Chapter 9
LYKOR
One of the wraith woke Lykor mere hours after sleep had finally claimed him. The Maw prisoners, she reported. Unrest in the holding quarters.
Third time this week.
Lykor peeled a purring Aiko from his chest and settled the vulpintera on the bed.
He dressed in the dark, pulling on flight leathers by memory, fastening buckles with fatigued fingers.
Frost cracked over his knuckles and climbed his forearms, his body arming itself faster than his hands could follow.
Aesar should’ve surfaced by now with some tedious objection about prisoners and leverage, careful reasoning that made restraint sound noble.
Silence held.
Lykor flexed his fingers until the ice shattered.
Outside, Asharyn’s dirt-packed alleys swallowed his stride, torchlight catching the frost that bloomed and died with every footfall.
Beyond the sleeping walls, Jassyn, Fenn, and Serenna were in enemy hands. Inside, the city rationed grain it didn’t have among mouths still loyal to Galaeryn’s crown.
This holding quarter occupied a repurposed storehouse near the southern wall—windowless sandstone with slits cut high and narrow. Convenient, then, that the grain was gone. Asharyn needed the space for prisoners who gnawed through its food and repaid the debt by spilling blood.
The reek reached Lykor before the door did, stale with confinement and old fear gone sour.
Daeryn waited at the entrance, the leader of the Essence-wielding shamans reduced to prison guard. Jassyn’s son watched with hazel eyes that gave nothing away. Lykor killed the comparison before it could settle.
“Three of them went after a druid bringing morning rations,” Daeryn said without greeting. “Nearly strangled the girl before Bhreena put them down.”
“Put them down?” Lykor’s gaze cut past him, teeth grinding.
“Subdued,” Daeryn corrected, though his tone said she’d considered the alternative. “She’s still inside.”
Lykor shouldered past him.
Inside, urine and old hay choked the air. Seven prisoners lined the walls. Three had been dragged to the center.
Wreathed in Essence, Bhreena crouched over one, her knee driven into his spine.
She ground his face against the stone while blood pooled from his broken nose.
Two more lay bound in shadows beside her—one unconscious, the other staring at the ceiling with the fixed concentration of a male already planning how to finish what he started.
Bhreena’s knuckles were split, accounting for the first male’s face. But blood seeped through his shredded tunic in thin parallel lines, too precise for fists.
Lykor grunted. Rending, then. Sliced shallow enough to leave him alive. Punishing the nearest flesh still sworn to the crown that had hurt her sister.
The same sister that had been hauled out of the mountain prisons with the others. Safe, if that word could crawl out of a place like that and still mean anything.
“Took you long enough,” she muttered without rising.
Lykor ignored her. These ten prisoners remained, stripped of everything but loyalty to Galaeryn.
The others dragged from the Maw had found ways to survive. Many had sworn themselves to Asharyn, quick to cast off the king’s armor once it stopped protecting them. A few became bargaining pieces or stayed alive because fear opened their mouths.
Saundyl belonged with those cowards, comfortable and watched, his compliance lasting exactly as long as his wife and son stayed breathing.
But those in this cell had looked at Asharyn’s starving refuge and decided the king was still the safer bet.
Lykor reached inward once more, to where Aesar’s caution should’ve risen.
Nothing answered.
He exhaled through his fangs.
Bhreena lifted her knee off the soldier’s spine. He sucked air through broken teeth as she wiped her knuckles across his torn tunic and rose.
“They’ll keep coming after us,” she said, voice scraped flat. “Loyal to the end. They would send my sister back to the prisons if Galaeryn ordered it. Every day we keep them alive is a day we’re not keeping our own people safe.”
“I’ll handle this,” Lykor said.
He didn’t tell her she was right.
Bhreena’s nostrils flared, but she stepped back, extinguishing Essence. Lykor’s shadows slid in where hers withdrew, pinning the three prisoners before any of them remembered how to move. She left without another scathing word, her fury quieter than it used to be.
Colder.
As she disappeared, Daeryn ducked through the doorway with a younger druid at his shoulder, a bruise darkening her throat. The girl’s wings trembled as her gaze darted to the prisoners, then away.
The soldier with the broken nose tracked the druid from the floor.
His smile spread slowly, a promise written in bloody teeth.
He’d be faster next time.
Citizens’ rations had been cut twice that week, and ten bodies loyal to Galaeryn were eating what Asharyn’s children would not.
Tomorrow, Lykor’s wraith would deploy for Kyansari.
Every fighter worth fearing would leave with them.
