Chapter 27
SERENNA
After two full days and nights in the Everfrost Caverns, Serenna stood in the open. She caught Fenn’s arm as he reached the cliff’s edge, his wings twitching toward the sky. Metal flashed along his face. He looked like himself again, and that’s what made her pause.
“Your piercings,” she said. Studs and rings glinted along his ears and brows, each piece restoring what Taryn had stripped away.
Fenn’s eyes slid past her toward Vesryn, who stood on her other side, the clawed tips of his wings flexing to bask in the dawn.
“Why are you looking at him?”
Fenn’s fang clicked against the ring in his lip. “Your princeling helped me…reacquire them.”
“Reacquire?” she echoed, leveling him with a look as she shifted into her wings.
Membranes unfurled through the slits in her armor, rustling in the icy wind rolling off the peaks of the Everfrost. Cold gnawed at her skin before scales climbed across her arms. “Please tell me you two did not go back to Centarya.”
“We did not go back to Centarya,” Vesryn repeated.
“That’s not even a good lie!” Serenna whirled on him, planting a finger against his chest. “I can sense you two are hiding something.”
She gave both bonds an accusing tug. To prove what, she wasn’t sure. Only that she could.
She squinted at the rising sun, barely cresting the ridge. “When did you even sneak off to do that?”
Fenn rubbed the back of his neck, talons snagging through his braids. “Before you woke up.”
“You…what?”
He smirked, bumping her shoulder. “You rouse late.”
The memory of the golden collar tightened Serenna’s throat. Her eyes snapped to Vesryn, certain the entire scheme had been his idea. “You could’ve been captured. What if they tortured this location out of you? What if they hurt—”
“We weren’t seen,” Vesryn interrupted, his calm scraping against the panic climbing her throat. “Nothing happened.”
Fenn nodded. “I cloaked us. It was quick. In and out.”
Serenna folded her arms across her leathers. “Don’t the wraith have extra jewelry you could’ve acquired?”
Fenn thumbed the obsidian scale at the point of his ear. “These are mine.”
“But—”
“Leave it,” Vesryn clipped. “Enough was already taken from him.”
Serenna opened her mouth, then shut it again, the grief in Vesryn’s words killing that protest before she could give it voice.
She’d spent so long wishing the tension between him and Fenn would ease that she’d never considered peace might forge something worse—a reckless alliance she’d have to rein in.
“So if you broke into the Spire,” Serenna said, “tell me you at least found something useful about Centarya, because I don’t believe that you slipped into Taryn’s chambers, stole back a few piercings, and simply left.”
Vesryn glanced at Fenn, who gave the barest shrug.
“We searched the grounds. The hatchlings aren’t on campus,” Vesryn said. “A magus we…questioned indicated they were taken to the Drowned Spires.”
The Drowned Spires. Where Galaeryn would consolidate his power on this side of the world.
Wind howled low between the crags, hissing across Serenna’s scales. “And their Essence-wielders?”
Fenn nudged a loose shard of ice over the cliff with his boot. “They lost a quarter of the force they brought to Asharyn.”
Serenna shook her head. They were still outnumbered. No matter how many fell, the king would always have more bodies to conscript. More bloodlines to bleed dry.
Vesryn angled toward the cliff before she could pry another detail loose. “Are you two ready to fly? Zaeryn already has a head start, leading the western sweep on Trella. I’d rather return tonight with more to show for it than the rangers.”
Naturally Vesryn had turned the search for Veyrix into a contest. But if covering more sky were truly his concern, he wouldn’t have lent Naru to another rider.
Above the peaks, the sky stretched wide enough to promise freedom. But every shadow along the ridgeline could conceal a razorwing already tracking them, waiting to strike.
Fenn flashed his fangs. “We’ll see who gets to the Aetherveil first.”
He winked, then warped, vanishing from the cliff and reappearing as a dark fleck in the pale sky.
Vesryn muttered something about “wraith theatrics” as he tore open a portal. He dove through before the edges finished forming, chasing Fenn into the sky.
Serenna rolled her eyes. She backed up five paces across the stone, breath clouding before her, then sprinted.
Her armor creaked with every stride as the cliff’s edge hurtled closer.
She hit the rim and launched—legs driving off stone, wings tearing wide as wind slammed beneath her membranes and the mountain fell away.
As she climbed, Serenna left her Starshard cold against her throat. The memory of all three crystals igniting still shivered through her nerves—a prismatic current none of them quite knew how to control. Instead, she plunged through the bonds into their shared Well and seized portaling.
The sky opened into a void. Tucking her wings, she shot through in pursuit.
A river spilled from the Everfrost Caverns, a silver scar winding between frozen cliffs beneath low-hanging clouds. The rangers had fanned out across the west, their dracovae hunting warmer thermals, while Serenna, Vesryn, and Fenn flew into the unmapped north.
Serenna sliced through the currents until she flanked Vesryn and Fenn, her braid snapping behind her. Fenn cackled as he warped circles around the prince while Vesryn sent fire ripping through each afterimage Fenn left behind.
Fenn split the air with a portal and plunged through, emerging miles ahead.
With each rift, the mountains unraveled into jagged ridges, their peaks sheared by ages of wind. Serenna settled into Vesryn’s wake, letting the air he carved steal some of the strain.
They vaulted through portal after portal as the sun climbed, crossing frostbitten plains veined with rivers and fractured by ice.
Steam silvered the fault lines below, where warmth seeped through and pale mosses clung to exposed stone.
Serenna’s muscles burned with each wingbeat as the sky fought her for every inch.
Far ahead, a shimmer wavered against the horizon.
Fenn banked sharply, air thundering beneath him as he pulled up short. Wild delight broke across his face—the first Serenna had seen in days.
