Chapter 48
SERENNA
The air was wrong.
It found Serenna before she reached Ayla’s chamber on the tower’s second level, fouling the back of her throat. Rot clung beneath the mineral bite of stone like meat spoiling under a hot sun.
After dawn, one of Jassyn’s guards had found her on the lower islands with Vesryn and Fenn. They were still combing the wreckage for survivors and gathering what remained of their people when he summoned Serenna to the tower.
Lykor filled the doorway, one shoulder braced against the frame, arms crossed over his armor. Serenna turned sideways to slip past him, and he didn’t yield so much as an inch. Crimson eyes tracked her into the chamber, flat and burning.
Jassyn knelt beside Ayla’s pallet with one palm hovering above her shoulder, weaving crimson lattices of mending into her skin.
She’s worse, Serenna thought.
Days. It had only been days since Serenna had last visited Ayla before the battle, but the king’s magic had devoured every one of them.
Eyes closed, her sister sat propped against the stone, the sharp, imperious beauty Serenna remembered from Centarya carved down to gaunt angles.
The flame-colored hair Ayla had once worn like another piece of finery hung in brittle ropes, white spreading through the roots.
The golden collar sagged against a throat wasted away, the metal now oversized.
Tendons strained against parchment-thin skin, blue veins branching toward fingers curled protectively around Sharyne. She slept in the crook of Ayla’s arm, silver eyes shuttered under delicate lids. Her breathing stayed soft and even, the steadiest rhythm in the room.
The earth pulsed in Serenna’s awareness.
Moss thickened around Ayla as Jassyn drew life through the stone. Roots climbed her legs, fresh leaves unfurling green and vivid until brown crept across their edges. They withered and crumbled as new shoots broke through the dying growth, replacing them faster than the foliage could fall away.
Jassyn leaned back on his heels, hands dropping to his thighs. The crimson light dimmed from his fingers, while the vines spent themselves on a body that consumed every scrap of life. He finally lifted his head and met Serenna’s gaze, then nodded toward the doorway and rose.
Ayla’s eyes never opened. She might’ve been sleeping, but at the scrape of Jassyn’s boots, she adjusted Sharyne against her chest without looking.
Lykor moved just enough to let Jassyn pass, and Serenna followed him out of the chamber.
Jassyn dragged a hand through his curls. “Her body is still accelerating. Whatever the king did to speed the pregnancy didn’t end with the birth.”
Serenna glanced toward the chamber. “And Sharyne?”
“Her growth is normal as far as I can assess.”
Serenna uncurled her fingers at her sides, only then realizing she’d made fists. “There’s nothing you can do.”
He shook his head.
“Thalaesyn and your magus could study whatever the king changed in her,” Serenna said. If Ayla died, everything she still knew about Galaeryn went with her. “They might find a way to undo it.”
“Thalaesyn’s already been here.” Jassyn tugged at a bracer, tightening a strap across his wrist that didn’t need it. “It’s magic we’ve never encountered. We’d need weeks to understand what Galaeryn altered, let alone reverse it.”
A sound carried from inside the chamber. Laughter.
Or what remained of it, the rasp echoing against the stone.
“You don’t even have days,” Ayla called through the archway.
Jassyn’s mouth pressed into a thin line, and Serenna stepped back around Lykor with Jassyn trailing behind.
Ayla’s eyes were open now, sunk in bruised hollows, the whites dulled and webbed with red. Her face had wasted around them, yet the same glacial calculation Serenna remembered remained, already three moves ahead of everyone else and waiting for them to notice the board.
Ayla waved a skeletal hand around the sparse chamber. “Make yourself comfortable, sister.”
Serenna halted a few paces in.
“I have something you need,” Ayla said. Her voice wavered around the edges, but the venom held. “Information your little rebellion can’t afford to go without. The king’s timeline.”
Of course Ayla would turn her deathbed into a bargaining table. Serenna crossed her arms. “Tell me.”
Ayla traced the copper wisps of hair at Sharyne’s scalp, her gnarled fingers careful where they touched. “I want a vow in return.”
From the doorway, Lykor’s leathers creaked. “We don’t negotiate with prisoners.”
