of pressure and silence.
At evening’s fall, Farine had portaled him across the realms with a retinue of favored nobles, all draped in gossamer silks too sheer for court and too calculated for innocence, summoned to admire the king’s claimed sanctum under the lake.
Golden coronet braids framed Farine’s face, and her hands glittered with rings wrought in delicate shapes, each jewel holding a trapped pulse of Essence.
She hadn’t looked at Jassyn once. Ornaments were displayed, not acknowledged.
Her arm curled through his anyway, fingers settled in the crook of his elbow with the idle weight of ownership.
The platform swayed under his boots, and Jassyn’s stomach clenched as the lake opened dark and depthless in every direction. Wind coiled between the towers, rustling the membranes of his folded wings.
A noble’s voice spiraled across the platform, extolling Galaeryn’s claim of the Drowned Spires, but the words lost shape as pressure cinched around Jassyn’s throat.
The jacket Farine had forced him into sat high-collared and rigid against his pulse, the back trimmed to display the viridian stretch of his wings.
She’d noticed the color change that morning, and he’d lied without thinking twice. Proximity to the dragon, he’d told her.
Farine had accepted the answer because it didn’t occur to her that the dragon could touch him in a way she hadn’t permitted. To Farine, Blossom was only another conquered marvel chained in the Vallende estate.
There’d been no time to search for the Heart of Stars that bound the dragon. But Elashor would never leave the instrument of her obedience beyond reach. It was either locked somewhere within the estate’s private vaults or carried on the general himself.
Essence brightened under Jassyn’s boots, dragging him back to the platform.
At its center, a glass lift waited with its crystal doors sealed, transparent on every side. The noble was still talking when the doors parted without a sound, and Farine drew Jassyn inside alone while her favorites remained on the platform.
Crystal closed around him—walls, ceiling, floor—with black lake water pressing against the glass at his feet and the drowned palace lurking below.
The lift fell.
His stomach lurched upward. Instinct twitched through his wings, a helpless urge to flare against the drop. Farine’s fingers tightened on his arm. His body gave her no flinch, long past remembering how.
She rose onto her toes, pushing into his side, her breath damp against his ear.
“Try to smile, darling. The nobles wonder what I see in you, and I’d hate to disappoint.”
Jassyn’s mouth curved before the coercion could force it. He couldn’t decide which frightened him more—that she could command the expression, or that she didn’t need to.
His reflection flickered across the glass as they descended, hollow-eyed but watching.
The lift settled into a crystal socket at the palace base with barely a sound. Essence flared along the seams, sealing the chamber to the atrium while lake water pressed against the outer walls in dark, wavering sheets.
The doors swept open into music, harp strings plucked through a melody polished smooth.
Farine’s heels rang against the floor, announcing her passage while Jassyn followed at her side, a silent adornment.
The hall opened under the lake’s weight, vaulted glass holding back the water on every side. Beyond the walls, the other spires receded into depths blurred by drifting silt. Spheres of illumination hovered overhead in slow orbits, casting constellations across the floor.
Nobles lounged across divans and crescent-backed chairs, arranged in pastel silks with goblets lifted and jeweled throats tipped back in laughter.
Conversation dwindled as Farine entered.
Their attention slid toward Jassyn’s wings with the unhurried appraisal of collectors measuring rarity and price.
Farine held her head high and glided through the gauntlet, nodding as she passed, smiling as they stared.
At the hall’s heart, shallow crystal steps climbed to a dining platform raised above the gathering and open to the vast room. Farine ascended without slowing, Jassyn borne along as part of her display. The glass ceiling curved overhead, silver fish darting through the water beyond it.
A table stretched the length of the dais, carved from crystal and lit from within. Veins of Essence pulsed through the surface, undulating like a tide.
At the head sat the king.
Jassyn had known Galaeryn would be waiting. Still, he tensed against Farine at the sight of him. The few nobles already in attendance had arranged themselves around the king—every chair angled, every voice muted, every body turned toward him.
Galaeryn sat motionless as they approached, fingers draped over the stem of his goblet, silver hair cascading over his shoulders.
His beauty had been refined past softness, polished past warmth, every feature arranged in symmetry too precise to feel alive.
Those silver eyes held the worst of that perfection, depthless and bright with the wrong kind of stars.
