Chapter 31
LYKOR
Lykor halted just inside the cavern. Mineral steam filmed his skin, heat sinking into the places where frost usually held the line. A dark pool spiraled through the chamber’s heart, its rim worn into shallow steps.
Vesryn leaned bare-chested against the stone lip, his neutrality held too carefully to be convincing.
Serenna had sunk to her chin between him and Fenn, color high in her cheeks.
Fenn sprawled beside her, wet hair slicked to his neck, his grin confirming Lykor’s suspicion that none of the three wore a stitch beneath the water.
Convenient. Kaedryn’s delay had bought the lot of them enough time to foul the pool.
Lykor scowled and scrubbed the moisture from his jaw, eyes flicking to Jassyn. “Why are we meeting here?”
Jassyn lifted one shoulder in a helpless shrug. “I asked Blossom for the most secluded chamber. The undressing was their idea.”
“If you’d been flying all day,” Serenna said, the water lapping at the fresh fang marks on her neck, “you wouldn’t be complaining.”
“Any chamber could’ve been made private.” Lykor snapped his hand toward the entrance. Shadows surged from his fingertips, sealing the cavern off from the tunnel beyond. “Or we could’ve portaled anywhere that didn’t involve communal bathing.”
“In Blossom’s defense,” Vesryn said, his gaze sliding toward Fenn, “only your wraith would come somewhere like this.”
Fenn patted the water in invitation, ripples racing outward. “And apparently no other place would’ve annoyed you this efficiently.”
“I’m not getting in,” Lykor growled, stalking closer. His boot snagged on Fenn’s tunic where it lay crumpled on the ground, and he kicked it aside without breaking stride.
Warmth seeped through his armor and into joints held rigid since the rainforest. His shoulders loosened before he could stop them.
The involuntary relief sharpened his irritation.
The king’s forces were closing around them, yet the cavern coaxed his body to forget the danger.
Lykor locked his spine, fingers flexing until the tension returned.
His gaze cut to Jassyn, who’d chosen the chamber. The rebuke reached his teeth and died there. Lykor turned his scowl on the pool instead.
“We already spent hours wringing every useful detail from our scouting reports in that stars-forsaken council.” He paced, each footfall cracking against the stone. “So tell me—what, exactly, couldn’t be said fully clothed?”
“There were more ears than I wanted there.” Jassyn crossed the cavern and settled on a ledge without so much as shedding his boots. Sensible. He’d reached the same verdict on the water. “You noticed Bhreena’s absence today. And her reaction after dinner last night.”
“Which part?” Lykor turned at the pool’s edge. “When she nearly combusted because Cinderax refused to extend his gift to Daeryn’s entire band, or when she realized she wasn’t among those he chose?”
Vesryn’s fingers drummed against the stone lip. “She took Cinderax’s judgment as a public humiliation.”
“Half of Daeryn’s people received no boon,” Jassyn said, loosening the ties at his throat. “None of the others stormed out.”
“Bhreena shouldn’t hear anything of tomorrow’s movements until we know what she intends to do with the insult she imagined,” Vesryn said.
Serenna sniffed. “She’d get along with Skylash.”
Fenn reached over and pinched the tip of her ear. “Just like you.”
Serenna scowled and swatted his fingers away.
Lykor rolled his shoulders. “Speaking of dragons.” Since their return, the tunnels had carried none of the deep tremors that marked the Bramblemaw’s passage. “Where’s Blossom?”
“She went to the surface to feed.” Jassyn traced one finger along a vein of quartz in the rock. “The rangers brought down a herd of elk. Or something close enough.”
“Let’s hope she remembers the herd is the meal,” Lykor muttered. He’d seen the carnage Blossom had strewn at the Vallende estate.
Jassyn pressed his palm to the ledge. Moss spilled beneath his fingers and ran across the cavern floor, tiny white flowers opening in the green. “It’ll ease the strain from flying,” he murmured as the growth crept toward the pool, its blossoms glowing through the steam.
Fenn combed his talons through the blooming mat, and Serenna and Vesryn held their arms over the water’s edge. Wherever it touched them, the moss withered. White petals browned and curled as light kindled along their veins.
