Chapter 34
SERENNA
Two days. That was all Jassyn and the council had given everyone before they would raid the Falling Star Crater. Two days for Serenna, Vesryn, and Fenn to master how their Starshards had linked in Asharyn. If they failed, they’d be walking into a cursed mine, hoping desperation would save them.
Serenna wasn’t counting on hope.
Thin air scraped her lungs as she folded her wings after landing on a desolate island in the Aetherveil’s lower chain.
Vesryn and Fenn touched down beside her on wind-polished stone.
Sparse grass clung to cracks in the rock, the island no more than fifty paces across—a splinter of earth suspended in open sky.
On the horizon, rangers coasted upward, their dracovae’s feathery wings catching thermals as they climbed. Starshards still studded the higher islands, and the rangers were dismantling them alongside wraith and druids.
Serenna’s own gem hung against her chest on a chain, its rhythm pulsing like a heartbeat she’d trained herself to ignore.
At her left, Fenn’s restlessness skittered along the bond, his limbs already loose and waiting. At her right, Vesryn stood rigid, every line of him braced to make his body the first thing danger struck.
Serenna moved before either of them could turn the exercise into an argument. She hauled Essence through her Starshard, and the gem flared bright against her collarbone.
“In Asharyn,” she said, her voice steady over the vibration in her sternum, “I don’t know why the Starshards linked when I reached through mine.” She studied the three gems at their throats. “We need to learn how to connect them deliberately.”
Vesryn’s wing claws flexed. “I felt you pulling power straight through my gem. I couldn’t steer any of it, but I wasn’t cataloging technique while we were fighting for our lives.”
Fenn’s fangs flashed as he ignited Essence. He extended a claw and hauled a stone free from the ground with a sharp pull of force.
“I could throw a rock at your head,” he offered. “Simulate danger?”
Before Vesryn could dignify that with an answer, Serenna closed her fist around the gem at her throat. She bypassed the familiar channels of their joined Wells and cast her awareness toward their Starshards, two points of light pulsing at the edge of her senses.
She pulled.
Both males pitched forward, wings flaring behind them.
She struck the sealed threshold of their gems, the Essence beyond remaining untouched.
“A warning next time,” Vesryn muttered as he straightened.
Serenna scowled, dropping her hand. “Maybe it only works if you open the way. Summon your magic, but let me channel it through the gems.”
Vesryn’s gaze sharpened. Fenn’s grin faded, talons rising toward the crystal at his throat before he halted the motion.
“If we’re going to link more than just the three of us,” Serenna said, quieter now, “we can’t rely on the bond. Ayla said the Starshards could connect. We have to learn how to do it for everyone else.”
Neither male moved as wind scoured the stone between them.
“We can…try that,” Vesryn said too evenly, his attention cutting to Fenn. “If that’s what it requires.”
Essence whirled around them in twin streams of stars—Vesryn’s compressed and controlled, Fenn’s running wild and bright. Their Starshards remained dark, power banked behind each gem.
Serenna drew a slow breath and closed her hand around her Starshard again. Essence lit the crystal, heat sinking into her skin and winding inward.
Twin filaments of light slipped from her shard and drifted across the space between them, like smoke searching for a draft.
Fenn’s Starshard flared first. His magic rushed to collide with her waiting thread, pouring into her sternum until heat crowded the spaces between her ribs.
Vesryn’s Starshard remained dark as Fenn’s current wound through hers. His fingers tapped against his thigh, gaze narrowing on the light braided between them.
Then he sent his own power after it.
His gem flashed. Magic struck Serenna with the force of a breached dam, carving its own channel beside Fenn’s current.
Twin bands of prismatic light snapped taut—one stretching to Fenn, the other to Vesryn, with Serenna caught between them. The doubled force sent her staggering, boots scraping for purchase.
Yet the separate flows tore through her without joining. Serenna lifted her hands, trying to wrench them together, but neither yielded, each driving the other aside.
She was the place the current broke.
To keep it moving, they needed a circle.
Serenna released their power. The twin streams dimmed, leaving her Starshard burning alone at her throat.
She sent a single filament of light toward Fenn, spanning the space between their gems.
“Take my power,” she said. “Add yours and steer both to Vesryn.”
Fenn’s Starshard flared as her Essence raced between them. It widened into a prismatic band as his power joined hers. Then a second arc leapt from Fenn toward Vesryn.
The joined flow struck Vesryn’s Starshard and recoiled hard enough to buckle Serenna’s knees.
“Vesryn.” She braced against the returning force. “Let him through.”