Elashor sat at Galaeryn’s right, his gaze raking over Jassyn.
Jassyn’s wings twitched, his chin lowering by a fraction, breath slowing to a careful measure. He hated the efficiency of it, obedience moving through him, arranging his posture into submission.
Two open seats waited beside the general. Farine led him toward them without hesitation. Jassyn held her chair first, then took his own.
The back pressed flat against his folded wings, pinching his joints, the frame too narrow for membranes designed to span twice his reach. Jassyn adjusted once, only enough to confirm there was no comfortable way to sit.
A scattering of nobles climbed the crystal steps, council members and companions taking their places with the ease of those accustomed to ruling from any table they touched. Servants arranged themselves along the outer edge of the dais, close enough to pour, distant enough to disappear.
Jassyn envied how easily they vanished.
“This Asharyn.” Galaeryn’s voice cut through the low murmur, his attention on Elashor. “What Centarya pried from our prisoners matches what your mother’s pet yielded?”
The talons at the tips of Jassyn’s wings clenched tight. Serenna and Fenn, perhaps.
And he was the pet.
No memory of speaking to Elashor surfaced, only the unsettling certainty that his mind had been opened and emptied sometime between the sea and Farine’s hands.
Asharyn could already be bleeding from knowledge taken from him whether he remembered surrendering it or not.
Elashor inclined his head. “It does. The city has twenty-three hatchlings across three elements—Emberharts, Tidecrashers, and Stormstrikes.” He grunted. “These ‘druids’ supposedly insist the beasts named their species themselves.”
The king’s mouth thinned. “Riveting.”
“From what we’ve gathered,” Elashor continued, swirling his wine, “the final Warden remains unaccounted for. A Zephyrfang with control over the wind.”
Jassyn’s fingers locked together under the table. Veyrix, another elemental asset waiting to be claimed.
Galaeryn tilted his head. “And the rogue lightning beast? Your scouts haven’t located it?”
Elashor waved the question away. “Irrelevant, if we seize a Stormstrike hatchling from Asharyn.”
Jassyn’s pulse kicked beneath the collar of his coat. Skylash had promised the druids nothing beyond her own vengeance. But with the way Elashor spoke, Asharyn must still be standing, unconquered.
“We’ll see,” Galaeryn said, the words too slight to hold agreement and too cold to invite argument. “Perhaps hatchlings will prove more malleable than the earthbound beast in your possession, which failed at the single task given to it.”
Farine’s laughter chimed beside Jassyn. “It does keep the gardens blooming, though. A charming use for a disappointing creature.”
Blossom. Spoken of like a fountain.
Beastblood stirred in Jassyn’s veins. Scales prickled along his forearms under the jacket sleeves, and he forced the shift down before the fabric split.
Galaeryn’s attention cut toward Farine, unmoved. “Utility comes in many forms. The Aelfyn honor perfection above all.”
His focus passed over the viridian stretch of Jassyn’s wings, then to the scales arranged across his forehead in the shape of a trillium.
Jassyn didn’t breathe until the king looked away.
“We’ll have one of each beast soon enough,” Galaeryn said. “The Aelfyn revealed what this world was made for. When I rise to meet them, I intend to offer it all.”
The pieces aligned in Jassyn’s mind—a dragon of each element, presented as tribute.
The king lifted his goblet, and servants slipped silently along the platform, bearing steaming trays to deliver the first course.
Citrus glaze cut through char and herbal smoke, sweetness layered over heat until the air thickened. Farine’s fingers skimmed the inside of Jassyn’s wrist as a servant set a plate before him.
The cutlery flanking his dish glinted in the drifting illumination—crystal handles, gleaming metal. Jassyn’s attention hooked on the knife, and a pulse of heat locked his hand flat against the table before his mind could finish the thought.
The command was buried deep enough that even a half-formed urge summoned correction.
Jassyn stared at his unmoving fingers. His own body, the enforcer.
Around him, nobles went on murmuring praise for the Drowned Spires. Galaeryn spoke of other sanctums waiting across the realms, Aelfyn ruins he meant to seize for his dominion.
Jassyn focused on every word. If he ever got out, if his memory survived what they did to him, he would need the information—each name, each location, each hint of where the king meant to reach next.
