Chapter 15
LYKOR
Lykor counted the ranks of wraith beside a forgotten waterfall in Alari, mist clinging to their wings. Vesryn moved among them, issuing final orders as he opened portals to every district in the capital.
They cloaked in shadows and vanished, each rift devouring the twilight around it. One by one. Squad by squad. The rhythm of their departure counted down his own.
They stepped through knowing the cost. No victory waited on the other side, only a kingdom to gut.
Burn the estates. Strip the parasitic elite of Essence and leave the capital choking on its own blood.
Some of his warriors had carried this vengeance for decades. Others had been born into the wreckage, raised in a world that called them monsters. Either way, every one of them brought a debt into Kyansari.
Lykor had his own.
Jassyn.
Fenn.
Kal.
Lykor’s fists curled at his sides, talons and nails cutting into palms.
Koln looked back before vanishing through a portal, flashing fangs with a nod.
Kal would’ve hated everything about this—too many risks, too many lives thrown into streets that belonged to the enemy. He would’ve argued until his voice went hoarse, and he wouldn’t have been wrong.
But he wasn’t here. And neither was Aesar.
Frost sealed over the hollow in Lykor’s ribs. He reached inward again, searching.
Aesar lingered deep in their shared mindspace, drowned in grief. A century sharing a skull, and Lykor had never felt this alone.
Cinderax and Kaedryn had opposed the assault openly, pushing to hunt Veyrix instead. They could chase the Zephyrfang. Lykor would tear Kyansari apart just for a whisper of Jassyn. Besides, Vesryn had sent the rangers north with the druids to sweep the Aetherveil.
The last of the wraith vanished until only he and the prince remained beside the waterfall’s thunder.
They’d prowl together through the palace as the city burned. Tear Elashor out by the throat. Find the ledgers if the general had fled. Retreat if Galaeryn showed himself.
One moment too long in the king’s city, and the raid became a culling. Still, if the wraith ripped talents from even a fraction of the pure-bloods, the plundered Essence might buy them another day against the king’s insurmountable human army.
Vesryn shoved his shoulder. “Are you ready?”
Lykor knocked his hand away but nodded.
The prince tore open a portal, and they stepped through.
Darkness hit first, the weight of a kingdom bearing down. Vesryn ignited spheres of illumination. Light seared across Lykor’s vision, and he scowled until his sight adjusted.
“Kyansari’s dungeons,” the prince said, answering the question Lykor hadn’t bothered to ask. “Under the palace.”
Lykor grunted and fell into step beside him. Their boots struck stone, each impact hurled back by the narrow walls. Doors carved from solid rock lined either side. Stale air crowded his lungs like it had in the mountain prisons. He crushed the memory before it could sink its teeth in.
“Your warriors have enough among them who can portal,” Vesryn said. “They’ll make it back to Asharyn safely if the raid turns.”
Reassurance, then. Useless.
Lykor’s shoulders twitched. “I wasn’t worried. They know what’s required. If they’re captured, they’ll die before they give the elves anything useful.” He didn’t wait for agreement. “Which wing first?”
Vesryn didn’t slow, attention fixed on the corridor ahead. “I’m sure there’s a feast we can interrupt. Your wraith should pull the capital’s attention away from the palace.”
“A lot of hopes.”
Vesryn cut him a sidelong glance. “We’re getting Jassyn back.”
“If he’s not already dead.”
The prince halted as his illumination drifted overhead, light throwing their shadows long against the corridor walls. “You don’t believe that. You wouldn’t be here if you did.”
Lykor locked his jaw until pain sparked in his temples. “Something happened to him.”
“He’s too valuable. They wouldn’t kill him.”
“There are fates worse than death.”
Vesryn ran a hand over the shaved side of his scalp, but he said nothing. He turned down the corridor and flicked his wrist toward the door at its end.
A pulse of force struck the stone. The door cracked open, grinding against the silence.
Two soldiers stood posted on the other side. Both jerked back, hands flying to hilts as Essence flared around their fists.
“Wait,” Vesryn snapped, throwing an arm out as Lykor ignited his power. “They’re likely coerced.”
Shadows raced from the prince’s fingers, winding around the soldiers in restraining coils. They halted in place, limbs bound, Essence still shimmering.
Lykor sneered as he stared down the immobilized guards. “Save the conscience for when this is over.”
“Some are forced to serve.”
“Saundyl wasn’t compelled when he handed Serenna over.”
