Chapter 32
JASSYN
The world slammed back into place wrong.
The cavern gave way to open night air, frost-bitten wind scouring Jassyn’s lungs. His boots skidded across frozen earth as he staggered from the portal and fell forward, palms striking the ground while Blossom’s last sending remained lodged in his skull.
The final images strobed behind his eyes, fragmented and already fading. His jaw ached, teeth grinding against nothing.
Flesh tearing. Blood steaming against the earth as she devoured the offerings. Too small. Barely enough.
Hungry. Always so hungry.
She ripped a leg free. Hooves and bones cracked. Marrow sweetened her tongue.
She lifted her snout from the carcass and stilled.
A familiar scent threaded through the blood. One she liked.
An elf with auburn hair stood at the clearing’s edge, heart racing loud enough to taste.
One snap of her fangs would have ended the female.
But a promise held her jaws shut, one she’d made to the one who smelled of rain and roots and freedom. Those with two legs were not meat unless they asked.
She’d agreed. Reluctantly.
The elf raised both hands around a gem that screamed like burning stars. Its light clawed through her senses, a violation that set every scale ringing.
More elves emerged from between the trees. Power rose with them, closing into a ring. Earth—her earth—and starlight turned punishing.
She could have broken them all. Roots skewering ankles. Soil rammed past teeth. Ribs splintering between her jaws. The ground shuddered beneath her, ready.
She held it.
They struck.
Starlight bit into her scales. Shadows battered her flanks. Again. Again. Roots tore loose and whipped her forward across her own ground, toward the void waiting between the trees.
The sky closed too fast. Darkness became cage.
The sending had torn apart as Blossom went through the portal.
Forced through by Bhreena.
Gone.
Jassyn shoved to his feet, cold sawing through every ragged pull of air.
The ground lay ripped open where Blossom had resisted. Severed roots convulsed in the furrows, curling inward as their fibers blackened and died. His ears rang from the rupture of her sending until shouted orders cut through.
At the cavern entrance, the wraith had forced those stranded when Bhreena’s portal closed to their knees in a tight knot. Lykor stood over them, rending cinched around each body, while Vesryn—bootless and bare-chested, water from the pool still tracking down his ribs—searched their faces.
Druids sealed the perimeter with drawn blades and fire kindled in their palms. One of Daeryn’s soldiers lay crumpled among the others, blood bubbling from a slash in his throat as he choked.
Blossom’s lingering terror raked through Jassyn as he strode forward. His wings unfurled behind him, talons flexing. One by one, the kneeling captives resolved into prey.
Fenn and Serenna spilled from the portal Lykor had left open, half-dressed and still fastening their clothes into place.
“Find Daeryn.” Jassyn cast the order across the stone shelf outside the caverns. “Bhreena didn’t take the Heart of Stars alone. Get Kaedryn up here. Now.”
Fenn yanked his trousers into place and tore open another rift. Serenna crossed through beside him, one hand tying her tunic as they disappeared.
“Where did Bhreena take Blossom?” Jassyn demanded as he approached those bound in shadows.
No one answered.
Lykor closed his fist, driving rending through muscles and spines. The captives thrashed against it, screams ripping through the night.
“Answer him,” Lykor snarled. “Or I’ll flay you alive.”
Wind scoured the mountain, hissing between the rocks.
Essence whirled around Lykor, but a male’s resolve broke before the shadows struck.
“Bhreena promised us our lives,” he said, his voice cracking.
Jassyn held his face still despite his beastblood twisting toward violence. “That’s not what I asked.”
“Do you truly expect us to stand a chance against the king?” a female challenged, defiance ragged with desperation.
Lykor bared his fangs, shadows billowing around him. Jassyn raised one hand, and the darkness stalled.
Another portal tore open. Serenna stumbled through beside Velinya, Kaedryn sagging between them.
Blood sheeted down the druid’s neck, its copper tang fouling the cold.
Vesryn broke from the prisoners and took Serenna’s place at Kaedryn’s side, bearing her weight as Serenna stepped back.
Velinya kept one arm firm around Kaedryn’s waist.
“Cinderax is with the hatchlings,” Serenna said. “They’re safe.”
Fenn appeared through the rift, carrying a body.
Jassyn knew who it would be before the head rolled back and dark curls—the same waves as his—spilled over Fenn’s arm. Before the wound at the throat opened like a second mouth, too late for mending to matter now.
His mind cataloged the losses—Blossom taken with the Heart of Stars, Daeryn’s force compromised, loyalty split along faultlines he’d failed to map in time. He needed to determine how far the betrayal reached, who among them could still be trusted, whether the caverns would…
The thought unraveled when Fenn lowered Daeryn to the earth. The male Jassyn had scarcely managed to look in the eye, much less acknowledge. His son.
He kept reaching for the next step, the calculation that might reduce this to a problem he could solve. All he found were hazel eyes gone sightless, the memory of rain in a jungle where Daeryn had stood with more courage than Jassyn had ever managed and called him sire.
The ledger closed. There was no category for this.
“I’m sorry.” Kaedryn’s voice rasped through the mended ruin of her neck. “They took the Heart and slit our throats. Velinya reached me before I bled out.”
“How many?” Lykor demanded, shadows writhing around the kneeling soldiers. “How many joined Bhreena?”
“I don’t know. At least a few whom Cinderax denied the scalebound gift.” Kaedryn pressed two fingers to the mended seam at her neck and swallowed. “Daeryn tried to stop them.”
Jassyn could almost understand Bhreena’s logic. Cinderax had refused her the power she believed herself owed, and the slight had stripped away whatever trust she’d placed in the alliance to protect her sister.
