Chapter 18
SERENNA
The collapse kept roaring in Serenna’s skull long after the stone stopped falling.
Fenn had shielded her just before the ceiling slammed down, the only wall between her and the rubble. Through the dark, she felt his heartbeat and counted it.
Dust packed her throat. Serenna coughed against Fenn’s weight, eyes streaming, each ragged breath scraping through debris still drifting from the crumbled stone.
Then pain took over.
Her leg spasmed, a broken rock crushing her ankle to the cavern floor. When she strained against it, bone ground under the pressure, agony spearing up her calf until her vision blurred.
The cavern she’d brought down pressed in from every direction. Somewhere inside all this broken stone was Ayla.
Ayla.
The name shoved the pain in Serenna’s leg to the edge of her mind. She didn’t know whether Ayla lay dead beneath the rubble or waited alive in the dark with Serenna’s Starshard still latched around her throat.
Serenna reached for Essence.
Power answered, rushing around her.
The breath trapped in her chest broke loose as she shaped the magic into light. A globe of illumination flared across the ruin, revealing stone where air should’ve been—slabs leaning at wrong angles, grit sifting through cracks in what used to be the ceiling.
The collapse had left them in a cramped pocket beneath the wreckage, rocks wedged overhead too low for Serenna to stand without striking it. A tomb with room enough to breathe. Barely.
Fenn lay half over her, unmoving, ash and powdered dust darkening his golden hair. A rock had split the skin at his temple, blood tracing a thin line down his skull. Yet through the bond, his presence held steady, sunk deep in unconsciousness but stable.
Far across her other bond, Vesryn burned at the edge of reach—realms away, but moving closer through the expanse between them.
Serenna pressed her forehead to Fenn’s shoulder, relief striking sharp enough to hurt. Then she steadied herself before anything else could follow.
Weaving a quick lattice of mending, she stitched the split at his temple and stopped the blood. That had to be enough for now while she found their Starshards.
She clenched her teeth and heaved Fenn sideways off her, desperation finding leverage where her strength had run out.
Serenna’s lungs opened fully for the first time since the cavern fell. She pushed herself upright, and pain flashed white behind her eyes. A shriek clawed up her throat, but she bit it back until blood mixed with grit in her mouth.
Her boot was still trapped beneath a sheared edge of stone, too heavy to kick loose.
Serenna reached through the bond for Fenn’s Well, hauling on his force talent. Blue light surged between her fingers before she slammed it into the rock. Stone split with a crack that rang off every jagged surface in the cavern. The pieces fell away, spilling salt dust across her leg.
Only then did she feel the damage fully—swelling packed tight inside her boot, the joint hot and pulsing against leather. It wouldn’t bear weight without mending.
The rest of the cavern started to reach her in fragments, the ringing in her ears thinning screams and groans to a distant hum.
A broken stone had crushed a reaver, his jaw still working without sound.
Blood seeped into the sand where a druid’s claw raked slow furrows in the dust—just the arm, the rest buried.
A dark trail painted the rubble in a thickening line.
It ended at Taryn, and fear snapped cold through Serenna before the rest of the sight caught up.
Fenn’s sister lay half-trapped beneath debris, her ravaged wrist still leaking blood from where Cinderax had bitten her hand off.
Her unfocused eyes stared through the ruin, her remaining fist locked around Fenn’s Starshard, knuckles white against the facets.
Serenna’s beastblood surged. Shadows ripped from her palms, ravenous for retribution.
Darkness struck Taryn’s head.
Her skull detonated.
Blood sheeted across the nearest rocks, bones clicking against stone like hail. Her body convulsed once, wedged between two slabs, then sagged in the sand.
Fenn’s Starshard gave a final pulse between Taryn’s dead fingers before going dark.
A tremor started in Serenna’s arm and wouldn’t stop. She stared at the blood sinking into the sand, darkness fanning outward grain by grain.
Taryn had tried to kill Fenn back at Lykor’s fortress. She’d laughed when their Starshards forced them to butcher each other.
None of it steadied her.
Through the bond, Serenna sent a trembling thread of Fenn’s force across the ground and hooked it around his Starshard.
She jerked the magic hard. The gem resisted between Taryn’s clenched fingers, then wrenched loose, spinning through the dust into Serenna’s open palm.
She shoved it into her armor, the crystal still carrying the warmth of Taryn’s skin.
The cavern’s muffled noise dulled inside her skull until only her heartbeat broke through. Then a low hum surfaced under it—her Starshard, thrumming from somewhere deeper in the ruin.
Fenn’s gem was secured. For now. But if Ayla woke before Serenna reclaimed her own, control would cinch tight again.