Farine leaned into him, close enough that her perfume clogged the back of his throat. Her grip tightened on his arm, just enough to make him straighten.
Jassyn smiled because the alternative had been trained out of him. The expression settled before he chose it, obedient as his wings when she commanded them open.
He ate because the role required it—gratitude performed in small bites, curated to honor her generosity. The first mouthful scorched his tongue, syrup-laced and searing.
He chewed and swallowed past the burn, tasting nothing.
“Elashor.” Farine’s voice carried across the table, bright as struck glass. “Have you told the council of our little triumph in the Falling Star Crater?”
The question gave Elashor his entrance. Jassyn recognized the performance at once and had no doubt Farine had arranged his role in it too.
The general smirked and lifted his goblet toward the king. “The excavation continues to unearth treasures for the crown. Ancient Aelfyn relics.”
Murmurs rippled through the nobles. A few leaned forward. Others went still, already calculating where new power would settle and who might possess it.
“Such wonders our ancestors left behind,” Farine said. “And perhaps a few surprises the king has yet to divulge.”
Whatever they were extracting from that crater, the room’s careful silence told Jassyn enough. His thoughts turned toward an armory in Galaeryn’s hands.
Farine’s nails grazed Jassyn’s wrist, and the dread scattered.
She turned her smile on him. “Darling,” she purred.
“You’ve seen these new realms, haven’t you?
Flown over them on these lovely wings.” Her fingers traced the exposed edge of his membrane where it folded against the chair, and the leather flinched from her touch.
“Where should House Vallende turn its ambitions next?”
Goblets halted before lips, every eye finding him over rims.
Jassyn’s grip locked around his fork, the bite he’d taken souring on his tongue.
He smiled while everything inside him writhed.
Farine wanted a spectacle, and if he denied her one, she’d make another with his body.
Silence would protect no secrets, but a lie would be worse.
Elashor had apparently already dragged enough truth from him to recognize a falsehood.
So Jassyn chose the damage himself, offering what the table had nearly assembled without him.
“Veyrix,” Jassyn said. “The Zephyrfang.” He lowered his gaze, feigning thought—a performance within a performance. “He’s still bound in the Aetherveil. Skylash’s mate. She tasked the druids with finding him.”
Farine’s laugh trilled beside him, bright with delight. Her fingers slipped into his curls and knotted at the nape of his neck.
“Did you know,” she said to the table, “the dragons have names? How exquisite.”
Elashor arched a brow. “Dangerous,” he said smoothly, “to part with so many of our secrets, Mother.”
At the head of the table, Galaeryn watched, unblinking.
Farine blotted the corner of her mouth with her napkin.
“Well. The other houses deserve a fighting chance after the way your daughters ended the Coliseum’s games.
” She set the linen beside her plate and reached across the crystal as if to console the nearest councilor.
“A pity, truly. All those shaman-blooded pets, charred in the arena. Such promising little beasts.”
“Which reminds me, Mother.” Elashor’s voice dropped, idle and sharp at once. “I’ll need to borrow your pet in the morning. I’m due for a visit to Centarya.”
Farine huffed, her hand closing over Jassyn’s, a claim disguised as affection.
“You may have him in the morning,” she murmured. “If he’s of any use to you by then. I intend to keep him occupied tonight.”
She patted his cheek, then turned his jaw with one finger beneath his chin. “Be a dear and fetch the Vallende blend. You always remember what pleases.”
Jassyn rose, ears ringing with the scream caged behind his teeth.
He didn’t need to ask which wine she meant. The bottle would already be waiting, uncorked and breathing—a vintage laced with Stardust.
The lounging nobles tracked him as he descended the crystal steps and crossed through the main hall. He moved the way they’d taught him—decorative enough to admire, silent enough to forget.
He knew what waited. The wine. The bed. The practiced sequence of being used.
Jassyn took the Vallende blend from the waiting tray without looking.
They would drink, steeping themselves in pleasure until their thoughts blurred and their guard dissolved.
And when that happened, Jassyn would strike. He’d lace commands into minds softened by Stardust, quiet enough to pass unnoticed. Coercion subtle as a heartbeat, the thread that had kept Farine dreaming, the whisper that had turned a servant aside.
He would find the Heart of Stars, break Blossom’s chains, and carve a way out from the inside.