Chapter 10
SERENNA
Serenna groaned as consciousness ripped her up from the dark. Her eyes peeled open, vision filmed by the receding wash of pain.
Two days since Taryn had lifted Fenn’s Starshard and Serenna’s world had erupted in his fire, leaving her more ash than flesh before the menders stitched her back together only to burn again.
The hours bled together, measured in injuries and the number of times she’d woken in the Infirmary, healed into usefulness and sent back to the ring.
She blinked hard, forcing the blur into shape just as a magus in white leathers withdrew from her bedside. The latest fragment of memory was a punch of force that had knocked her from the sky.
Taryn waited at the foot of the cot, arms folded, chin lifted with satisfaction. Behind her shoulder, Fenn stood with his jaw locked, a muscle jumping beneath the skin.
He didn’t look away from Serenna. He couldn’t speak with his sister standing between them, but his silence reached her anyway, heavy with apology, fury, and the same helpless dread for whatever came next.
Ayla had begun sending reavers and magus against them two, three, four at a time, and Fenn had fared no better. The menders had erased the blood and burns, but not the way Fenn held himself too still, as if one wrong breath might give Taryn an excuse to aim his Starshard at Serenna.
With a wince, Serenna pushed upright, her mended ribs pulling tight as she swung her legs off the cot. A cup waited on the table beside her, and she drained the water, hating the small gratitude that followed.
Ayla had kept them bathed, clothed, and fed. Like prized hounds patched between fights, returned to the kennel when not in use.
In one fist, Taryn rolled Serenna’s Starshard necklace and Fenn’s matching gem, their facets clicking against each other.
So. Ayla had handed off the leash again.
The reavers and magus were no longer the worst the training rings could throw at them. Sometimes their Starshards changed hands, and Serenna and Fenn were pitted against each other—fire and storm turned loose in a cage, made to clash while others pulled the strings.
It wasn’t her. And it wasn’t Fenn. But her power obeyed every time, lightning ripping from her palms before she could clench them shut.
Afterward, all she wanted was to reach for him. But she never could. By night, her hands shook from the day’s damage, every tremor remembering his fire, her lightning, and the distance neither of them was permitted to close.
“You’ve been summoned,” Taryn clipped.
Serenna stared, the word taking a moment to make sense. “Summoned…where?”
“General Elashor requires you in Ayla’s chambers.”
The Infirmary contracted around her. Even the training ring sounded safer. “Elashor is here?”
Taryn’s lip curled as she hauled Serenna to her feet. “Don’t keep the general waiting. Fly to Ayla’s balcony. Go inside. When he’s finished with you, return to the training rings.” She lifted Fenn’s Starshard a fraction, and Fenn’s wings snapped out. “And don’t make me fetch you.”
The threat still hung in the air as Taryn shouldered past Serenna, weaving between the rows of cots before shoving through the Infirmary’s doors.
Fenn followed slower. But as he passed, his fingers brushed hers.
Brief. Barely there.
Then gone.
Serenna forced her legs into motion. Sunlight struck hard as she stepped outside, Taryn and Fenn already angling toward the practice rings.
She measured the distance without thinking, from the Infirmary to the Spire’s crown.
The Starshard’s reach had followed her through training rings, the dining hall, and half the campus. Far enough, perhaps, to lay its claim anywhere in Centarya. A balcony, a roof, or some blind corner behind a building would only buy her a different place to be caught.
Escape lived beyond the island.
The impulse to run flared, wild and reckless, but Serenna crushed it as she launched into the air. She wouldn’t leave Fenn behind.
And Taryn would be watching. Two days had taught her what disobedience cost. If she fled and failed, Fenn would be dragged before her, and Taryn would force Serenna’s lightning to detonate through his body until escape became another wound with her name on it.
So Serenna angled toward the Spire and flew.
The last time she’d seen Elashor, she’d still been an initiate, still mistaking Centarya’s walls for protection instead of the first outline of a prison.
She dredged up their last conversation, and it came back sour in her thoughts. Elashor had held Jassyn’s freedom just beyond reach, a promise meant to bend Serenna into compliance. Her body. Jassyn’s bloodline. A child Elashor meant to claim through her.
Serenna’s wings faltered, and the sky lurched.
Her stomach dropped before she caught the next current and forced herself steady, circling wide around the waterfall spilling from the portal above.
Spray needled cold across her membranes as she passed, the cascade roaring behind her as she landed on Ayla’s balcony.
Instinct fired, and Serenna shifted without waiting for permission. Her wings folded and vanished, and the relief that followed—the simple proof that her body had obeyed her—unlatched the breath trapped behind her ribs.
Then she stepped through the glass door and dread locked it there again.
Elashor stood at Ayla’s lacquered desk, rifling through her parchments with the casual trespass of a male who’d never asked before taking.
But it wasn’t the general who stopped Serenna in her tracks.
It was Jassyn.
His wings were shifted, but no trace of Cinderax’s maroon remained. Viridian shimmered through the membranes now, another dragon’s gift rooted in him.
