Chapter 24
SERENNA
Serenna tore awake gasping, her spine arching off the ground, one hand clamping over her sternum. A white-hot grief seared beneath her ribs, flooding her pulse with pain her body claimed as its own.
Then the bond went mute.
Fenn.
She lunged into the silence after him—grasping, desperate, panic scrabbling through her.
He shut her out.
Every emotion vanished behind a barricade he’d never raised between them before.
Breath left her in shallow pulls. The cavern returned in fragments—cool moss beneath her spine, the sour heat of too many bodies thickening the air, green-blue light spilling over faces slack with exhaustion.
Wraith, druids, magus, and everyone caught between lay where two sleepless days had felled them, scattered through the chambers Blossom had shaped.
Her hand shot sideways and closed over cold space where Vesryn should’ve been.
Serenna shoved upright, and the cavern lurched around her. A few paces away, Koln lay on his side, dark hair spilled across his arm. Beside him, the patch of moss where Fenn had settled for the night lay flattened and empty.
Her pulse struck high against her throat. She reached through the bond again, searching for Vesryn this time.
There.
Somewhere in the tunnels above her. Moving with the grim certainty of someone who’d seen Fenn leave and had followed.
Serenna snatched up her cloak, flung it across her shoulders, and followed the steady burn of Vesryn’s presence through the mountain.
She wove through the dim passages, past sentries braced against exhaustion, past crates and bedrolls, until the tunnel opened onto the mountain’s eastern face.
Cold bit her cheeks. Her boots skidded on frost-slick stone, and she caught herself against a jagged seam beside the cavern mouth.
Below, the Everfrost fell away in broken shelves of rock and pale scrub toward pines gathered thick at the mountain’s feet.
Steam lifted from fissures along the slope and thinned among the trunks, dawn silvering the outermost needles.
Serenna followed Vesryn’s trail down the ridge, where frost-stiff grass spread below the dying stars and the forest pressed close beyond it. Vesryn stood at the meadow’s rim, shoulders tense through his cloak.
He didn’t turn when she approached, but when she stepped beside him, his hand found hers and squeezed tight.
Near the center of the meadow, Fenn crouched low in the grass, his back to them. With only his leathers between him and the cold, he held wraith-still, each breath too shallow to lift his ribs.
Three hatchlings prowled through the first light, wings tucked tight as they stalked movement near the tree line.
Vasharax led with a Stormstrike creeping at her flank, their obsidian scales glinting with every step. Behind them, a Tidecrasher lumbered, cold mist pluming from his nostrils.
Fenn lifted one claw toward a shadow darting through the exposed roots.
Vasharax pounced and pitched snout-first into the grass. She surfaced hissing, frills flared, an ember snapping between her jaws.
The Stormstrike’s tail lashed. She crept forward, muscles bunching under her scales, then shrieked, spraying sparks as she sprang. Her jaws clamped shut around the fleeing shape. She reared back, whipping the creature side to side before dropping it at Fenn’s knees.
Serenna flared her dragonsight. The shape sharpened into a vole, limp and still.
Fenn stared at it. His talons flexed, scoring pale furrows through the frost-crusted grass. When he spoke, his voice barely crossed the meadow.
“You have to learn this. No one else is going to do it for you.”
The Tidecrasher struck, snatched the vole, and bolted away. Vasharax and the Stormstrike hissed and tore after him in a blur of scales.
Fenn’s shoulders sagged. He rose to one knee, then stopped there, each draw of air coming too quick for a body held so rigid.
Across the bond, the barricade inside him splintered. Grief drove into Serenna, cinching her lungs around the next breath. He held wraith-still while each pulse struck her harder than the last.
She’d known Fenn through nearly every emotion the bond could carry—rage that choked like smoke, joy like sunlight flung wide, desire so deep it hummed in her marrow. Now the bright warmth of him had withdrawn into a silence that left his presence cold in her chest.
Beside her, Vesryn stood unmoving, his thumb tracing a slow arc across her knuckles. The Tidecrasher swallowed the vole before Vasharax and the Stormstrike piled on him, all three rolling through the frost in a tangle of wings and offended shrieks.
Fenn stared at the grass while the hatchlings fought and tumbled around him.
“Kal taught him this,” Vesryn sent telepathically, meant for her alone. “How to hunt. How to survive.”
