Chapter 29
SERENNA
Lightning devoured the sky.
The charge cracked across the horizon in jagged veins, flashing against the drifting islands. Skylash tore through the upper thermals like a descending storm, each wingbeat a crack of thunder.
Serenna wheeled hard beside Vesryn and Fenn to meet the dragon head-on.
“Let me handle this,” she said, sensing Skylash’s fury prickle along her spine. “This is between the two of us.”
She surged ahead, leaving Vesryn and Fenn behind.
Skylash flung her wings wide and released a roar that echoed between the islands. Sparks forked across her scales, racing from wingtip to wingtip before gathering between her fangs.
Her jaws snapped open and lightning ripped toward Serenna, a white-blue wall that erased the clouds.
The blast came in layers, each surge driving the next until the air ignited. Serenna thrust both hands forward. The charge screamed across her palms as she tore the branching light apart.
The lightning ruptured, its concussion driving into Serenna’s chest like a battering ram.
Her wings buckled. She hurtled backward through open air, muscles seizing as her vision strobed at the edges. Gasping, she caught a draft, her pulse hammering at the base of her throat.
Skylash circled overhead, then folded into a vertical dive, her descent bending the sky around her silhouette.
Serenna held position. Every muscle strained to flee. But her beastblood surged, daring her closer to the threat.
She reached for Skylash’s spark. The gift raced through her in a violent rush, lightning bleeding from her wing talons and fingertips.
Another bolt speared from Skylash’s jaws. This time, Serenna met the charge with her own.
She hurled her lightning into the heart of the blast, and the sky cleaved open between them. Two storms collided in a blinding detonation, sparks ricocheting between the drifting islands like falling stars.
Static skittered over Serenna’s arms, heat rippling through the ruptured air. Thunder rolled outward through the Aetherveil, leaving her ears ringing.
Vesryn and Fenn remained several wingbeats behind her. Essence seethed around the prince, his hand poised to tear open a portal. Fenn held beside him, every line of his body aimed at Serenna, waiting to warp her clear.
Skylash steadied into a hover, wings beating slow and even. Violet eyes narrowing, she swept close, heat from her scales rolling across Serenna’s face.
“Where is Veyrix?” Her voice cracked through Serenna’s skull. “I sent you here to free the tempest.”
Serenna wrestled the air for breath, each word scraping past her teeth. “We only just arrived.”
Sparks snapped from Skylash’s nostrils. “Then why do I find you wasting wind and sky while my mate remains in chains?”
“Do you know where he is?” Serenna’s voice sharpened, lightning still tingling through her veins. “Because if so, please, lead the way.”
Skylash hissed, the sound tearing sideways through the clouds. “Fangless whelp. You reek of fear and dare spit defiance?”
Lightning drew tight between her fangs, every current folding inward. The bolt tore free on a single course for Serenna’s heart.
Serenna snatched the lightning from the air. The jolt shuddered up both arms, webbing across her palms. Teeth clenched, she hurled the charge back.
The bolt struck Skylash’s throat and burst into sparks across her scales. Serenna hovered, chest heaving.
Neither moved.
Skylash bared her fangs. “At least you didn’t forget how to bite.”
Her grudging praise quieted the answering violence shuddering through Serenna’s scales. Only then did Vesryn and Fenn close the distance, settling at either side.
“How long have you been hunting here?” Vesryn asked.
A growl climbed Skylash’s throat, deepening until the air trembled around her.
“Ah, how much quieter my ancestors’ skies must’ve been. Before those addled wyrms gifted the scaleless speech. Now you multiply like insects, swarm the air, and scrape kingdoms from dirt.”
Before Vesryn could respond to the insult with one of his own, Serenna cut in. “We are searching for Veyrix. What do you know about these islands? Are they all guarded by Starshards? Or where—”
“Enough.” The word struck hard enough to jar Serenna’s teeth. “I know not where Veyrix fell. But his scalebound would have left protections behind. Your crystal gems. False winds. Wardens in the sky.”
“Wardens?” Fenn asked, piercings lifting with his brows. “Like the leviathan in the deep? Or the snow golem in—”
Skylash gnashed her fangs. “Your questions rise like ash and choke the sky.” One brutal downstroke hurled her higher.
“I’ve flown for days without rest or meat, and you would keep me here until I starve.
The next words you scar across my sky will carry his location. Anything less will be your last.”
She folded and plunged through the clouds, lightning streaming after her.
“Dragons,” Vesryn muttered, his wing claws flexing.
