Chapter 40
JASSYN
Lykor’s swinging claw flung Jassyn off his feet, his spine striking the crystalline wall hard enough to ring the chamber. Pain detonated as a rib cracked, and his next inhale splintered in his chest.
Jassyn dropped to his knee, one palm splayed against the crystal floor, the other clamped over the talon punctures in his torn leathers. Blood beat between his fingers while he hauled on the earth, each gasp breaking short against the fracture.
Vines forced through hairline fissures under his palm and coiled up his wrist. Green radiance bled from leaves and stems, igniting in his veins. The growth withered and blackened, life sealing torn flesh and coaxing the bone back into place.
Enough to keep him breathing.
Lykor advanced, shadows unspooling from his frame in ribbons too smooth to belong to him. Jassyn’s stomach clenched when he registered turquoise irises where crimson should’ve burned.
At Lykor’s back, the illusion glided toward the raised platform and lifted one arm. Lykor’s claw mirrored the figure’s motion, the gesture passing from light into flesh.
Jassyn stumbled to his feet, the half-mended rib grinding as he stood. “Lykor.”
Shadows whipped before the name had finished leaving his mouth.
Violet light fountained from Jassyn’s hands, climbing around him, but Lykor’s rending struck before the shield could close.
Darkness sheared through the weave and hurled him sideways along the crystal wall, punching the air from his lungs.
Jassyn braced against the crystal, driving his will through the chamber floor and into the earth beyond. Vines burst through the cracks at Lykor’s feet, lashing around his wrists, ankles, and torso.
Without breaking stride, Lykor tore through the snares, shadows hacking the vines apart as each step forced Jassyn backward.
The figure brightened on the platform, its attention roving over Jassyn with acquisitive patience. A chill sluiced through him, his body recognizing the lingering regard that searched for what could be taken.
Jassyn locked a shield into place the instant Lykor unleashed another wave of rending. Violet light burst across the chamber as the ward disintegrated. The impact sent him skidding through dead leaves and splintered vines.
Lykor crossed the distance, crystal grinding under his boots, every movement stripped of fury, every step borrowed.
Neither Jassyn’s earth nor defensive magic could stop the hold the illusion had on Lykor.
There was one weapon left.
Jassyn had sworn never to breach Lykor’s mind again. But the next strike of shadows would tear through his flesh.
Telepathy flooded his fingertips the moment he reached for it, coercion gathering too readily. His stomach turned at the ease of it, at the wrongness of wielding that power on Lykor. Across the short span between them, shadows writhed around Lykor’s claw.
Jassyn drove coercion into the mind he’d once fought to free.
“STOP.”
The command sank into the scars Galaeryn had left behind. Lykor halted mid-strike, every muscle drawn taut, his claw suspended in front of Jassyn’s face as the shadows stilled around it.
The chamber fell silent, leaving only Jassyn’s rasping breath.
Jassyn hauled on the earth. Fresh growth surged through the shattered crystal, climbing Lykor in tightening coils. Thicker roots wound around his boots and pinned them to the ground.
Before revulsion could loosen his hold, Jassyn steered the coercion deeper, burying the command until even the smallest tremor left Lykor’s body.
He reinforced it once, then again, then a third time, because the first two had been to hold Lykor, and the third was for the part of him that needed repetition to give the violation the excuse of craft.
Across the chamber, the figure turned toward a broad crystal pedestal fused to the dais.
Five recessed housings formed a reliquary across its front, each cradling a crystalline core.
Essence rose from them in glittering streams and entered the apparition’s waiting arm.
As it drew from the cores, Jassyn’s control over Lykor wavered.
His pulse lurched. Five Hearts of Stars.
One could free Veyrix. Two more could liberate Blossom and Rimeclaw.
Enough to shift the balance. Enough to give the alliance hope.
Jassyn glanced back. Turquoise still burned through Lykor’s eyes, his stare fixed on nothing, his body imprisoned within Jassyn’s magic.
Jassyn could enter his mind again and hunt for the place where the presence had lodged itself, though another descent offered no certainty he could cut the intruder free.
The reliquary offered a structure he could break, and though his mind accepted the choice, his body named the first step away from Lykor a betrayal.
Jassyn crossed the chamber and climbed the steps to the platform. The apparition turned, its features sharpening as cold pressure probed the edges of Jassyn’s mind for purchase.
Jassyn struck both palms against the reliquary and channeled Blossom’s gift into its seams. Roots speared through the fissures beneath the dais and heaved against its underside.