Kal had been fool enough to try to stand between Lykor and killing. Vesryn didn’t get to inherit the dead male’s place.
Lykor shouldered by.
The prince didn’t block him.
Lykor slammed his claw into the first soldier’s chest and reached past flesh, past bone, into the bright root of his Well. His awareness closed around the magic. One strike, and he severed it.
The warrior didn’t scream. His stare remained fixed ahead, blank with obedience, as Lykor plundered his power.
Compelled, then. Vesryn had been right.
The prince’s shadows unraveled when the body collapsed, limbs twisting and darkening, remaking itself as wraith.
Lykor kept the stolen magic at a distance, leashed in his orbit. Still close enough to bind. Still close enough to be tempted to augment his power.
He’d been that creature before. Gorged. Mindless. Jassyn had hauled him back. But he wasn’t here now.
Vesryn’s mouth tightened. Yet when Lykor stepped aside, the prince drained the second soldier and cast the siphoned abilities into the ring of power circling them.
They climbed from the dungeons into the lower keep, then to the palace proper.
Lykor didn’t reach for Aesar’s memories of this place. Ripping through that mourning for directions would only split his focus. He let Vesryn lead as they passed through forgotten halls and crystal domes open to the star-swept sky.
He registered the corridors the way he registered any space that might turn lethal—exits, angles, distance to the next door. Marble pillars veined with captive Essence shuddered with a stolen pulse. Carpets muffled every step, thick enough to bury sound.
While his people had survived on roots and fungus, on hunted game in forests the realms had forgotten, the palace had fed until even its stone looked swollen with gluttony.
Patrols still moved in pairs through the halls, eyes empty. No threat. Only bodies in the way.
Vesryn bound them with shadows, and Lykor carved through their Wells, the plundered talents joining the rest. The rhythm of it came too easily. Snare. Drain. Discard. Whatever hit the marble after, dead or alive, didn’t matter.
Through the open windows, smoke began choking the skyline. Dark shapes flew between spires and towers, and somewhere below, screams echoed as glass shattered. Streaks of illumination pulsed above the rooftops, district alarms flaring one after another.
Inside the palace, no panic spilled through the polished halls. No commanders shouted orders. No hidden force raised Essence or arms. The soldiers continued obediently on their routes, seemingly unaware of the attack on the city.
“Stardust,” Vesryn muttered as another empty corridor stretched before them. “I watched this city die, poisoned by it.”
“Easier to rule when no one’s thinking.”
Lykor’s attention pinned on an archway ahead. The smell hit before the sight—braised meat and honeyed fruit, spiced wine steaming in a room that didn’t care if the city burned.
Inside it, crystal chandeliers hummed overhead, caged illumination trembling through each prism.
Marble columns climbed toward skylights ribbed in white stone.
Twelve nobles lounged around the feast, draped in silks and drunk on their own safety.
A few blinked toward the entryway, the intrusion reaching them too late.
One male shoved back from his chair, shouting for guards.
Shadows exploded from Lykor and the prince, a black tide ripping through the chamber in every direction. The nobles’ Essence flickered in answer, thin and panicked, and extinguished just as fast.
Writhing shadows pinned all twelve before the wine stopped sloshing in their goblets.
Lykor and Vesryn moved down opposite sides of the table.
These were the jeweled leeches who’d grown fat while starving the realms. Who’d bartered Jassyn’s bloodline and called it governance.
“Elashor,” Lykor demanded, claw hovering over the nearest noble.
“N–not here,” the female gasped, eyes darting to the others. “But he has holdings in the new lands. I have influence, I can—”
Lykor drove his talons into her chest and seized the molten core of her Well. Her scream rang off the vaulted ceiling as he ripped power loose. Talents tore free, spiraling upward to join the growing constellation.
Across the table, Vesryn snarled, “Where is the general?”
One noble sagged against the rending, sobbing. Another hacked free of the shadows with her own, wrenching a portal open before her hips cleared the chair.
Lykor’s ice punched through her chest as she left the table.
The others just stared, stunned by the first true lesson of their lives. That their power could be stripped.
Lykor and the prince drained them one by one. After the fourth, the screams became part of the room.
Breath hissing between his fangs, Lykor turned from the toppled chairs and the feast growing cold beside the bodies. He strode to an outdoor balcony, stolen Essence circling him.
Below, the city burned.
Wraith flew low over streets on wings of fire, Essence erupting in bursts of shadow and force. Pure-bloods fled through alleys they’d never learned to fear, scattering before the monsters their kingdom had created.
