Chapter 22
JASSYN
With heavy-lidded eyes still dazed by Stardust, Farine watched Jassyn, possession gleaming through the fog. A jeweled comb had slipped free and struck stone as she sat swaying against a vine-strangled column, one hand braced in the moss.
The coercion was gone. Jassyn knew that—he’d torn every scrap of magic from his skull. Yet his body still locked at the sight of her, instincts trained deeper than compulsion.
Farine pulled herself to her feet against the column, tangled hair falling across her face. Her gaze flicked to Blossom, to Elashor restrained between the dragon’s jaws, then settled back on Jassyn, sapphire eyes bright with calculation.
“You forget,” she murmured as she straightened, “without me, you’d never have survived the elves. I gave you a place.” Her lips curled, almost fondly. “The highest honor the Vallendes ever bestowed was your position in my court.”
Jassyn’s ears rang as her words slithered through him, old bindings tightening. He knew that voice best in darkness—the murmur that came after she’d used him, softening ownership into affection, turning violation into something he was meant to appreciate.
“They would’ve discarded you,” Farine said, almost gently as she took a step closer. “I saw what you were worth. I made you mine because I was the only one who knew how to protect you.”
Jassyn swallowed, acid burning the back of his throat. He lifted a hand, reaching for thorns, for roots, for any life that could end her.
But the earth didn’t move.
He tried again. Reached for the bloom, for the lash of vine that had obeyed him only moments before. But the magic slipped through his grasp, frayed and failing.
Power waited, thrumming, poised to answer his call. Jassyn’s breath tore from his chest. It wasn’t the earth failing him.
He just couldn’t do it.
Stars, he couldn’t. He’d come this far but couldn’t raise a hand against the one who’d conditioned him to yield. She’d taught him that stillness hurt less, that silence cost less, that survival could wear the shape of willingness if someone else arranged his body carefully enough.
The guard he’d bound with coercion approached Blossom’s flank. Knife in hand, blood drying to her wrist, stare vacant. Waiting for the next order.
The last of the soldiers.
He could end Farine with one command. If his own body wouldn’t obey him, he could make someone else’s.
Jassyn hooked his awareness into the guard’s mind again, just enough to feel the thread of coercion stretch taut. She stepped to his side, blade lifting toward Farine, becoming the violence his limbs refused.
He only had to give the command.
One order, and the guard would slit Farine’s throat.
Jassyn’s jaw unlocked.
The earth exhaled, wind stirring through leaves.
Blossom’s head snapped skyward just as a shadow cleaved the canopy above.
The soldier at his side detonated.
Flesh and bone burst outward in a red concussion. Jassyn flared a shield on instinct, blood and splintered bone hammering the ward hard enough to rattle his teeth.
Boots struck the moss beside Jassyn, wings veiled in frost, shadows writhing from armor.
Lykor.
His attention landed on Jassyn first, a single searing sweep, cataloging damage. Then it cut across the clearing—the trees consuming the vault, Blossom with Elashor clenched in her jaws, Farine swaying where she stood, chin tilted, already measuring Lykor as another body to command.
Crimson eyes returned to Jassyn, burning with fury and promise.
Jassyn’s shield collapsed. His knees followed.
Lykor caught him. Arms closed around him, scorched armor pressing against his cheek and smelling of frost and smoke. The only person in the grove who’d never required anything from him.
Jassyn buried his face into the crook of Lykor’s neck and let himself stay there, just for a moment.
Blossom growled.
The sound rippled through the glade, low and thunderous. The leathery fringes on her spine lifted.
Jassyn forced himself upright, his remaining strength shuddering back into his limbs. “It’s alright,” he said, lifting his hands to soothe her.
Ice pounding into her hide. Shadows splitting scale. The blinding, burning fire in the mountain. She hadn’t forgotten the scent of those who’d harmed her.
“Lykor didn’t know,” Jassyn said quietly. “He won’t hurt you now.”
Lykor’s wings twitched. His attention slid to the wraith still dangling from her jaws.
“Elashor,” Jassyn whispered.
Lykor went still. From the way his eyes ignited, Jassyn thought he would tear the general from her fangs and finish what the dragon had begun.
“No,” Jassyn rasped. “We need him alive.”
Shadows writhed around Lykor’s fists, frost cracking at the edges of his armor. Then his fury found the only Vallende left unclaimed.
He stalked forward and Farine scrambled back, palms raised as her back hit a tree.
“I made him,” she hissed as Lykor cornered her. Essence flickered in a broken halo as she tried to summon it. “No one will ever love him as I have.”
Jassyn’s breath caught. Old wounds tightened around his lungs, places she’d stitched over with praise but kept festering with poison.
“I couldn’t do it,” he said, voice breaking as he reached Lykor’s side. “I wanted to. I just…”
“You’re not a killer,” Lykor said. Warmth bled from his gaze, icing over. “But I am.”
Lykor was wrong. Jassyn had ended lives. He’d fed guards to Blossom’s jaws and coerced a soldier into slitting throats.
But now Lykor stood before him, waiting for permission he didn’t need, unwilling to steal the choice from him, offering to carry the violence so Jassyn didn’t have to.
Jassyn exhaled through his nose and nodded.
Frost raced along Lykor’s arm, solidifying into a spiked gauntlet of ice and shadow.
“Please,” Farine breathed. “I protected him. Ask him. I gave him everything. He knows what they would’ve done.”
Lykor’s lip curled back from his fangs. He pivoted so fast he blurred, the ice-crowned gauntlet smashing through Farine’s skull with a crack that silenced the grove.