Crystal shrieked. Panels bowed outward as fractures raced between the five recesses, and seamless Aelfyn craft that had outlived its makers split under the fury of living earth.
But the mechanisms fought him. The vines buckled the outer shell, yet five inner housings cinched around the Hearts, their joins closing against every root he drove through them. Jassyn forced the growth deeper, swelling wood inside the fractures until the ancient fastenings began to groan apart.
The first Heart tore free as its housing shattered. Crystal shards scattered across the dais, and the figure flickered.
The second set of brackets yielded with a series of brittle cracks, the apparition blurring like breath across glass. Jassyn sensed the presence reach through Lykor and shred the outermost layer of his coercion.
He kept both palms planted against the reliquary, focusing on freeing the Hearts.
The third housing split, and one of the figure’s hands dissolved into mist.
Essence ignited at his back.
Jassyn felt one vine snap, then another. Behind him, Lykor’s shadows uncoiled from his rigid frame, wielded by the foreign will inside him. The stolen darkness hacked through Jassyn’s earth while the presence pried at the coercion from within Lykor’s mind.
The second layer buckled, leaving only the deepest command between Lykor and the thing wearing him.
Jassyn forced the roots farther into the fractured reliquary. He could drive more coercion into Lykor, but if he abandoned the Hearts now, the violation would be for nothing.
The fourth housing shattered in an explosion of living wood. Across the dais, the figure thinned to a ragged outline, shedding the last pretense of form as it burrowed its remaining strength into Lykor.
Deep in Lykor’s mind, Jassyn felt the final threads of his coercion strain. The invading presence peeled the weaves of his magic, prying Jassyn’s hold wider with every beat of Lykor’s heart.
Then it tore the command free.
Lykor warped, striking his back with a century of warfare gathered into the impact. Jassyn slammed chest-first against the reliquary, his palms skidding across the crystal. A claw clamped around his throat and hauled him upright, talons biting into the flesh under his jaw.
The ruined figure guttered to a jagged silhouette, its fractured light streaming past Jassyn and into Lykor.
One Heart remained.
Though Lykor had torn Jassyn’s hands from the reliquary, every shudder of the roots buried within it climbed into his bones.
Blossom. Rimeclaw. Veyrix. Their names struck through him with each weakening beat of his pulse.
Lykor’s grip constricted.
Jassyn bore the roots through the final housing, swelling them into its fractures until crystal ground against crystal.
Still, the ancient fastenings held.
Lykor’s talons sank deeper. Darkness crowded the edges of Jassyn’s sight, and to survive, he’d have to make a battleground of Lykor’s mind.
But Jassyn refused to save himself that way.
He forced the growth wider until the Aelfyn fastenings split with a ruinous screech. Vines hooked around the fifth Heart and ripped it from its cradle.
The figure detonated.
Turquoise light seared the chamber white. The cold pressure at the edges of Jassyn’s mind vanished with it, and the sudden emptiness sent the room pitching around him.
As the blaze ebbed, Lykor’s talons slipped from his neck.
Jassyn struck the floor on his hands and knees, choking as his bruised windpipe fought every inhale.
Lykor swayed, eyes unfocused, his claw still held open in the shape of Jassyn’s throat.
“Lykor.” The name barely rasped free.
Crimson fire surfaced through the fading turquoise ice. Lykor blinked, then found him.
Jassyn forced himself upright, the chamber still rolling around him. He caught Lykor’s face with unsteady hands, searching for any lingering threat from the presence.
Lykor’s breathing broke against him, ragged as his own as he lifted a hand to Jassyn’s neck. His fingers skimmed the torn skin with such gentleness that the touch barely registered.
Then his gaze caught on the talon marks at his throat and the bruising already swelling around them. Lykor’s eyes flared, and his arm recoiled.
Jassyn grabbed his wrist and pressed his palm flat over his hammering heart. Lykor tried to step back, but Jassyn tightened his grip before distance could open.
Lykor shook his head, slow disbelief carried in the motion. “I hurt you.”
“It wasn’t you.”
Jassyn could’ve left the rest unspoken. Lykor hadn’t asked, and whatever memory remained seemed to have ended before Jassyn had compelled him.
“The vines couldn’t hold you,” Jassyn whispered. “You tore through every shield. I…” The next words caught against the damage in his throat before he forced them free. “I entered your mind and made you stop.”
Lykor went wraith-still.
Jassyn had no defense left to offer. His pulse battered against Lykor’s fingers while he waited for the revulsion he deserved.