Or forced there.
He stood across the room with his hands loose at his sides, scales stippling his forehead in the shape of a flower, his expression empty.
Hollowed. That was the only word for it.
Serenna’s stomach clenched around a cold, sinking weight as she ventured fully into the chamber.
Elashor turned at last, arms folding as he took her in with the detached attention of a general counting losses he didn’t intend to mourn.
“This should’ve been settled months ago.
Back in Vaelyn. The strongest shaman bloodlines from the north and the south run through you both.
My sire didn’t spend centuries refining them only to let them die with you. ”
Jassyn tensed, and ice spilled down Serenna’s spine.
Elashor’s gaze raked over Jassyn’s wings. “But he never accounted for this. Essence, earth, and dragon. That power will endure.” He gestured to the rug between them. “One way or another.”
Jassyn staggered back.
Elashor merely crooked a finger, and he froze.
Amber eyes wide, Jassyn scanned the room, but his body didn’t move.
“You can’t,” Jassyn rasped. “You can’t force us—”
“You had months.” Elashor’s voice flattened into something clinical. “Consider the delay corrected. King Galaeryn will have another vessel waiting when the Aelfyn arrive.”
The floor seemed to tilt under Serenna’s feet. Her stomach plunged and kept plunging, a fall with no bottom. The spark in her chest thrashed, begging for wings and flight.
Her eyes snapped to Jassyn, to the blood draining from his face as horror took shape between them. She turned toward the balcony, every muscle coiling.
Elashor scoffed. “Run, if you like.”
Serenna read the dare at once—the open balcony, the distance to the edge, Elashor standing untouched while Jassyn remained locked inside his own body.
If she bolted, Elashor would send him after her.
If she struck, Elashor would put Jassyn in the path of her lightning.
Even victory would leave Jassyn paying for every blow she landed.
Serenna stayed still, and Elashor smirked.
“I’m not even fertile for another six months,” she said, throat so tight the protest came out hoarse.
“You think we don’t have a way around that?” He flicked a wrist toward Jassyn. “Prepare her.”
Crimson light flooded Jassyn’s palms.
He lurched forward, pale and shaking, fighting every inch and losing.
Serenna’s legs moved before thought could interfere. She backed away until a wall met her spine, the room running out.
She could’ve thrown lightning at Elashor. Hurled herself from the balcony. The knowledge moved through her with terrible clarity.
She could still fight or try to run.
That was the horror of it.
But Elashor had made Jassyn the price of defiance.
Jassyn’s hands shook in front of her, Essence spilling between fingers he couldn’t close.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t stop. I can’t…”
When his magic breached her abdomen, Serenna flinched. Heat spread where it had no right to be, deep and invasive, forcing a window inside her body to open before its season.
She locked the scream behind her teeth and turned her fury on Elashor instead.
His expression didn’t flicker as he watched Jassyn carry out the command.
By the time crimson light faded from Jassyn’s palms, his exhales broke apart in shuddering bursts.
“Is she primed?” Elashor asked.
Jassyn nodded once. To the floor.
“Then begin.” Elashor leaned back against Ayla’s desk. “This doesn’t need to take all day.”
A high ringing flooded Serenna’s ears, the room narrowing to the ragged pull of her own breathing.
Jassyn moved first, limbs jerking forward in broken sequence—shoulders, then legs, then hands—none of the motion belonging to him. He dropped to his knees without looking at her.
Serenna held herself upright until her legs crumpled.
Her shoulder struck the wall on the way down, but it didn’t hold her. Her back hit the rug hard, palms crushing the red velvet.
Jassyn’s hands struck the rug on either side of her head. His knees planted outside her hips, close enough to cage her in without touching. He caught himself there, every muscle locked to hold his weight off her.
His breath fractured against her cheek, his forehead falling beside hers.
“I’m trying to fight it,” he choked out. His arms shook, making that impossible inch of distance the last piece of himself Elashor hadn’t taken yet.
“It’s Elashor,” Serenna whispered. “Not you.”
Jassyn lifted his head just enough to face her. All of him strained against the command, teeth clenched around the resistance trapped behind them.
“I’m still trying.” His fingers dug into the rug, knuckles white. “Even if I’m losing.”
Serenna turned her head and pressed her cheek against his. Pinned to the rug, she trembled under him, but she leaned into the only point of contact she could choose.
“Where are they keeping you?” she whispered, the words slipping between breaths, buried beneath Elashor’s notice.
“The Vallende estate.” His voice broke on the name.
Her fingers curled into fists at her sides. “Lykor and Vesryn will be searching. We’ll get out. I promise.”
Neither moved. The pause was all they could steal.
Elashor’s voice cracked across the room. “Get it over with.”
Jassyn’s hips shifted.
Serenna tensed when his fingers found the ties at her waistband, too unsteady to loosen them at first.
His apology caught in her hair.
Serenna exhaled and let her fists fall open. Any resistance would only hurt him.
There was no version of this where either of them won.