Chapter 52
LYKOR
Veyrix rose like the king had ripped him up by the spine.
From the ridge, Lykor tracked the Zephyrfang snapping skyward—a weapon wrenched from its sheath. Wind shrieked as his wings unfurled, the gust flattening soldiers still scrambling at the platform’s edge.
And then he was climbing.
Fast.
Too fast for something that size.
Jassyn tensed beside him.
So did Aesar in his skull. A cold pressure gathered in Lykor’s chest as Veyrix aimed at Skylash, lightning webbing the night around her.
Skylash roared, fury and grief given fangs as she folded her wings and dove.
The dragons collided above the lake.
Cyclone clashed with lightning. Thunder detonated in widening rings, shearing through smoke and striking the ridge hard enough to send chips of stone skittering over the cliff.
Dracovae screamed, the blast hurling riders and mounts sideways. One beast dropped nearly to the water, talons skimming the surface before its wings punched down, the stroke blasting spray outward as it climbed back into the air with a screech.
The shockwave hammered through the wraith and druid fliers next, flinging bodies loose from their ranks.
One formation never recovered.
Veyrix’s wind shear hurled them through the branching veins of Skylash’s lightning. The charge leapt from wing to wing, body to body, every silhouette burning black against the flash of light.
Then the formation disintegrated—wings shredded, armor burning, fliers tumbling toward the lake in trails of fire.
Jassyn drew a sharp breath through his teeth, that surgical stillness cracking around the edges. He took a step toward the ledge, one hand lifting, as if wanting to follow where the bodies fell.
Fatal, if indulged.
The muscles across Lykor’s shoulders twitched, wings nearly shifting from the impulse to surface. Every instinct pulled toward the slaughter below—to warp in, find a threat, make himself useful with violence.
Veyrix and Skylash could tear the sky apart. It changed nothing. Their plan lived or died on Galaeryn stepping onto that platform. Until then, twenty circles of Starshards hung dark above the water with no king to burn.
Along the shore, Fenn, Vesryn, and Serenna still blazed like a constellation, holding half the army’s attention with their prismatic light while they ripped portals through the enemy ranks.
Above the lake, Skylash lunged for Veyrix’s throat, lightning raking across his scales. He twisted clear with a speed that made even her look slow and wrenched the currents against her—air meant to carry her now knifing across her wings, every gust turned from lift to execution.
The king still hadn’t shown his face, but his will moved through the dragon’s flesh.
Then Rimeclaw stirred.
The Tidecrasher lumbered to the platform’s edge, crystal groaning under his weight. Frost erupted from his jaws and struck the lake, racing straight across the water until a broad white path stretched into the dark.
Rimeclaw planted one webbed foot on the ice, and the surface creaked.
Then he heaved into motion.
Fractures raced ahead of each pounding step before the cold sealed them shut, his enormous body gathering speed in a brutal charge across the frozen road.
His wings hammered down.
Ice shattered behind him as he launched, sheets of frost tearing from his talons as he climbed toward Skylash.
Lykor reached for the Tidecrasher, hunting for any break in the silence Galaeryn had sealed over him.
Nothing answered. Only the same abyss he’d found in the Aetherveil, closed over the place where the dragon’s mind should’ve roared.
“The hatchlings,” Jassyn said.
Lykor’s gaze dropped back to the platform. Blossom remained where the others had left her, crouched over the crystal with roots spilling from her foreclaws. Around her, the soldiers Veyrix had flattened with the wind hauled themselves back to their feet and closed ranks.
Lykor flared his dragonsight.
The hatchlings huddled together, each cinched in bands of force, five scraps of scale cowering in Blossom’s shadow. One Emberhart pressed its snout against a Stormstrike’s wing, trembling hard enough for Lykor to see across the lake.
Jassyn took another step closer to the ledge and Lykor’s claw snapped around his forearm. “No.”
Jassyn’s jaw tightened, the scar over his brow pulling taut. “That platform is the most exposed it’s going to be. We could portal—”
“You’re not setting foot on it.”
“The king wanted all five elements,” Jassyn insisted. “He’s not there yet. If we reclaim the hatchlings—”
“Blossom is right fucking there.” Lykor’s talons bit deeper into Jassyn’s armor before he forced himself to let go. “Land next to her and she’ll devour you the way she did Kal.”
Aesar recoiled at Kal’s name, and Lykor ground his fangs until pain sparked through his skull.
Portals split the air across the platform.
