Chapter 49
SERENNA
Ayla died before nightfall.
Serenna used her Starshard and portaled Sharyne to the Everfrost Caverns herself, down into tunnels they’d abandoned after Bhreena betrayed them. Galaeryn knew where every refuge lay, but his attention was focused elsewhere. By now, every place left to them came with its own way to die.
Not all the civilians crowded on the islands across the Aetherveil could fly, and if the coming battle killed those who could open portals, the floating isles would become a prison in the sky. So the young, the old, the wounded, and those who’d never held a weapon filled the cold tunnels again.
Saundyl’s wife took Sharyne without question, settling the infant beside the son already tucked against her breast. Two tiny bodies rested among frightened civilians, everyone pretending stone could keep the end from finding them.
For now, Sharyne was as safe as anyone else.
If Serenna survived the night the moons went dark, she’d decide what came next.
By the time she returned to the Aetherveil, darkness had settled into an unnatural hush. Even the wind had abandoned the islands, leaving only the creak of ancient stone under two moons pared to silver hooks.
Beyond them, the blue spiral galaxy blazed in silence, its arms curled wide above a world with only two days left before the king’s portal opened.
Following the bonds, Serenna flew toward an island, where Fenn’s druid flame burned low and gold against the night.
She descended at the edge of the gathering, wings shifting back into skin as she crossed into the warmth. Cold still clung to her shoulders as she lowered herself beside Vesryn on a moss-soft ridge Jassyn had coaxed from the ground.
Vesryn adjusted the longsword across his lap to make room, his thigh pressing against hers. A loose strand of silver hair slipped over his shoulder toward the blade, and Serenna swept it behind the point of his ear, fingertips grazing skin before she withdrew.
The whetstone stopped.
Then he drew it down the steel again, slower this time, over an edge that had been sharp long before she’d arrived.
Next to Jassyn, the druids’ Starshards lay in a row, their reserves depleted from the battle. Essence spiraled from Jassyn’s fingers into a gem while his other palm opened to the sky, drawing threads of starlight to replenish his Well.
Serenna took a crystal and ignited Essence. Magic bled from her fingertips, pulse by measured pulse. Her Well dwindled with it, leaving a hollow beneath her ribs. Across the scattered islands, glimmers rose and faded as other survivors did the same.
On the other side of the fire, Fenn sat behind Koln, weaving dark hair with an ease that belonged to another life.
Fenn talked steadily as his talons worked through the braid, and Serenna caught more rhythm than words, punctuated by a flash of fang whenever Koln grunted at whatever insult or endearment Fenn murmured.
Hot blood and singed fur rode the faintest stir of air.
Skylash hunched over the steaming carcass of a moose on an adjacent island, tearing through the kill she’d hauled up from the plains. Every few moments, her head lifted south. Past the islands. Toward the empty stretch of sky where Veyrix had vanished.
Serenna leaned into Vesryn without meaning to. Tomorrow, he or Fenn could become the absence she kept searching the horizon for.
Seventeen hatchlings crowded around Skylash in a restless tangle of wings and claws, dark scales glinting in the pale moonlight. Cinderax perched above them on a jut of stone, tracking every dragon.
Emberharts tore strips from the carcass, smoke curling from their snouts. Two Stormstrikes wrestled over a rib, sparks snapping between their fangs, while Tidecrashers gnawed at a discarded haunch, cracking the bone.
Skylash tolerated the feeding frenzy until one hatchling edged toward the choicest meat at the moose’s flank. She bared a fang longer than Serenna’s forearm. The hatchling froze, frills half-flared, then backed away three careful steps while Skylash tore another bite from the kill.
Wingbeats pounded through the sky.
Lykor dropped to the island’s edge and shifted out of wings and scales as he crossed toward the fire. He settled beside Jassyn with one knee drawn up, snow whirling around his shoulders.
He kept his attention on Jassyn, though his voice carried to the rest of them. “The scouts we sent south confirmed the human army has been portaled to the lake ringing the Drowned Spires. Close to fifty thousand, by their count.”
Serenna’s stomach plunged at the number.
“The army isn’t the target,” Jassyn murmured, Essence streaming from his fingers into a Starshard.
“They become the target when they’re standing between us and the king,” Lykor growled, frost creeping outward from his boots.
Vesryn slid his blade into its sheath. “So we fly over it.”
“What do you think would happen if we crossed over the army lining the shore?”
Serenna recognized the finality in his tone. Lykor had already decided how the flight ended. Worse, he was right. She answered before Vesryn could mistake the question for a challenge.
“Those with Essence might reach us in the air,” she said. “And the king’s shamans could surely bend the wind and rip us out of the sky.”
“Then skip the army,” Fenn said, his talons never pausing in Koln’s hair. “We could portal straight to the Drowned Spires.”
Lykor shook his head. “The king would either sever our portal or siphon our magic if we got close. And that’s not even accounting for the dragons that might be waiting with him.” His eyes flared. “Rimeclaw. Blossom. Veyrix. Five hatchlings.”
Serenna made herself count what remained. Wraith warriors. Kaedryn’s druids. A few score of magus. Even a number of prisoners dragged from the king’s dungeons and the Maw who’d taken up arms beside them.
“But we hardly have three thousand,” Koln said, tying off the braid Fenn had finished weaving.
Three thousand. Against fifty thousand humans. Against a king who could plunder their power before they came close enough to strike.
The number soured the longer she held it, her mind placing people where they might die. Every path to Galaeryn ran through faces she knew, through bodies that would have to hold where the fighting broke hardest so others could strike.
Fenn leaned back on his claws. “We still have the Starshard circles.”
“Because those worked brilliantly against the king last time,” Lykor muttered.
“We weren’t ready,” Vesryn shot back. “Rimeclaw’s ice scattered us, and that was when the king picked everyone off.”
