Chapter 23
LYKOR
Lykor blinked into the dawn spilling over the stony peaks outside the Everfrost Caverns, where what remained of Asharyn had been driven underground.
Wind scraped across the ridge, skinning frost over black boulders.
Behind him, the cavern mouth, guarded by wraith and druids, cleaved the mountain, rimmed in ice and old snow packed hard as bone.
Beside him, the last of Serenna and Vesryn’s sunfire guttered out.
At their boots, the Heart of Stars Jassyn had secured lay cracked into broken shards.
Fenn kept close beside Serenna with one claw braced at her back, tracking the open sky.
They all stood ash-streaked from the battle, upright only because none of them could afford to collapse.
Blossom’s clear lids swept slowly across her eyes, peeling back to reveal moss-green irises.
A dragon named Blossom. Like a fucking pony. If anyone else had come up with it, Lykor would’ve made them regret saying it aloud. The insult rose by reflex but he smothered it.
She’d been with Jassyn in that estate. He had not.
Lichen raced under Blossom’s talons, green veins needling through frost as she arched her neck toward the rising sun. Her roar hit like bedrock cracking under Lykor’s feet, shuddering through his ribs and staggering him back a step.
She chuffed once, then bumped her snout against Jassyn’s chest.
Jassyn lifted a hand to her jaw, morning light catching the amber in his exhausted eyes as his trembling fingers scraped over her scales. Lykor had torn him out of Farine’s estate barely an hour ago, as if distance from its horrors meant anything.
“We should get underground,” Lykor said, attention cutting to the horizon. “If razorwing scouts catch us exposed, this refuge becomes a grave.”
Cinderax growled at his heels and blew a plume of fire, hoarfrost hissing to steam where it crawled over the stone. “The hatchlings will grow restless, sealed in so much stone. They were made for the sky, not a mountain’s belly.”
“They can resent the mountain with everyone else,” Lykor snapped. “We’re shoving three thousand bodies into a cave system and hoping it doesn’t become a tomb. Asharyn was already living on meager rations before the evacuation. Now it’s only a matter of time before we start starving in the dark.”
“I’ll lead the squads back to Asharyn,” Fenn offered. “Strip what’s left before Centarya musters a response.”
Necessary, if they meant to last another week.
“I’ll coordinate with my father and see who can be spared,” Fenn added. “If that’s acceptable.”
Lykor stiffened.
Jassyn’s hand stilled against Blossom’s jaw.
“Kal…” Lykor began, but the name snagged behind his teeth. His mind reached sideways, searching for the voice that should’ve been there to carry the grief.
Fenn glanced between them, frowning as he thumbed where a ring in his brow used to sit. “He’ll only take a minute to find. He’s probably—”
“Kal didn’t come back from the prisons,” Vesryn said softly.
Fenn went wraith-still, a breath leaving him without sound.
His head turned slowly to the prince. “He’s still there?”
Frost cracked over Lykor’s knuckles as his fists closed. “No. He fell. In the fighting.”
Fenn looked from Vesryn to Lykor, then to the cavern mouth as if Kal might still come through it. “How?” The word broke on the way out.
Lykor glanced at Blossom, her lids lowered as she leaned into Jassyn’s touch. Pale blue flowers unfurled under her talons, impossibly alive around the same dragon who had killed Kal.
But she bore no guilt. Lykor should’ve called the retreat the instant she appeared. The dead stacked in his chest like stones. Kal. Rangers. Wraith. Two of Fenn’s sisters he still had to tell him about.
Serenna reached for Fenn, her hand landing on his arm.
Fenn flinched away, shaking his head. “He–he didn’t make it? Did the elves… Was it…”
He didn’t finish.
“The king made Blossom defend the prisons,” Jassyn said, his hand dropping from her jaw. “She didn’t have a choice.”
Fenn seemed to remain upright by denial alone, claws curling tight at his sides. Talons sank into flesh, and blood welled between his fingers, steaming against the frosted stone.
Then his knees unlocked.
He staggered back, and Serenna reached him first. She caught one bloodied fist between both hands, pressed her thumbs to his knuckles, and sent a thin stream of mending into his palm. One finger at a time, she eased his claw open. Vesryn hovered beside them but kept his distance.
Fenn stood where she held him, shoulders lifting on hard, silent breaths, the tendons in his throat drawn tight as wire.
Lykor swallowed and turned away. He’d failed Kal. That truth lodged behind his sternum, too deep to tear out and too late to make useful.
And in Aesar’s absence, Lykor stood alone inside a grief that wasn’t wholly his yet still knew every nerve.