“I should’ve warned her.” Serenna steadied against the churning air Skylash left behind. “If the king claims another Heart from the crater Ayla mentioned, he could bind Skylash as he did Rimeclaw.”
Fenn tipped one wing toward the gap Skylash had torn through the clouds. “By all means, she-elf. Fly down and enlighten her.”
Serenna rolled her eyes. “The sooner we find Veyrix, the sooner she might stop trying to strike us.”
“Until she realizes you didn’t turn all those Unbound eggs into Stormstrikes like she ordered,” Vesryn added dryly.
“Not helping,” Serenna snapped.
She turned midair, scanning the island chain rising through parting clouds, mist winding between them. Nothing moved. Still, her gaze swept across each empty span, catching on every shimmer that disturbed the air.
“If we’re exploring,” Serenna said, “we do it carefully. Absolutely no Essence near the islands until we know the Starshards’ range.”
Vesryn arched a brow. “You’re starting to sound like her. One queen of storms barking orders was enough.”
Serenna flicked a spark at him. “That wasn’t a suggestion.”
Vesryn flared scales along his arm, the charge skittering across them. A pulse of desire rolled through the bond, tightening heat low in Serenna’s body.
Fenn cackled as he arced around them. “Do it again, she-elf. But harder. I think he liked that.”
“Like you didn’t heel the moment she ordered us to stay back,” Vesryn said. “I could’ve done without feeling what that did to you.”
Fenn’s fangs flashed. “Then stop paying attention.”
Vesryn scoffed and surged forward, wings driving hard.
Fenn slanted a grin at Serenna. “I think he’s warming up to me.” Then he warped past the prince.
Serenna followed, hoping the Aetherveil would yield some sign of Veyrix before those two found another reason to race each other into danger.
She cast her senses wide, listening for a Starshard’s shriek and watching for a shadow of something worse.
Wind curled beneath her wings as hundreds of floating isles hung at staggered heights, ruined towers rising from them like stony thorns. Narrow bridges wound between the larger masses, the abandoned remains of a druid city strewn through the clouds.
Vesryn pointed at Starshards embedded in the island roots as they flew past, but none of them broke course to claim them. They coasted onward, riding currents woven between the isles.
At first, their pattern barely brushed Serenna’s awareness. But when she reached through her connection to the earth, rivers of air ignited behind her eyes, braiding through the Aetherveil in paths invisible to ordinary sight.
“I think the druids shaped the wind for flight,” Serenna said, tracing a current only she could see.
Vesryn squinted as he drifted to her side. “Does it lead anywhere?”
Serenna studied the lattice of roads crisscrossing through the air. One by one, they bent upward, joining a single ascending route.
Far above, nearly lost to cloud and light, an island floated over the Aetherveil. It rose higher than she’d ever flown—even astride Naru with the prince. Wind churned below its tapered base in a vast funnel, drawing every channel toward it.
Fenn followed her gaze. “Where else would they chain him but where the sky runs out?”
“We don’t know what’s waiting above. We should—”
“Warp us closer,” Vesryn said to Fenn.
Fenn looped around to face Vesryn. “Didn’t quite catch that, princeling. Was that a request?”
Vesryn’s nostrils flared. “You heard me. It saves us the climb.”
Amusement kindled in Fenn’s eyes as he extended a claw. “Then by all means.”
One wing swept wide for Serenna. She angled into it, clasped his forearm, and braced against his side.
Vesryn held himself beyond Fenn’s reach. His gaze dropped to the sliver of space at Fenn’s other side, and his jaw locked.
Fenn let his offered palm fall. “Suit yourself. Since portals are too risky around the Starshards, we’ll get a head start.”
Vesryn snarled and lunged. His hand closed around Fenn’s wrist, and Fenn cackled as he warped.
The world cinched shut. Pressure punched the breath from Serenna’s lungs as the jump wrenched them upward.
They burst back into open sky with a crack that jarred her teeth, wings snapping wide as they scattered below the island. Its underside eclipsed the sky, vast enough to dwarf Centarya itself.
Something unseen sliced across Serenna’s cheek. She hissed and reached up, blood slicking her fingertips.
Vesryn cursed and twisted midair, searching behind himself. A thin cut opened along the shaved side of his head, blood welling bright against his scalp.
The wind moved wrong.
Blade-thin currents writhed through the sky, invisible until they bent the light. One grazed Fenn’s arm. He warped aside, but a black seam opened across his skin before scales plated over it.
The false winds Skylash had warned of.