These prisoners, tethered or not, would remain when the corridors emptied and the guards thinned.
Ten problems waiting to strike.
Lykor refused to hand Jassyn back a city that had eaten itself alive.
A lash of force cracked across the room, hooked the smiling soldier above his golden collar, and hauled him upright into Lykor’s waiting claw.
The smile died first.
Lykor closed his fingers around the soldier’s throat and drove into his Well.
The soldier screamed as Essence burst upward in a spiral of light. Bright globes tore free and spun above him while his body twisted into a wraith.
Then the shrieking stopped.
The room went still as spines locked. No one seemed to breathe. The remaining prisoners stared at him, each face realizing there were nine deaths left in the room.
Lykor moved to the next soldier still sprawled on the stone.
This one struggled in his shadows, fighting to stand. Ice punched into his sternum and drove him down. Lykor reached the Well before the male’s back hit stone, and talents spiraled upward to join the others.
The third had stirred awake but closed her eyes, mouth shaping a plea Lykor didn’t try to hear.
The fourth spat at his boots. Lykor didn’t pause.
By the sixth, the rest were clawing at the gold around their necks as stolen talents multiplied overhead.
Each prisoner the transformation left alive, he killed. Shadows across the throat. The same death he’d promised when Kaedryn asked what would happen to traitors.
No one was left to tell him to stop.
Dead soldiers needed no guards. No grain. No second chance to hurt a defenseless girl carrying their rations.
By the tenth, every breath scraped his throat. The room had gone from prison to graveyard, lit by stolen stars. Not enough power to win a war, but perhaps enough to buy someone a few more minutes when the king turned his gaze on Asharyn.
When he dropped the last wraith, Lykor found Vesryn waiting by the doorway, one shoulder against the frame, one boot kicked back against the stone. How long the prince had been there, Lykor couldn’t say.
Vesryn’s fingers drummed against his arms, but he hadn’t intervened. He’d drained soldiers on Galaeryn’s ships like it had cost him nothing. Maybe it hadn’t. Lykor never asked. Didn’t care.
Daeryn had remained in the room, his composure uncracked. Whatever he felt about witnessing ten soldiers drained of power and life, he buried behind the same mask Jassyn wore to every council.
“Distribute the talents,” Lykor ordered. “Your people. Kaedryn’s. Whoever needs them.” His gaze flicked to the druid girl still trembling at Daeryn’s shoulder. “Start with her—if she wants to break the next hand that reaches for her throat.”
Daeryn dipped his head and claimed the nearest orb of Essence.
Vesryn pushed off the wall and opened a portal without a word. He tipped his chin toward the void.
Lykor followed him through.
Dawn spilled on the other side of the rift—pale gold, too bright for a morning that had started with a room full of bodies.
Wind rushed across the upper cliffs above Asharyn, where the desert met the city’s edge and the sky stretched wide enough to drown in.
Below, druids moved through the streets beyond the lake—patrols changing shifts, families carrying water—the early rhythm of a sanctuary still pretending it had a future.
From up here, Lykor could almost believe the lie.
His boots scuffed the same ledge of sheared stone where he’d snatched Jassyn back mere weeks ago.
Then, Jassyn had been close enough to touch.
Now the ridge was just wind-scoured rock.
Vesryn stood beside him, overlooking the lake. “We should evacuate.”
Lykor watched a patrol of wraith cross a bridge below. “Not yet.”
“How long do you think we have before the elves make them talk?”
Lykor’s hand tightened against the frost crusting his knuckles. Somewhere, Jassyn could be strapped down, his voice flayed from screaming, trying to turn agony into a problem he could solve while Elashor carved information out of him piece by piece.
The thought split something too deep to touch.
Lykor sealed the wound in ice.
“They’ve been gone two days,” Lykor said. “Galaeryn already knows where we are.”
Vesryn blew out a harsh breath. “Then why are we still standing here? What if the king doesn’t wait to strike?”
“Then Kaedryn gets the civilians out before the streets run with blood.” Lykor had spent half the night dividing Asharyn into exits—assigning districts to portals, marking which routes belonged to families and which belonged to fighters.
“Thalaesyn and Mara will oversee the evacuation. The rest of us defend the city to buy them time.”
Vesryn’s mouth tightened. “And if holding the city costs us the raid? We could lose our fighters in the streets.”
“We hit the capital tomorrow.” Lykor clenched his jaw. “The wraith need today to map entry points and retreat routes.”
“Tomorrow.” Vesryn scoffed. “While Serenna, Jassyn, and Fenn could be dying.”