“Then we have to keep the circles intact,” Serenna said. “We can cloak them around the lake and wait until the king is in view. Then every circle strikes together.”
“And you think that will be enough?” Lykor growled. “We already threw everything we had at him, and he didn’t flinch.”
“The circles didn’t use sunfire,” Vesryn said quietly.
Serenna’s fingers tightened around the crystal in her lap, its light pulsing in her grip.
Vesryn’s jaw settled, the stubbornness he wore once his choice was already made.
“You and Serenna are the only ones among us who’ve channeled it,” Jassyn said. “In untrained hands, sunfire could cost us more wielders than it’s worth.”
“Then we teach our people to harness it without burning themselves out.” Vesryn glanced toward the Starshards. “We have two days.”
Silence gathered around the fire, the stars cold and bright overhead.
Koln rose, adjusting his eye patch.
“I’ve learned worse in less.” He cracked his neck before his eye found Jassyn. “I’ll speak to Kaedryn and assemble the Starshard holders at dawn.”
Jassyn dipped his chin. Serenna didn’t envy him for being the one who’d ask their forces to channel a power capable of consuming them.
Koln shifted into wings. He warped over the island’s edge, vanishing into the dark.
Fenn leaned forward and sent another ribbon of flame curling over the bare ground, stoking the fire higher.
Wingbeats swept over from the adjacent island before Cinderax crossed the gap in a single glide. He landed on the stone with a click of talons, molten irises scanning the circle.
Skylash followed. The island shuddered under her weight, stone cracking beneath her claws. She curled at the edge with her spine to the fire, leaving enough distance that no one could mistake proximity for company.
Cinderax’s voice pressed into Serenna’s mind. “We will fly with you. All of us.”
“All of you?” Fenn asked. The fire around his talons thinned to smoke as he watched the hatchlings descend on the unguarded carcass in a tangle of flapping wings and gnashing fangs. Any other night, he would’ve cackled. “You can’t mean the hatchlings too.”
“We are dragons.” Cinderax’s tail struck the ground, stirring dust through the firelight. “Five of our clutchmates have already been claimed by this usurper. We will not cower while our kin remain leashed.”
“And what do you expect whelps to do against a king with grown dragons?” Lykor leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees. “One wingbeat from Rimeclaw would slap them out of the sky.”
“Rimeclaw scattered your warriors too.” Cinderax’s nostrils flared.
“I am not asking the young to challenge the Wardens. Put them within your circles. Let their elements strengthen your children of earth and starlight as Skylash’s lightning did at the river.
They carry fire and frost and storm older than this war. Let their power burn alongside yours.”
“They can barely control their elements,” Serenna said, sharper than intended, fear biting into each word. “They’re too young for a battle.”
“And yet they are what remains.” Heat rolled outward from Cinderax’s scales. “If that portal is opened to bridge the worlds, there will be no hatchlings left to shelter. No clutches laid in spring. No sky left for them to soar.”
His ancestral memory struck through Serenna’s mind, the mourning of dragons who’d watched their kind fall. Eggshells crushed by starlight. Scales scattered through the sand. Fire guttering in throats that would never roar again. The terrible silence left where wingbeats should’ve thundered.
“Balance dies with this world,” Cinderax rumbled softly. “Or it is defended by every fang, every wing, every breath of power we have left. You carried their flames into being, First Keeper. Do not cage what you kindled.”
Serenna set the Starshard she’d been holding among the others as his memories lingered behind her eyes. Every instinct urged her to keep the seventeen remaining hatchlings grounded, hidden, alive—beyond the king’s reach. Yet their lives were theirs to risk.
Serenna turned toward the dragon facing away from them. “Skylash. Are you flying with us too?”
Skylash remained still, her spine cut black against the stars, tail coiling tighter around her.
“I will fly.” Her voice scraped through Serenna’s mind like talons dragged across glass. “And if you cannot free Veyrix again…”
She turned her head, violet eyes flashing.
“I will kill him myself. He will not remain shackled while I still have freedom in the sky.”
No one spoke.
Sparks lifted from her scales in bright spirals and vanished into the dark.
Fenn broke the silence with a huff that nearly became a laugh before it died.
“So we have three thousand against the king’s entire army. Our newest recruits are hatchlings and a dragon vowing to strike down her own mate.” He shook his head, dark hair swaying across his back. “We’ve never had good odds. Dying just hasn’t been one of our talents.”
Vesryn flicked a glance at Fenn across the fire. “Then we make sure the king regrets leaving any of us alive.”
Fenn’s eyes glowed as he rose and crossed the narrow ring of warmth. He settled at Serenna’s other side, slinging an arm around her shoulders before knocking his fist against Vesryn’s arm.
“No one else I’d rather have beside me when the world goes up in flames.”
Serenna caught Fenn’s claw where it hung over her shoulder and threaded her fingers through his. She felt his affection radiating like the warmth of his palm, as reckless and unguarded as everything else he offered. Vesryn’s hand closed over her thigh, and she leaned into him.
Jassyn rested his head against Lykor’s shoulder while Lykor curved an arm around him, tucking him close.
Vasharax launched across the gap from the neighboring island. Her wings wobbled through two frantic beats before she landed beside Skylash, claws skittering over stone. Another dragon followed. Then another.
Cinderax watched from beyond the firelight as the ragged procession crossed the sky. The hatchlings gathered against Skylash while she held herself rigid against the heap.
Vasharax nosed along her side, searching for warmth beneath her folded wing. For a moment, Skylash refused to move. Then her wing lifted a fraction.
Vasharax slipped beneath it, another hatchling burrowing in after her.
Above them, the stars wheeled on.
Serenna closed her eyes.
For now, everyone she loved was still close enough to touch.