Ayla didn’t look at him. “Fascinating. You had no problem using my information before.”
“What do you want?” Serenna demanded.
Ayla’s attention dropped to Sharyne before returning to Serenna.
“You will raise her. Not hand her off or tuck her away in some camp where she becomes everyone’s burden and no one’s child. You.”
Serenna’s breath stalled halfway in, the chamber narrowing to the infant sleeping in Ayla’s arms.
“No.” Serenna studied her sister. “Why?”
Ayla’s mouth twisted, the sneer splitting a dry seam in her lip. “You’re her blood. And I’m out of better choices.”
She looked down at Sharyne, and her composure cracked.
Her fingers tightened around the infant as fear broke plainly across her face.
“You’re one of the few who sees an infant instead of a threat.
I watched what the capital did to every child in this realm they decided was useful. I refuse to let that happen to mine.”
From the doorway, Lykor’s voice dropped low. “You’re asking her to protect a silver-eyed liability with Galaeryn’s blood running through it.”
“See?” Ayla hissed. “You’ve already got one who can’t look at her without seeing the king.”
Her words snagged on a cough. It shook through her ribs before she pressed her lips together and strangled the next one down.
When Ayla spoke again, her voice rasped. “I suggest you take advantage before I become considerably less useful. What I know is worth my daughter’s future.”
“We’re fighting a losing war,” Serenna said. “What makes you think she has one?”
Ayla’s expression didn’t change, but she drew Sharyne closer. “Because I can give you a chance to stop him.”
Hope stirred, sharp enough to hurt. Serenna refused to mistake an opening for a promise. “Then prove it.”
Ayla didn’t argue as she turned toward the window, where morning brightened the floating islands, indifferent to the shadow the king had cast over them the day before.
“Two nights from now, when the moons go dark, the Aelfyn homeworld will burn brighter than any star in the sky.” Her focus returned to Serenna. “That’s when he’ll open the portal.”
Two nights.
The blue spiral galaxy wheeled through Serenna’s memory, its stars circling the devouring dark she’d glimpsed when sunfire raged past her control. The whispers had called her closer, and some buried part of her still remembered wanting to listen.
“He can’t possibly have enough power for that,” Serenna said, hating how little disbelief remained in her voice.
“He does.” Ayla’s certainty left no room for comfort. “He’s pilfered enough Essence to bridge the distance.”
She adjusted against the wall and winced before she could hide it.
“But once it opens…” Serenna trailed off.
“He’ll call them here. Or go to them.”
A cough tore through Ayla again. She turned aside, covering her mouth with one hand. When the fit passed, blood slicked her fingers, and she wiped it onto the pallet.
Serenna watched the red seep into the fabric. “And the dragons?”
“He wasn’t in the habit of sharing revelations with the mother of his investment.” Ayla gave a humorless scoff. “I only know they’re elemental tributes. Now that he has one of each, there’s nothing left to delay him. He’ll be at the Drowned Spires.”
She drew a breath so rattling that Serenna’s attention snapped to Jassyn.
At her silent question, he shook his head.
“If that portal opens,” Ayla continued, “and he brings the Aelfyn here, everyone with Essence becomes an offering.”
Serenna’s pulse struck hard, each beat answering a distant, starlit threat too vast for her mind to hold. They had two days to stop a portal none of them understood, fueled by power none of them could rival, opening to a world none of them could reach.
Sharyne stirred in Ayla’s arms, one tiny hand flexing against her chin.
“And her?” The question escaped before Serenna could weigh it. “If she’s already—”
“She is not Aelfyn,” Ayla gritted out, the denial rising too quickly.
At the edge of Serenna’s vision, the iron eased from Lykor’s shoulders. His spine straightened, the scowl dissolving as violence relinquished its claim. She recognized the change before he spoke.
Aesar.
“Galaeryn’s eyes turned silver when he began siphoning Essence,” he said. “That was also when he started hearing the Aelfyn.” Crimson eyes landed on Serenna, but they burned softer now, where Lykor would’ve made it a challenge. “Vesryn told me you hear them when you channel sunfire. The whispers.”
Serenna’s throat tightened but she nodded.
