Chapter 19
SERENNA
Serenna dragged herself through the portal and onto the cliff outside the collapsed cavern, the stone still radiating the day’s warmth under her knees. Smoke billowed from Asharyn below, fire lighting it from within.
She drew only one breath before Vesryn seized her.
He dropped beside her, palms sweeping her face, her throat, the trembling wreck of her hands. His fingers pressed everywhere, hunting for injury.
Then the agony in her ankle tore out in a rush, flooding straight into Vesryn. Relief hit like a wound of its own, leaving her gasping. His jaw locked, scales flickering along his neck as he absorbed every last shred of pain through the bond without a sound.
She could’ve told him not to, but it wouldn’t have mattered.
His mouth crashed into hers, teeth catching her lower lip. One hand tangled in her hair while the other cradled her jaw like she might dissolve.
Beneath the kiss, through the bond torn wide open, her name moved through him again and again with terrible tenderness, carrying the emotion he couldn’t put into words. He held the feeling at the edge of language and kissed her harder instead.
When he pulled back, his pupils had narrowed to draconic slits, jade irises burning through the night. His focus dropped to her boot—leather crushed inward and dark with blood—and as crimson light raced to his fingertips, Fenn emerged from the portal.
He hauled himself through on one forearm, the other hooked around Ayla.
He looked worse in the firelight flickering up from the city—dirt streaking his face, blood dried dark at his scalp. Still, he staggered to his feet and dragged Ayla with him, his shoulders squaring from an exhaustion that echoed Serenna’s own.
Vesryn’s hands halted above her ankle, the mending lattice half-woven. His attention flicked over Ayla, then snagged on Fenn—on skin that should’ve matched the midnight sky, on golden hair and blue eyes, a face rewritten in an arch elf’s image.
“What happened to you?”
“What?” Fenn bared teeth that should’ve been fangs, his grin too sharp for the face wearing it. “First time seeing an elf prettier than yourself, princeling?”
Serenna sensed the wrongness beneath Fenn’s bravado—the body he hadn’t chosen, every proud piercing peeled away and replaced with someone else’s standard of perfection.
“At least your tongue survived the transformation,” Vesryn muttered, returning his attention to her ankle.
“Keep talking about my tongue, and I’ll start thinking you missed me.”
Fenn shifted into his wings. They snapped wide for balance as he hitched Ayla higher against his side.
Vesryn rolled his eyes and finished braiding the mending lattice, threading Essence through Serenna’s boot with more urgency than finesse.
“Just stabilize it,” she said. “We can finish the healing later.”
Vesryn nodded and thinned the strands to a simpler weave, warmth settling deep around the swollen joint, bracing bone to bear weight.
When he extinguished his power, he rose and pulled Serenna to her feet. Her ankle held, numb and precarious beneath her.
She turned toward the view she’d been avoiding.
Asharyn smoldered below the cliff. Black smoke rolled thick above the streets, split by bursts of Essence and wild streaks of flame. Stone buildings she’d memorized from a hundred flights jutted broken against a sky stained red by fire.
Serenna stared at the city she’d begun to think of as home, guilt choking her throat along with the smoke. She’d led Ayla to this haven. A thousand years of hidden sanctuary, destroyed in a single night.
She couldn’t count the lives lost from here. Her mind reached for the number anyway, then recoiled before it could become real.
“Mara and Thalaesyn should have the evacuation portals open by now,” Vesryn said. His hand hadn’t left her arm. “Lykor planned for this.”
Some of the pressure loosened behind her ribs. Not all their people would be lost.
But the hatchlings…
She didn’t know how many had been stolen before the cavern collapsed, or how many had escaped into a city already burning.
Serenna’s gaze whipped toward Ayla, hatred crawling through every nerve. Ayla sagged against Fenn’s side, eyes unfocused on the city she’d invaded. Close enough to punish.
Ayla’s Starshard hummed in Serenna’s leathers, and for one vicious moment, Serenna’s fingers twitched toward it. She could seize her sister’s power and turn it on Centarya’s soldiers. Make their queen strike as her weapon.
The thought sent a scorch of remembered fire down Serenna’s arms. Her fingers curled away from the shard.
Gaze locked on the siege below, Serenna’s voice came barely above a whisper. “We need to get down there.”
Vesryn didn’t argue. His fingers slipped through hers as he opened a portal. Serenna stepped through at his side with Fenn close behind.
Heat struck first. Smoke followed, thick and acrid, clogging her lungs.
Sound hit next—metal clanging against metal, Starshards shrieking as they discharged. Somewhere through the haze, a child wailed, loud enough to pierce through the clamor.
Centarya’s forces clashed with wraith and druids in the cramped streets, steel and Essence spilling blood between market stalls.
Families poured through the evacuation portals, arms full of whatever they could carry.
Sandstriders bellowed as handlers drove them forward, eyes rolling white, carts jolting and screeching over the cobblestones.
Above, wings beat gales into the melee—druids and wraith diving through the smoke, raining fire and shadows onto Centarya’s advancing lines.
Fenn’s whistle split through the square, a sharp two-note command. A squad coalesced from the shadows, then faltered when they found an elf standing where their captain should’ve been.
“It’s me,” Fenn growled, shoving Ayla to the nearest wraith. “Full guard. She stays tethered. Secure her on the other side.”
The wraith blinked, but Vesryn didn’t give them time to hesitate. “You heard him.”
The warriors closed ranks around Ayla and ushered her toward the portals, cutting past families clutching children.
Mara’s gaze caught on the collar and the wraith guarding Ayla. Her mouth flattened, but she waved them through without a word.