Serenna squeezed Vesryn’s hand and released him. She crossed the meadow, frost breaking under her boots, then knelt beside Fenn. The frozen grass dampened her knees as she pulled him close.
Fenn’s breath hitched. He folded into her, forehead pressed to her neck, arms winding tight around her waist.
Frost cracked behind Serenna, and Vesryn knelt on Fenn’s other side, his hand settling on Fenn’s shoulder. They closed around him, saying nothing as silent tremors shuddered through his body.
Across the meadow, the hatchlings stilled, all turning toward Fenn.
Then Vesryn spoke, his voice pitched low.
“When Kal was first assigned to the royal guard, I tested him. Constantly. I was a spoiled bastard and thought the rules didn’t apply to me.”
He gave a humorless grunt.
“Aesar and I were supposed to fly the dracovae one afternoon. I portaled us to a human village instead. Told him I wanted to try a drink the rangers kept talking about—something the farmers brewed and traded for shed dracovae scales. But Aesar refused to set foot in the tavern, saying he wouldn’t be ‘complicit in whatever idiocy’ I was planning.
He returned to the capital, so I went in alone. Got drunk. Very drunk.”
Fenn lifted his forehead from Serenna’s neck, his attention settling on Vesryn.
“Apparently I told the humans I came from the stars. Started levitating their mugs to prove it, because naturally the best way to preserve elven secrecy is to perform miracles for drunk farmers.” His mouth twisted around the last word.
“The next thing I remember, I was vomiting in a ditch with Aesar and Kal standing over me.”
An old ache pressed through the bond, tightening through Serenna’s ribs each time Vesryn spoke Kal’s name.
In the silence, the hatchlings edged closer. Frost softened under Vasharax and the Stormstrike. Around the Tidecrasher’s claws, it thickened into glittering crystals.
“Kal said nothing at first,” Vesryn continued, his focus on the dragons.
“He hauled me up, portaled us out, and spent the next six hours tracking down every human in that tavern. He made sure they had enough coin to forget what they’d seen.
Only then did he corner me and say, ‘If I report this, the king punishes you—and probably rewards me for it. You’re not exactly his favorite son.
So we’re going to pretend this never happened.
And you’re never pulling a stunt like this again. ’”
Fenn released a huffed breath. “He never spoke about his life as an elf. I didn’t know he spent it dragging princelings out of ditches.” His voice roughened, but his gaze remained on Vasharax. “But that lecture—I heard versions of it often enough.”
Serenna pressed her cheek against Fenn’s shoulder and tightened her hold.
“I wish I could say that was the last time,” Vesryn murmured. “He chose to protect me when he could’ve advanced his position. Stars know Elashor would’ve turned me in without a thought. I expected Kal to hold it over my head.” His jaw worked. “But he never did.”
Serenna’s throat ached. The hatchlings gathered near them, wings folded close, and Vasharax crossed the final span to press her snout against Fenn’s knee. A low rumble stirred in her throat.
“He would be proud of you,” Vesryn said, his hand tightening on Fenn’s shoulder. “But I know he told you that himself. Kal didn’t leave the important things unsaid.”
Fenn’s lips parted, then closed. His gaze stayed on the hatchlings, on Vasharax’s small snout pressed to his knee.
“He was supposed to be here,” Fenn said, his voice worn hoarse. “My mother’s gone. Now him. Three of my sisters. Four left, and now the clan will look to me.” A laugh scraped out of him, brief and ruined. “A brilliant succession when I’m barely fit to command myself.”
Serenna’s denial struck the back of her throat. Fenn had pried truth from every silence she and Vesryn tried to hide inside. He’d held the three of them together by refusing to let either of them retreat.
His next breath caught before she could speak. His arm tightened around her, and his palm closed over Vesryn’s hand where it rested on his shoulder.
And he sobbed.
The restraint holding him together tore loose. Grief surged through the bond, whitening Serenna’s vision. The anguish bore the imprint of Kal’s hand—the steady warmth of it, remembered so deeply Fenn’s body still leaned toward where it should’ve been.
He shook in her arms, and Vesryn’s grip never left him. His jaw stayed clenched, every breath measured.
A fierce ache tightened in Serenna’s chest as she watched Vesryn—a male who guarded gentleness as though someone might tear it from his hands—hold steady so Fenn could fall.
They stayed with him as sunlight cleared the ridge and frost steamed from the grass around them.