Fenn’s chest rose and fell steadily. He was safer unconscious. Awake, he’d try to protect her, and Ayla would force Serenna to strike him.
Serenna didn’t look at Taryn’s corpse again. Gritting her teeth, she crawled forward through the sand. Her ruined ankle flashed agony up her leg with every inch, but the desperation to reach her Starshard pulsed louder than the pain.
She found Ayla ten paces away, under slabs balanced so precariously that they’d crush her if the cavern shuddered. Serenna braced herself, dragging her body closer.
One of Ayla’s arms curled over her middle, the other raised over her head as a shield. Blood trailed from her scalp into crimson hair already matted with it, the diadem still crowning her brow as if the collapse had spared the crown.
Serenna drove a wedge of force beneath the slabs and heaved.
Too reckless. Too wild. Stone groaned against stone, dust blooming thick enough to choke on. The rock above Ayla shifted, grinding lower.
The chain at Ayla’s throat was the only thing left in focus. Serenna drove more force beneath the rubble, prying until her sister’s body lay exposed.
She crawled the rest of the way through the settling grit and snatched her Starshard from Ayla’s throat. The chain bit into Ayla’s neck as she wrenched it free, broken links scattering into the sand. Ayla’s lashes fluttered but didn’t open.
Warmth flooded through the facets, familiar as her own pulse. Serenna shoved the gem into her armor beside Fenn’s.
Her drifting illumination caught on a crescent of gold in the rubble.
Her tether. The collar Ayla had stripped during the fight.
She couldn’t let Ayla wake unbound and risk her sister subduing her with Essence.
Serenna lunged for the collar, her body remembering fury before it remembered pain. The moment gold met her fingers, Essence vanished, the bonds with Fenn and Vesryn dispersing into silence.
Ayla began to stir.
With Skylash’s spark thrashing in her chest, Serenna threw herself across Ayla’s hips. Teeth bared, ankle forgotten, she crushed her sister’s shoulder into the sand with one hand while the other dragged the gold toward Ayla’s throat.
Ayla’s eyes flew open. Her hand shot to her neck, fingers scraping the empty place where Serenna’s Starshard had been. Panic flashed across her face. Then rage. She shrieked and bucked hard enough to throw Serenna sideways against a rock.
They grappled in the narrow space between the slabs—no room for skill, just fists and elbows—stone biting through torn leathers.
Serenna whipped the collar across Ayla’s temple. Gold cracked against bone, splitting the skin above her ear, and her sister’s head snapped sideways.
Serenna dove back on top and lashed a current of sparks across Ayla’s chest. Ayla flailed beneath her, muscles seizing, spine bowing, a strangled curse ripping from her throat. Her boot crashed into Serenna’s ankle.
Pain detonated behind Serenna’s eyes. A scream tore through her teeth, and the tether slid halfway from her hand before she clenched down hard enough to grind gold into her palm.
Essence whirled around Ayla’s hands, starlight darkening into shadows. They raced toward Serenna’s face—Ayla’s magic unleashed, half-formed but vicious.
Serenna shoved the gold around her sister’s throat and forced the ends together. Metal bit into metal and locked.
The shadows vanished.
Ayla’s hand shot toward her belt.
Serenna flung lightning in a crackling web. Sparks whipped around Ayla’s wrist, cinched tight, and pinned her twitching arms to the sand.
Ayla writhed beneath her, fingers still stretching.
The key.
Serenna ripped it from Ayla’s belt and shoved it into her armor beside the Starshards.
Ayla shrieked against the collar, the sound choked thin.
Serenna rolled off her and collapsed in the sand, waiting for the white bursts behind her eyes to fade and her ankle to become pain she could breathe through again.
Only then, with Ayla stripped of command and clawing at the gold at her throat, did Serenna truly see what the king’s magic had done to her.
The swell of her belly strained against torn leathers—months along, not weeks—visibly pronounced in just hours. Her cheekbones stood too sharp against skin drawn thin over her face, every spare ounce of her feeding the king’s heir she’d been forced to carry.
Light glinted from Ayla’s brow.
Serenna’s stomach dropped.
The diadem’s Starshard.
The tether had smothered Ayla’s magic, but the gem still held her reserves. She could draw from it, tethered or not.
Ayla’s fingers stilled on the collar.
They both moved at once.
Serenna threw herself at the crown. She caught herself on her palms, lurching forward until her hands closed around the silver. Ayla’s fingers locked onto the gem, but Serenna ripped the diadem free, taking hair along with it.
Serenna panted and looked at the Starshard.
Then at her sister.