The queen who’d invaded their city and made Serenna kill children for sport went through the portal before the mother holding a screaming infant three paces behind her.
The Coliseum rose behind Serenna’s eyes again—sand, ash, small bodies, Ayla watching from above. She understood why her sister had to be secured first. That only made the choice curdle on her tongue.
She swallowed the bitterness and shifted into her wings, the clawed tips clenching tight.
“The evacuation is taking too long.” Her voice frayed at the edges. “We need to buy them more time.”
Vesryn snatched her hand as if expecting her to take flight. “I just got you back. I’m not losing you to this battle.”
“We fight.” Fenn gripped Vesryn’s shoulder. “The three of us together. Standing farther from the flames won’t make the risk vanish.”
He stepped back from the prince and pulled the Starshard from his armor.
Essence ignited around him in a blinding rush, glowing talents unseating one by one until six orbs spun like severed stars.
He kept portaling and force in his Well—the talents Serenna had gifted him.
Through the bond, she felt the feral satisfaction of his body shedding the shape Ayla had forced him into.
Golden hair bled dark, shadow devouring the gilded lie until night crowned him again. His skin deepened to indigo as his frame lengthened to the height Serenna knew, joints cracking as his fingers stretched back into taloned claws.
His eyes flickered, glacial blue searing away to crimson. When they landed on Serenna, they burned. And when he grinned at Vesryn, his fangs flashed in the firelight.
“I can still wield your elf magics with the Starshard,” he said, curling his fingers around the gem as the talents spun closer. “Taryn gave me a thorough demonstration of its uses.”
He drew the abilities into the Starshard, their light splintering through its facets until the gem pulsed in his palm.
“But this form…” He flexed his wings, claws raking the air. “This one is mine.”
With Vesryn’s hand clasped in hers, Serenna reached for Fenn, settling her other palm against his chest. The market fell away until all she felt was his drumming heartbeat.
Fenn’s fingers closed over hers. The bonds hummed between the three of them, and for the first time since before Saundyl’s ship, Serenna could breathe.
Fenn spread his wings wide. “Shall we?”
He hooked an arm around her waist before she could answer, and Vesryn’s fingers tightened through hers. Fenn warped her skyward, the prince’s curse snarling through the bond as he was yanked up with them.
The world folded, sound crushing flat, pressure slamming her ribs, the ground ripping away beneath them.
They reappeared high above Asharyn.
Fenn released her waist and swept out beside her as the city sprawled in flames below. Serenna caught the sky with Vesryn still holding her hand, their wings beating in tandem.
One corner of Fenn’s mouth lifted when he saw the prince’s fingers still locked through hers.
Vesryn released her as though the contact burned. “Warp us like that again,” he said, voice honed down to threat, “and I’ll portal you into the lake.”
“Promises,” Fenn murmured. “Wraith have a celebrated history with water, princeling.”
Vesryn’s mouth tightened around whatever answer wanted out. He jerked his chin toward the southern district, where ice and shadows churned above the streets. “That must be Lykor.”
Serenna flared her dragonsight and Lykor resolved through the haze. He carved through the sky on azure wings coated with rime, shadows lashing with every beat. He dove low over a building and ice speared from his fists, freezing a magus solid where they stood.
Serenna scanned the burning city. “Then we help him.”
She tucked her wings and dove. Vesryn and Fenn fell into place at her sides, wind roaring past as they arrowed toward the south.
Lykor banked hard ahead of them, an obsidian arc cleaving the night. A bolt of Essence streaked toward him from the rooftops. He rolled beneath it, wings folding tight before snapping wide, then flung a fistful of shadows into the attacker, detonating her before a scream ever formed.
Frost sheathed his arms as he rose to meet them, already scanning for the next threat.
Essence erupted from the streets below—geysers of rending and force racing toward them. Lykor flicked his wrist, and a violet shield cracked across the air, encasing them in a sphere.
The pressure of his Well thundered against the scales that Serenna had locked into place, her bones ringing with the force of his power.
Lykor’s gaze raked over her and Fenn before he searched the sky behind them.
“Jassyn?” Just the name. A demand already halfway to violence.
Serenna’s wings missed a beat. She knew where Jassyn was. And he’d already been sacrificed too many times by people who named it duty. The thought of offering him up to another night of imprisonment soured her stomach.
But Asharyn was dying below, and if Lykor abandoned the fight, Centarya’s soldiers would break through and reach the fleeing families.
Serenna hated the justification before the words even left her mouth.
“He wasn’t with us.”
Lykor’s fangs caught the moonlight, ice crusting over his clenched wing claws. He wrenched his focus from the empty sky, killing a snarl before it finished.
“Koln and the wraith hold the eastern district. What’s left of it. Kaedryn’s druids are scattered west with our Essence-wielders. Most of the citizens are through the portals.” His jaw tightened. “Daeryn and Bhreena are already on the other side with the rangers. Presumably keeping order.”
He sliced a hand toward the streets buckling under fire and smoke.
“You three push north and keep them off the evacuation route.”
A strike of rending cracked against Lykor’s shield hard enough to make Serenna flinch. Lykor didn’t blink.
“I’ll hold here. Mara and Thalaesyn need the minutes we can give them.”
“Can we take the city back?” Serenna already knew the answer, but hearing it from Lykor would make it final.
“We can kill what’s in front of us. That doesn’t mean we can win the night.” Lykor didn’t look at any of them. “The king knows where to gut us now.”
Flames sparked between Fenn’s claws. “So we hold until every last one of ours is out.”
“Then get to it,” Lykor muttered.
He shattered the shield and warped to the streets without warning.
Jassyn’s name stayed behind, lodged in Serenna’s throat.