Kal should’ve been here. Leaning against the mountain face with arms crossed, already primed with an argument about what came next.
But the wind had his place now. Nothing else.
Lykor exhaled through his nose and cracked his neck. The dead could wait. The living couldn’t.
Blossom shifted her weight, lowering her head toward the cavern mouth. Cracks webbed outward from her claws as she inhaled, nostrils flaring like she was scenting the tunnels below.
“She can feel where the earth runs warm,” Jassyn murmured to Lykor, his breath fogging between them in the chill.
“She’ll take us deeper and shape chambers inside the mountain.
” He buried his fingers in his curls before lowering his arm.
“And for Elashor and Ayla, she’ll make cells that can’t be reached without a portal. They won’t see daylight again.”
Lykor nodded. Koln and his squad had already taken Elashor and Ayla below under guard.
Cinderax padded toward Fenn’s ankles, smoke curling from his snout. Whatever ancient wisdom the dragon was dispensing was likely useless. Comfort usually was.
Still, it was more than Lykor had offered.
Jassyn angled toward the cavern, and Lykor fell into step beside him. The entrance was too narrow for Blossom’s bulk, but he’d seen what she could do to stone.
Her power shuddered through the earth. Rock buckled beneath her claws, the mountain peeling open.
Threads of pale green light lanced outward from her talons, the arch of the tunnel widening in every direction like an unhinging jaw.
Lichen spread across the smoothed walls, mist rising where earth met frost.
The druids and wraith stationed at the threshold tensed, wings twitching as Blossom’s magic raced between their feet. Jassyn lifted a hand, stepping forward.
“She won’t harm you,” he said. “Her power will move around us.”
Blossom prowled ahead as the mountain remade its own throat. Her obsidian scales glinted in the glow that pulsed through the reshaped stone.
The air warmed in her wake, heat seeping from the mountain’s ribs into muscles Lykor had kept locked since Jassyn’s capture. Whatever rest he’d stolen since then barely deserved the name.
A few days underground. That was all they needed. Long enough to find another haven. Or long enough for the king to crack their refuge open and slaughter them in the dark.
The mountain had barely swallowed them before the world reached for Jassyn again. First Keeper. Child of earth and starlight. Titles polished bright enough to hide their chains.
Lykor’s fingers twitched as Kaedryn slipped around Blossom’s flank with her retinue in tow. Her ceremonial robes were gone, replaced by druid flight leathers.
At least now she’d dressed properly for the world ending.
She halted before Jassyn and pressed a claw to her heart. Once, that gesture might’ve looked like faith. After Asharyn, Lykor couldn’t tell whether devotion still held or habit had survived the fire.
Behind her, Asharyn’s guildmasters fanned out.
He read the set of their chins, the careful stillness in their wings, the way their attention landed on Jassyn.
Their precious prophecy—barely back from the Vallende estate and still reeking of Farine’s perfume—was being handed a city’s worth of panic before he’d scraped captivity from his skin.
“Your return steadies us,” Kaedryn said, her wings furled tight to her spine.
There it was. Gratitude with a hidden hook.
“We’re still counting the toll,” she continued. “At least a quarter of our number…” Her voice thinned. “Gone. Warriors. Artisans. Historians. Smiths. Entire bloodlines burned out by the Aelfyn scourge.”
Blossom’s magic rolled through the passage, carving their next fragile excuse for survival from the mountain. Alcoves split from stone, mineral steam curling through new seams. Growth kindled under her claws, crawling over the tunnel floor in luminous veins.
Survivors funneled into the chambers opening ahead—stained with soot, arms locked around children or whatever scraps they’d dragged from the city.
“Most of our people fled with wounds and nothing else,” Kaedryn said. “Half our stores burned with Asharyn. The scalebound have supplies, but nowhere near enough. Not for what’s left of us.”
Jassyn brushed his fingers along the stone wall, faint green light glowing at his fingertips. Mushrooms unfurled from the cracks—thick-bodied and dense, their caps rimmed in dim blue light.
Lykor recognized them. The same kind had grown in his fortress, stubborn enough to keep a population alive. The Bramblemaw’s gift made life crawl out of stone, but he hadn’t forgotten that the beast herself fed on living flesh.
“Blossom can grow gardens,” Jassyn said. “We won’t starve. Continue coordinating hunts with the wraith and rangers. We’ll carry on as we did in Asharyn.”
The guildmasters absorbed that in silence. Lykor watched the numbers sharpen behind their eyes—who could be spared, who could be spent, who would be sent into the open next after others didn’t come back.
Ahead, Blossom carved a refuge from the mountain’s gut, and still the demands found Jassyn faster than shelter could.