So Bhreena had returned to Galaeryn with a dragon and a Heart of Stars, wagering that what she delivered would purchase her sister’s safety—and outweigh her defection.
Jassyn knew the fear of measuring survival against another’s power. He’d stared at Farine’s ceiling while she took what the realm had licensed her to take, counting how much of himself compliance might preserve.
Around him, every face had turned his way, waiting for the command that would carry them beyond this ruin.
It would’ve been easier to let his knees crumple beside Daeryn and surrender the burden of deciding what came next.
Jassyn’s wings slackened behind him, a chill settling where violence had burned.
“This position is compromised,” he heard himself say. “We move to the Aetherveil. Tonight. Everyone we have left.”
Lykor’s lip curled as he glared at the kneeling warriors. “Everyone?”
Jassyn’s focus returned to those who’d opened the way for Bhreena, leaving Daeryn’s blood to cool on the cavern floor while they delivered Galaeryn a dragon he needed.
If he meant to lead whatever fractured, doomed thing this alliance had become, he couldn’t hide behind Lykor’s shadows and call himself worthy of the title.
Jassyn extended one hand and reached for the only part of Blossom he had left.
The earth shuddered as a vine tore through the frost-hardened soil and spiraled upward to cradle his palm. More roots followed, creeping toward the kneeling warriors like serpents scenting blood.
The prisoners strained against Lykor’s shadows, muscles jumping against leather while their knees remained pinned to the frost. Around them, the wraith drew back from the roots’ path.
Lykor’s head snapped toward him, shadows rippling. “I’ll do it.” The offer held no judgment. “If you want.”
Jassyn’s fingers closed around the vine.
One pull and the roots would bore through rib cages, split skulls, and devour flesh until nothing remained but bones.
He hesitated, and knew it for weakness.
He wanted to do it.
Bhreena betrayed them, leaving Daeryn dead. Blossom was gone along with their only Heart. The traitors had earned their fate, simple and violent.
But he didn’t trust the part of himself that wanted to feel the roots tighten. Better to be the reluctant leader, one who’d demand answers rather than dispense death.
Lykor could carry out the sentence, but Jassyn wouldn’t pretend that made the choice any less his. He would bear whatever followed, even when the consequence wore Lykor’s face.
A coward’s way of keeping his own hands clean.
Jassyn released the earth. The vine slipped from his palm, and the roots withdrew back into the ground.
“Finish it.”
He turned his back as Essence surged. He heard one body rupture, then another. Blood and splintered bone struck the frost as the screams ended one by one.
Jassyn faced Fenn, keeping his gaze above Daeryn. “Build a pyre for…” He couldn’t say the name. “For him.”
Fenn nodded.
Velinya kept Kaedryn braced against her side as Serenna and Vesryn guided them back into the tunnels.
Jassyn dispelled his wings. He walked until the mountain ended and the world fell away. The peaks stretched below, pale beneath the stars, their beauty offering no comfort.
Lykor materialized beside him, his shadows vanishing into the night. The execution had left no mark that Jassyn could read. Perhaps it had cost him nothing.
Jassyn stared across the expanse. “What’s the point of any of this? We’re hiding at the edge of the world, waiting for Galaeryn to find us.”
Lykor held his words for a long moment. “Then we make him regret looking.”
“How?” Jassyn’s exhale hissed between his teeth. “Stars know how many Essence and earth wielders we lost to Bhreena. Blossom is gone. We have no Heart of Stars. No way to free any dragon.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “We aren’t fighting a war we can win. We’re just bleeding a slow death.”
Wind cut across his cheeks. At the corner of his vision, Lykor’s eyes burned through the dark. The silence between them felt worse than agreement.
“The alternative is letting him win without trying.” Lykor’s voice came rough as snow began falling around him. “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees. Vengeance used to be enough.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. “It isn’t anymore.”
“Then what is?” Jassyn turned to him. “What are you fighting for?”
Lykor met his gaze, the answer coming without even the shelter of hesitation. “A world where loving you doesn’t feel like building something I know will collapse.”
Jassyn went still. They’d never named what lived between them, yet Lykor had spoken of loving him as though it were a truth long settled, the confession folded into an impossible future and left all the more exposed for it.
Lykor closed his hand around Jassyn’s, warmth enduring under the frost that silvered his knuckles. “I fight for the chance to live instead of merely survive.”
Jassyn swallowed around the ache in his throat. Daeryn lay cold behind him, and Lykor was asking him to imagine their lives extending beyond this night. No matter how fiercely they resisted, the world never exhausted its ways of taking.
Still, Jassyn returned the pressure of Lykor’s grip and held on.
“I don’t know if we’ll get that world.” His voice came hoarse. “But I want it. With you. Even if it kills us getting there.”
The future Lykor had named began with freeing three dragons in chains. But to do that, they needed to find more Hearts of Stars. One path remained.
Jassyn’s fingers tightened around Lykor’s. “The Falling Star Crater is our only lead. If we mean to free them… It gives us somewhere to go besides deeper into hiding.”
Every instinct told him descending into the crater would be suicide. It lay too close to the Drowned Spires, too near the king’s forces, where discovery would be an inevitability rather than a risk.
But it was still a direction.
The only one left.
Lykor nodded. “We secure the Aetherveil, neutralize the Starshards, and move everyone first. Regroup. Then we go.”
Jassyn exhaled slowly and lifted his gaze to the stars. Somewhere beyond the mountains, Blossom was caged and alone, her wildness returned to chains. He’d promised her freedom, and the broken vow had become another thing he couldn’t repair.
They were running out of time. Out of reasons to believe any of this would work.
But Lykor’s hand was still in his, and the crater was waiting.
He hoped that would be enough.