Centarya’s forces poured through, fanning around the dragons with Essence already whirling. Twenty. Thirty. Fresh bodies. Fresh magic between them and the hatchlings.
Jassyn stayed angled toward the ledge, every line of him still aimed at the Drowned Spires. That posture meant only one thing. He’d found something else worth bleeding for.
Five hatchlings didn’t deserve to become whatever Galaeryn meant to make of them. Jassyn was right about stealing them back. But wrong about who would do it.
Aesar drifted closer in his awareness. “You promised him you wouldn’t go into danger alone.”
Lykor’s talons bit into his palm, blood sliding between his knuckles. “Stay here,” he growled. Aesar braced with the resignation of someone who already knew arguing was useless. “I’ll free them.”
Jassyn whirled toward him, one hand shooting out. “Lykor—”
He warped before Jassyn’s fingers could close around him, darkness devouring him.
Lykor reappeared at the edge of Kyansari’s ranks, boots striking crystal hard enough to jar his legs. Twenty soldiers wheeled toward him, armor flashing as Essence ignited around their palms. More crowded around the platform, magic surging until pressure pounded against Lykor’s skin.
Blossom stood vast and motionless, her crystalline eyes blank while the hatchlings strained in their bindings behind her.
“With you,” Aesar said as he pressed into their limbs.
Lykor’s jaw locked.
There. Not alone.
A lie he could see through, but he let it count.
This time, Lykor didn’t fight as Aesar seized control of their arms. Aesar reached over both shoulders and ripped the twin glaives from the sheaths crossed along their back in a single draw.
Steel for him. Shadows for Lykor.
Five wielders struck together. Their rending merged into a black wall and raced across the platform. Aesar warped before it reached them, folding sideways through the air and reappearing next to the nearest soldier with his glaives already slicing.
A blade opened one throat.
Lykor hauled on Rimeclaw’s current in his chest and claimed the rest.
Frost spun around them and sharpened into a ring of white daggers, their edges shedding vapor. Lykor snapped them outward. The daggers struck where armor surrendered flesh—throats, wrists, the gaps under raised arms.
Rime detonated from the wounds and raced inward, blood crystallizing vein by vein. Two soldiers locked mid-stride, eyes frosting white as ice sheathed their limbs and climbed toward their torsos.
Lykor seized them with a pulse of force before they could collapse. He wrenched them shoulder to shoulder, a wall of frozen flesh between the next volley. Aesar was already behind it, glaives spinning in the narrow shelter.
Force hammered into frozen flesh, breaking bones.
Shadows bored through after it, rupturing the corpses.
Lykor released the ruined wall as gore hurtled toward them. Aesar warped clear of the eruption and reappeared inside the next rank, both glaives cutting.
Lykor sent frost racing ahead of every step, ice flashing under enemy boots and stealing purchase.
At the edge of their vision, a green tendril slipped past a fallen soldier. Aesar twisted back toward Blossom.
She remained crouched where they’d left her. Around her, vines spread over the crystal, winding between bodies as they reached.
Dread slid between Lykor’s ribs, colder than any frost he could summon. Galaeryn could already be looking through her eyes.
If Blossom snared him with the earth, she’d pin him to the crystal before he could warp.
Lykor had learned what followed when fighting a Bramblemaw.
Ice bursting harmlessly against her scales.
Shadows vanishing into that armored hide.
Then Kal, skewered through the chest with a vine, yanked toward waiting jaws.
Essence would buy Lykor nothing. Glaives, seconds. A wall of corpses, less. Once the earth wrapped around him, he’d be crushed between her fangs before he ever reached the hatchlings.
They needed to use every moment.
Aesar warped them beside the nearest Stormstrike. The hatchling thrashed against its bands of force, lightning snapping wild across its scales as it screeched. Lykor slashed rending through the restraints.
The Stormstrike tore free and scrambled against the bound dragons, sparks scattering from its wings.
Aesar whirled toward the soldier charging their flank. One glaive crashed against the descending sword a finger’s width from their ribs.
The impact rang down their arm.
A spear of force punched into their chest.
The blow hurled their body backward, boots sliding across crystal. Aesar’s grip on the glaives faltered. Pain bleached Lykor’s vision as Aesar reeled inward and Lykor surged forward.
They collided behind the eyes.
Their knees buckled, one arm jerking as they clashed for control. A glaive nearly slipped from their fingers as their shoulders wrenched one way and their hips another.
A root burst through the platform beside their feet.
Lykor slammed back into their body and caught their balance while Aesar released their legs and kept the blades moving.