He pointed with a talon, breath misting. “Tell me your dragonsight can see that even if your elf eyes can’t.”
Vesryn’s pupils thinned to draconic slits as he searched the distance. “See what?”
Fenn motioned wildly. “Sky islands. Like your academy but bigger. Much bigger.”
Vesryn’s skepticism vanished. He tore open a portal and dove through without waiting.
Fenn flashed Serenna a triumphant grin. She shook her head, and they surged through the rift.
On the other side, the world broke open.
Serenna flared her wings and swept into a hover with Vesryn and Fenn, the sudden resistance jarring her shoulders.
The Aetherveil rose before them—floating islands strewn like fragments of a broken crown.
Dozens at first, then hundreds, suspended at staggering heights, their jagged undersides trailing curtains of mist and vines.
Root bridges spanned between neighboring islands, swaying in their slow drift.
Wind hummed through the archipelago, a vibration Serenna felt through her connection to the earth.
“Look at that,” Fenn murmured. “Some of the sky islands have towers.”
Serenna followed his gesture farther out, where pale spires climbed in slender twists, their contours bending as if they’d been grown rather than built.
“The druids must’ve lived here once,” Vesryn said. “We could make this our new base.”
“How?” Serenna countered. “Not everyone has wings or the ability to portal.”
“And Blossom didn’t carve shelter into the Everfrost so you could uproot everyone the instant a sky castle caught your eye,” Fenn added.
“I’d rather hold the skies than rot underground.” Vesryn’s wing talons clacked together before he angled toward the nearest island. “Let’s get closer.”
“We don’t even know if we’re alone here,” Serenna said, tilting her wings into a higher current. “We should regroup with—”
Vesryn was already gone, racing toward the isle without looking back.
“He’s never going to listen, is he?” Serenna mumbled.
“You know he only ignores you because of the face you make,” Fenn said before peeling off after him.
Serenna tipped into pursuit, exasperation hissing between her teeth. Above them, more islands hung in ascending tiers, surfacing through layered clouds like stepping stones.
The sky pulsed.
The first metallic note pulled every tendon along Serenna’s wings taut.
A Starshard.
Its rising shriek vibrated through her skull as she tracked it toward the island’s underside, where rugged stone narrowed to a tapered point. There, embedded in the rock, the crystal flared to life.
Force erupted from the gem and ripped across their flight path.
Fenn warped back beside her. His arm locked around her waist, and space buckled, snatching the sky from her wings. They reappeared higher along the island’s edge as the blast sheared through the air below.
Vesryn didn’t dodge fast enough.
The blast struck him square in the chest. The impact ricocheted through the bond and stole the strength from Serenna’s next wingbeat. Vesryn’s membranes collapsed, his body folding around the blow as he dropped from the air.
He plummeted—spinning, limbs loose, wings trailing behind him. Below, open sky gaped all the way down to a world so distant it had gone green and featureless.
Before Serenna could fold into a dive—or Fenn could warp after him—Vesryn’s wings cracked open, wrenching him out of the fall.
He drove upward in a steep arc and drew level with them, glaring at the gem below. “I’m getting really tired of being attacked by Starshards.”
“A little caution might improve your odds,” Serenna muttered.
Vesryn scowled at her and yanked his own gem from beneath his leathers, its facets glinting in the sun.
Serenna’s attention dropped to the crystal at her throat, bracing for the prismatic light that had bound all three of them in Asharyn. But it remained dark. So did Fenn’s.
Ebon light burst from the Starshard in Vesryn’s fist and streaked downward, a vein of midnight distorting the daylight around it.
Serenna had seen that impossible darkness once before, inside a tree in the druid jungle, devouring every shred of Essence Vesryn had cast against it.
Now he drove the current into the embedded Starshard, black barbs hooking between its facets. Both gems screamed.
Essence ripped from the island’s shard in blazing ribbons and burned through the ebon light before Vesryn’s Starshard siphoned it. He flew around the tapered cone, draining the gem until the crystal dimmed and fell silent.
Then he lashed a cord of force around it and wrenched. Stone exploded from the island’s underside. The spent Starshard tore free and snapped into his palm.
He tucked it into his leathers and turned, already hunting for the next island. “How many Starshards do you think defend this chain?”
Serenna groaned.
Of course he wanted more. The gleam in his eyes had already sharpened into pursuit. They wouldn’t be leaving until he’d stripped the entire Aetherveil bare. He would argue that they needed every gem they could claim, and the worst of it was, he’d be right.
Before Serenna could even think about counting the islands, static lifted the hairs along her neck. Lightning stirred under her skin and tugged her awareness south, answering a storm that hadn’t been there a moment before.
She veered in a hard arc, a chill scraping over her wings. Along the southern horizon, a wall of clouds boiled in the sky, lightning fissuring in its depths.
Thunder reached them in a concussive blow, knocking Serenna’s wingbeats out of rhythm.
The cloudbank convulsed with flash after blinding flash, then ruptured.
Skylash burst into the open sky, amethyst wings cleaving vapor. Her roar shook mist loose from the islands as lightning crowned her skull and writhed along the length of her spine.
She lowered her head and flew straight at them.
Lightning forked from her jaws.
“Move!” Serenna shouted as the charge lashed in their direction.
She flung out a hand, seized the current before it struck, and wrenched it aside.
For one stunned instant, the betrayal landed faster than the strike. They had a bargain with the dragon, but Skylash fired anyway. The dragon’s violet gaze swept over Serenna while lightning gathered again behind her fangs.
Serenna twisted hard into a dive, wings burning with the turn. Another bolt chased her downward, splitting the air beside her, its heat scalding her membranes.
Skylash closed the last distance with brutal wingbeats, her shadow swallowing all three of them. Then lightning poured from her jaws in a torrent, and the sky went white.