Jassyn coaxed fresh life through the dead, weaving it over the husks.
Lykor’s boots cracked another circuit across the stone. Neither Bhreena’s tantrum nor Blossom’s feeding habits explained the secrecy. And Jassyn playing earth mender for three naked bathers explained even less.
He stopped at the pool’s edge. “What are we actually here to discuss?”
Jassyn lifted his gaze. “Tomorrow, the rangers and our fliers will ascend to the highest isle in the Aetherveil. We’ll confirm Veyrix’s location, then free him before Galaeryn’s forces find him.”
The loosened ties of Jassyn’s tunic bared a strip of skin at his throat. Lykor’s gaze snagged there, and the rainforest returned in a rush—Jassyn’s mouth crashing against his, desperation sharp on his tongue. The recklessness. The instant the world had narrowed to only him.
Lykor turned back to the pool. The three in the water had managed to set the war aside for an hour. Lykor couldn’t remember the last time his body hadn’t been braced for the next disaster.
“A contingent of your wraith will shadow the human column through the Everglow Rainforest,” Jassyn continued. “They’ll track its pace and keep an eye on the razorwing scouts. The rest will remain here with the druids to hold the caverns and guard the civilians.”
Lykor crossed his arms. “This was all settled in the council.”
“But no one talked about what comes after,” Vesryn said. “If we free Veyrix while the king keeps mining Hearts of Stars from that crater, he’ll forge another leash. We’ll buy time. Nothing more.”
The prince was right, and Lykor hated that more than this heated chamber. Every fight had become the same ugly ritual—scramble to survive with no victory in sight and wait for the next blow to find them.
“Galaeryn already commands Rimeclaw’s frost and holds stolen hatchlings of fire and lightning,” Lykor said. “Wind and earth are all that remain free. If he claims Veyrix and Blossom, he can give the Aelfyn every dragon’s power.”
“As long as we protect Blossom,” Serenna said, “the earth stays out of his reach.”
Protect. As if any of them had managed that yet.
“He’ll come for her,” Lykor snapped. “He’ll tear this mountain open to root her out.”
Jassyn straightened and met Lykor’s gaze. “Then we stop him before that happens. You were right in the rainforest. We strike where his forces can bleed. We stop waiting for the war to find us.”
Savage approval stirred, but unease followed close behind. Jassyn had begun to sound like him.
“We’ll never win if Galaeryn keeps choosing where we fight,” Fenn agreed, his grin gone. “Even if we have Skylash, Veyrix, and Blossom, the elf king still has enough soldiers to grind us down.”
“And that’s before we account for the king himself.” Lykor resumed his circuit through the steam. “We won’t see his hand until it’s already gripping our throats.”
Vesryn trailed his fingers through the water. “So we deal with the wind gliders and find Veyrix first.”
“Then we start taking out the Essence-wielders from the Everglow column,” Jassyn said.
Lykor turned. “We still have enemy forces unaccounted for.”
Vesryn’s mouth tightened. “Kyansari’s soldiers, the northern shamans, and Centarya.”
Jassyn shook his head. “We can barely hold one front. Open another and—”
His hands locked against the stone.
The moss under his fingers burst into flowers, then blackened.
Wings tore from his spine. Scales swept across his skin, his body convulsing. His fingers clawed at the ledge. Moss erupted in their wake and rotted, life and death racing each other across the rock.
His pupils narrowed to draconic slits. Whatever he saw lay far beyond the cavern.
Then he pitched forward.
Lykor was already moving.
He warped to Jassyn’s side and caught him before his skull struck the water, wrenching him back onto the ledge. Jassyn collapsed against him, breath trapped behind clenched teeth.
Lykor shook him, frost cracking under his knees. “Jassyn.”
Vesryn lunged naked from the pool, but Fenn was faster—a blur of shadow appearing at Jassyn’s other side. Water spilled over the lip as Serenna hauled herself after them, crimson light gathering between her fingertips.
Jassyn’s chest hitched. Air tore into him in a ragged gasp. His lashes fluttered, and his eyes found Lykor’s.
One word scraped free.
“Blossom.”