“We don’t know if one caused the other, or whether the silver eyes mean anything for an infant,” Aesar said, quiet and unflinching.
“It may take years to learn whether the voices remain only voices, or whether something on the other side can reach through her. Today, she’s innocent.
That is all we have the right to judge.”
He clasped his hands behind his back, a prince’s posture before a court, though there was no throne here. Only stone and rot, moss and vines climbing around a dying female while Ayla’s breath rasped through the silence.
“If we stop the king…” He trailed off. “She is my blood as well. Whatever her power becomes. Whatever shadow follows it.”
Ayla held his stare, the silence stretching just long enough to expose the crack in her certainty.
“You don’t get to claim her,” she said at last, but the words had lost some of their poison. “Not after his threat.”
“Lykor fears that her corruption is inevitable,” Aesar said. “But I do not.”
Ayla disregarded him, turning back to Serenna. “I told you what I know. Now I want your vow. Not his.”
Serenna watched the steady rise and fall of Sharyne’s chest, too small to know others had already begun writing a verdict into her blood.
“If we survive this,” Serenna said, each word settling heavier than the last, “I’ll see that she’s cared for.”
Ayla considered her a moment longer. Then, barely, she dipped her chin.
“You still have my artifact.”
Serenna nodded, aware of Ayla’s Starshard tucked inside her leathers, its faint hum carrying through her armor.
“Take my tether off.”
The courtliness vanished from Aesar’s posture. His shoulders set, weight shifting forward.
“You bargained for the girl,” Lykor growled. “Not your freedom. The collar stays.”
“What exactly do you think I’ll do?” Ayla snapped. “I can’t even stand.”
She adjusted Sharyne against her chest. The effort emptied her lungs, leaving the next breath ragged.
“I want to extract my power.” Her lips tightened. “When she’s old enough, give her what remains of Mishryn and me.”
Serenna’s hands went numb. “You’re already weak. You—”
“Please,” Ayla gritted out.
Serenna blinked at her sister. At the female who’d tormented her, tortured Fenn through stolen hands, commanded armies, and spent a lifetime taking what she wanted without ever lowering herself to ask.
Serenna glanced toward Lykor, who had the key.
He glowered back, refusal set in every line of him.
Jassyn’s hand settled on his arm.
A muscle ticked in Lykor’s jaw. He exhaled through his nose, muttered under his breath, and reached into his armor. The key flashed in the morning light as he flung it toward Serenna.
She snatched it from the air.
Lykor’s shadows rose in hooked coils, every tendril angled toward Ayla.
Serenna crossed the chamber. Rot thickened with every step, swallowing the damp green scent of moss where she knelt.
The collar hung loose against Ayla’s neck, its gold dulled where it had chafed over bone. Serenna fitted the key into the lock and twisted.
The clasp broke open and Ayla shuddered.
Essence surged through her, sudden enough to press against Serenna’s skin. Serenna’s hand flew to Ayla’s Starshard in her leathers.
Galaeryn’s magic had wasted Ayla to bone, yet her power had suffered none of it.
Essence crowded the chamber with the same terrible magnitude Serenna remembered from Centarya, and for an instant the dying female before her became inseparable from the one who’d once made Serenna flinch with a glance.
The first talent tore free, a globe of light ripping from Ayla’s chest. Another followed. Then another.
Serenna’s grip eased around the Starshard as she drew it from her leathers and laid it in Ayla’s palm.
Ashen gray spread from Ayla’s fingertips, swallowing the pallor of her hands as her nails darkened and lengthened into talons. It crept over her wasted arms and up the fragile column of her throat. What little softness remained in her face disappeared, leaving her cheekbones stark.
The Starshard brightened in her grasp as abilities vanished into it, a lifetime of power compacting into radiance at its core.
Black bled through her hair from root to tip. Ayla endured the transformation with her jaw locked and her eyes open, Sharyne held steady against her chest.
When the final talent wrenched free, Ayla shoved the gem back at Serenna.
Crimson eyes lifted.
The female who’d once sneered at half-breeds now wore the body of a wraith—a body she’d been taught to revile.
“Get out,” she hissed. “Your face isn’t the last thing I want to see.”