Vesryn joined him, shadows still churning. “That was most of the council.”
“And we’re no closer to finding Elashor.” Lykor tracked the flames spreading over a bridge. “No trail to Jassyn. No whisper of the others.”
Vesryn studied the streets below, gripping the railing. His jaw tightened. “We should—”
The prince flinched, eyes slicing draconic. His whole body seized—spine snapping straight, head whipping south.
“Fenn’s untethered.” His brows drew tight. For the first time in days, uncertainty cut through the prince’s fury. “He’s on the move.”
“Jassyn could be with him.” Hope struck against Lykor’s ribs, but he crushed it before it could spread. “Saundyl sent all three to Elashor.” He seized Vesryn’s arm. “Where?”
“I don’t know. I can only sense…” Vesryn’s hands shook as he ripped open a portal. “I’ll have to jump blind. Follow the bond.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“No.” Vesryn was already half-gone, eyes unfocusing toward something Lykor couldn’t see. “Elashor could still be in the palace. You need to find him or the records. Otherwise, this is all for nothing.”
Lykor’s talons bit into Vesryn’s arm until blood slicked beneath them. Every instinct in him screamed to follow. To tear through whatever distance stood between him and Jassyn.
But Vesryn pulled free.
“Bring him back,” Lykor growled. It came out like a threat. He meant it as one.
Vesryn vanished and the rift sealed shut.
Lykor stood alone with the stolen power whirling around him.
The prince had the bond to chase. Lykor had the palace to search.
Elashor. The documents Saundyl had sworn would point to Jassyn—portal schedules and prisoner manifests, all the cowardly little signatures that moved bodies with orders and dressed abduction as procedure.
Lykor turned back into the palace.
An itch crawled between his shoulders, whispering that he wasn’t the only thing still breathing within these walls.
He stalked through the upper levels, kicking open doors, raking through chambers that had been sealed for decades.
Council rooms clogged with dust. Maps curled on tables, ink bleeding deep into the grain.
Private quarters stood untouched behind open doors, cups waiting on tables, beds unmade, wardrobes full—rooms preserved around absences the king had ordered.
Nothing useful remained. No Elashor. No ledgers. No manifests. No trace of authority left in these halls. If Saundyl had lied, Lykor would leave him alive just long enough to regret it.
Below, portals flared and snapped shut across the city, too many to count. Pure-bloods fleeing, if the raid still held. His wraith retreating, if it didn’t.
His warriors had done their part, cutting the capital by the throat. He should’ve descended into the city, hunted quarter by quarter, ripped answers from every pure-blood until one of them choked out Elashor’s location.
Instead, a pull came from Aesar’s silence. Muscle memory that didn’t belong to Lykor.
His boots found turns he’d never taken, fingers reaching for doors he’d never opened. The corridors gathered around him like a path walked ten thousand times by someone who wasn’t him.
He shoved through the double doors and the library opened before him, mosaic marble smooth under his boots.
Aisles of books wound in deliberate rows, scrolls sealed in crystal casings.
No dust gathered between the spines, preservation magic keeping pristine what no one had bothered to read in decades.
Here, Aesar had spent countless hours alone with the kingdom’s oldest lies.
From his memories, Lykor recognized the worn dip in the marble in front of the western shelves.
The table where Aesar had first read of dragons reduced from legend to resource, marked in the king’s hand for reclamation.
The shelves where forgotten texts had assembled Galaeryn’s ambition one horror at a time.
Lykor let Aesar’s imprint guide him through the atrium until his feet stopped at a floor-to-ceiling window where Aesar would pace.
Lykor pressed his palm to the cool glass. Flames engulfed the city beyond it, and for a moment, Aesar’s old grief aligned with Lykor’s sight. A kingdom worth saving once. Before it rotted from the inside out.
A pulse of Essence split the air behind him.
Lykor’s spine seized before thought became motion. His beastblood cowered, then snarled awake.
Skin prickling, he turned, every hair lifting. Deep in the marrow, where Aesar had been silent for days, something flinched.
Still as marble, Galaeryn stood at the center of the atrium, a portal sealing shut behind him. His silver eyes glinted with the fires he’d let burn. Power rolled off him in waves, the weight of a thousand Wells crushed into a single star.
The stolen talents orbiting Lykor dimmed. Paltry. Laughable. Every scrap of Essence he’d stripped from nobles, guards, and councilors turned insignificant before the one who’d made him.
Galaeryn had been waiting.