Serenna folded one wing and spun, breath hitching as another sliver of sharpened air sheared past her shoulder.
Her connection to the earth drew the hidden currents into focus, each one a faint distortion in the light. But Vesryn and Fenn flew blind with no way to see them.
“Behind you!”
One strand clipped Fenn’s ear.
“Needle gales,” he growled, fingers finding blood at the point. “They’re skewering us.”
The air broke around them—currents converging, dividing, then veering across every path left open. Each pass peeled flesh, scraped scale, or split membrane, flinging blood into the wind.
Vesryn’s wing claws curled into fists. “Can we clear their range? I’m not turning back over needles.”
Serenna locked her scales tighter. The island’s sunlit crown remained far above, and already the sky was closing its teeth.
“Follow me.”
She climbed on the final word as the false wind tore through her wake. She tucked her wings through one narrowing gap, then flared into the next turn, driving the pattern through the bonds—drop, bank, climb—until Vesryn and Fenn matched the path she carved.
Serenna angled toward the peak, the needle gales hissing past and raking her wingtips. Winds had worn the stone sheer, leaving ribboned vines and silver fronds clinging to the rock, roots bared to drink the mist.
Shadows peeled from the island’s face.
One after another, creatures the size of eagles unfurled from the stone. Pale as pearls, their broad bodies swept outward on diamond-shaped wings. They glided into formation with the slow, rolling grace of rays undulating through deep water.
Serenna’s stomach lurched as all ten settled into a widening spiral, Starshards glinting at the crown of every head. She broke off the ascent and hovered below them.
“File my fangs,” Fenn swore, drawing alongside her. “Wind gliders?”
Vesryn pulled up to her other side. “You’ve seen something like this before?”
“Of course not. But they must be guarding the path to the dragon.”
Serenna tracked their slow approach. “We can’t face ten wardens with Starshards.”
“They haven’t struck yet,” Vesryn said, the shadows sliding over his face. “If we don’t use Essence they may let us pass to the top.”
“So your plan is to fly close enough to make them prove you wrong?”
Hundreds of feet above, the wind gliders drew their circle tighter, each rotation carrying them lower along the cliff.
“We should regroup with the rangers,” Serenna insisted before Vesryn could argue. “Then plan a way forward.”
“Upward, not forward,” Fenn corrected, pointing toward the island’s peak. “If Veyrix is anywhere, it’s chained at the highest perch.”
The gliders scattered. They plunged in unison, broad wings tipping into the dive. The leading edge of each creature split open into a single crescent mouth. Pale ridges contracted within, drawing the air inward.
The wind screamed past them and poured into ten widening throats.
Then it vanished.
Serenna’s wings struck emptiness. Her next breath didn’t come.
She dropped, membranes shuddering as gravity claimed her.
The mouths sealed, and the surrounding wind crashed back. Air struck her lungs as the returning lift caught her outstretched wings and drove the full weight of her fall through both shoulders.
The wind gliders’ paths curved in staggered arcs, their formation tightening into a noose. The nearest swept close enough to buffet Serenna sideways with its wingtip, its mouth splitting wide again.
The gliders scoured the wind away.
Her wings swept through absence, ribs cinching around a breath already gone.
The returning wind caught only one of Vesryn’s wings, whipping him into a violent roll before the next pull dropped him again.
Fenn fell, warped back higher, and threw his wings wide into the returning rush.
“They don’t need to strike us,” Serenna gasped, forcing the words through scraps of air. Lungs screaming, she clamped her mouth shut and sent the rest down the bonds. “They’re drowning us in the sky.”
The gliders drew closer with every circuit, crescent mouths gaping in sequence. Each pull emptied the air from another side of the ring, driving the three of them toward its shrinking center.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Vesryn asked, eyes wild as they latched onto Fenn.
Fenn’s lips curved back from his gritted fangs. “I can warp faster than you can open a portal, princeling.”
Lift tore from Serenna’s wings again.
She dropped.
Then air slammed back into her lungs, but the next pull stripped it away before they could fill.
Fenn tracked the gliders’ circuit until two swept apart, opening a narrow gap in the ring. Beside him, Vesryn fixed his gaze somewhere beyond the island. Their intent aligned before Serenna could decipher the plan.
They reached for her together, Fenn gripping one arm, Vesryn the other.
Fenn warped.
Serenna went weightless, pressure driving through her joints before the world released them outside the gliders’ ring. Wind tore across her face, flooding her lungs.
Essence flared from Vesryn.
Behind them, ten Starshards screamed.