His jaw clenched, pupils thinning to draconic slits. “I can’t.”
“You can.” Both her and Fenn’s power pressed against the barrier together. “It has to pass through all three of us.”
Nothing yielded.
Then the prince exhaled.
His Starshard flared. The barrier gave way, and his magic swept through the crystal to join theirs.
Fenn’s Essence surged around Vesryn’s, threatening to overtake it before the flow could settle.
“Fenn, don’t overpower him. Carry Vesryn’s magic with yours. Bring them both back to me.”
Fenn’s attention cut to Vesryn, challenge flashing through the bond. Vesryn’s fingers twitched. Then he dipped his chin—barely, but enough.
Fenn’s magic curled around Vesryn’s rather than crushing it, bearing the joined stream back toward Serenna.
Her Starshard answered with a low hum. Weight gathered through her, but the power kept moving. Serenna caught the flow and turned it onward.
Prismatic light arced between them, and for the first time, the circuit held.
“I don’t know what would happen if we link dozens of Starshards,” she said as power shuddered through her, pulling every muscle taut.
She gathered the current once more, then yielded control to Vesryn. Her Starshard remained alight as Essence swept onward, answering to him as Serenna became another bright point along its path.
“Five wielders per circle to start,” Vesryn said before his gaze locked on Fenn. He thrust control across the link, and Essence blazed toward Fenn like a thrown blade.
Fenn seized it without hesitation, his grin flashing fangs. He spread his claws and hauled more Essence through Serenna’s and Vesryn’s Starshards until the prismatic light burned brighter than either of them had dared.
Serenna gasped as the sudden surge tore through her before she could brace. Her instinct clawed for control, but she loosened her grip and let the power flow.
“Only one of us can steer this at a time,” Fenn said.
Essence coiled around his talons, then streamed toward her. Serenna’s Starshard caught the returning flow, and the current bent to her will again, control settling between her palms.
“Let’s make practicing interesting.” Vesryn glanced toward the crown island hanging far above them, where distant dracovae riders wheeled in its shadow. “We can test the handoff under pressure. Draw the gliders away from the rangers while they strip the Starshard defenses.”
Serenna shook her head as the memories tightened in her chest. Stolen air. Collapsing lift. The sky turning inside out. “Essence will only draw the gliders straight to us.”
Vesryn smirked. “That’s the point.”
Fenn cackled. “So we make ourselves irresistible bait.”
Serenna groaned. They’d barely survived the gliders stealing the sky from their wings. Now Vesryn and Fenn wanted to summon them on purpose.
“So what’s the plan once we’re airborne?” she demanded as Fenn wrapped an arm around her waist.
“We rotate control.” Vesryn gripped Fenn’s shoulder. “You start. Pass it to me. I’ll send it to Fenn.”
“That’s not a plan—”
The world folded inward, the warp yanking the protest from her mouth. Darkness pressed close, displacement cinching across her skin. Then the sky slammed back around them hard enough to rattle her teeth.
Serenna’s wings snapped wide as the three of them spread apart, wrenching her fall into a hover as Vesryn and Fenn leveled beside her.
The island loomed above them, a colossal wall of shadow and stone blotting out the sun. The rangers rose along its face, dracovae wings laboring against the thinning currents. Druids and wraith kept pace beside them, ascending toward a summit lost in haze.
And above them all, the gliders dove.
The swarm converged on a ranger flying beyond the formation. Pearl-pale bodies swept across the sky like rays gliding through water, broad wings tipping in eerie unison as they drew a tightening ring around dracovae and rider.
Every ranger flew dark—they knew not to ignite Essence as Vesryn had ordered. But even that offered no protection from the horde of mouths that drank the air itself.
Vesryn’s voice cut through the wind. “Ready?”
Serenna locked her scales tight and reached through her Starshard, then outward to the gems at both males’ throats. Prismatic light surged from crystal to crystal, circling them in a living constellation—impossible to miss.
The gliders answered in a chorus, their shrieks raking across the sky.
They banked as one, mouths unfurling along their leading edges as they abandoned the dracovae entirely and wheeled toward the blazing current.
“Now would be a splendid time for the rest of the plan,” Fenn said, sweeping into an arc around them.
“Keep their attention,” Vesryn said.
“We have their attention!” Serenna shot back. “What happens when they strip the sky from us again?”
“Speaking for myself,” Fenn called, “I’d prefer a plan that didn’t include that part.”
The gems embedded in the gliders’ skulls glinted in the prismatic glare as they flew.