Chapter 56
SERENNA
Serenna turned to Vesryn as Galaeryn rose above the platform, the king’s cold radiance washing the lake in blue and silver.
The prince hovered beside her, gaze fixed on the ruptured sky. Across the lake, Fenn still raced from circle to circle, clutching hatchlings against his chest and shoving them through portals.
The trap they’d drawn around Galaeryn frayed and died, one ring of sunfire at a time.
“We failed,” Serenna said, the admission scraping through her throat.
Emerald eyes met hers, bright and steady. Vesryn drifted closer, wingbeats slowing as he took her hand.
“If the king reaches that portal,” he said, “there’s no telling what he could bring back from the other side.” His grip tightened. “I can intercept him. Maybe hold him long enough for you to gather what remains and strike.”
Serenna’s stomach plunged. “No.”
Vesryn’s expression softened, the decision already settled behind his eyes. Fear hollowed the breath from her lungs as she understood that he was only waiting for her to accept the cost.
“There has to be another way.”
“You know there isn’t. We need all the Essence the circles have left.”
“They’re scattered,” Serenna gritted out.
“Then gather them.”
She stared at him. Beyond the prince, Galaeryn climbed slowly, the edges of his body blurring into starlight. The portal hung above him, waiting like an endless eye.
“Make yourself the focus.” Vesryn’s voice stayed low, but command lived in it, a prince choosing to become the blade and placing the hilt in her hand. “Draw every wielder’s power through your Starshard. I’ll buy you time. When you’re ready, strike with everything.”
Serenna crushed his fingers in hers. “And what happens to you?”
Vesryn held her gaze, saying nothing.
She shook her head, fury rising fast enough to choke her. “Tell me.”
His mouth tightened. “You don’t stop. Whatever you feel through the bond, whatever you see happen to me, you drive the sunfire into him. Finish it.”
Tears blurred Serenna’s vision, smearing the fires below into the starlight above. But every line of Vesryn’s face stayed painfully clear. She sensed him reach inward, hauling on his Well. Essence kindled under his skin, power rising like dawn.
“Don’t—” Her voice broke around the word. “Don’t do this. Please.” She gripped the bond, reaching for the pulse of him, that infuriating certainty she’d never imagined could disappear.
Vesryn drew even closer, the edges of his wings brushing hers. “If he goes through that portal, there won’t be another chance.”
A tear slipped free. “You’re asking me to channel sunfire at you.”
Vesryn lifted his palm to her cheek, unbearably gentle while fire and Essence still tore through the armies along the shore below and the portal devoured the stars above.
“I love you.”
Serenna went still.
She’d known. Of course she’d known. Through the bond, his love had always worn arrogance like armor. And it had lived in reckless choices and maddening smirks, every steadying hand against her back.
But hearing the words now, shaped like farewell, cracked something in her chest.
“Say it later,” she whispered.
A faint smile touched his mouth, familiar enough to hurt. There he was. Her impossible prince, facing death as though it were only one more obstacle he intended to conquer.
“I should’ve said it a hundred times before now.” His thumb swept over her skin, catching the trail of falling tears. “If I have to cross the darkness between the stars, I’ll find my way back to you.”
“No.” Serenna seized his wrist, the rest of the plea strangled in her throat.
Essence brightened around him, silver flooding his eyes. She gripped him with both hands as if she could hold him together, fingers digging into flesh already too fragile to contain the magic shuddering through him.
“Vesryn—”
His gaze lifted past her, toward the king continuing his slow ascent to the portal. Then back to her.
“Anchor the stars behind me.”
A sob broke from Serenna as the bond blazed between them.
Then Vesryn kissed her.
There was no gentleness left to spare. His mouth turned fierce with heat and despair, a promise bitten into her lips. Serenna clutched his armor and pulled him closer, fingers clenching hard enough to hurt. His heart hammered against her palms, warm and solid and still hers.
Vesryn broke away, and Serenna blinked against the brightness pouring from his skin. His wings flared wide, fire spilling from their talons. But his body had gone too still, already half-claimed by the stars.
Serenna swallowed. “I lo—”
The words died against her tongue when Vesryn ignited.
Sunfire erupted from him in a white-gold spear. Scales flashed over Serenna’s arms before the heat struck.
For one suspended instant, she saw him divided between flesh and light—the prince before her, eyes flooded with silver, and another Vesryn wrought entirely of radiance tearing free from his chest.
The luminous figure shot upward after Galaeryn.
Vesryn’s body didn’t follow.
He went slack, wings folding wrong. His fingers slipped from hers as he plummeted toward the lake.
Serenna dove after him, one hand outstretched, even as the bond wrenched her awareness skyward after the brilliance pursuing the king.
Her fingers closed on empty air. He was already gone from the flesh, beyond her reach. She’d known he meant to intercept the king, but only now understood he intended to ascend.
“I love you.”
She sent the words through the bond, upward into the star he’d become.
Vesryn’s light flared above.
At the same instant, shadows split the air below.
Fenn appeared in Vesryn’s falling path and caught the prince against his chest, wings snapping wide as the lake rushed up.
He warped back to Serenna’s side with Vesryn limp in his arms, the prince’s wings trailing loose behind him, tossed by the wind.
Vesryn’s head tipped against Fenn’s shoulder in a way his pride would’ve never allowed. Fenn glanced at his unmoving chest, then upward to the luminous streak racing after Galaeryn.
Horror crashed through the bond as Fenn sucked in a breath. “He’s not breathing.”
“I know.”
The words cut through the numbness keeping Serenna’s wings in motion. A sob rose, but she bit down until blood salted her tongue, forcing grief into pain she could still use.
Anchor the stars behind me.
“We don’t have much time,” she whispered, refusing to waste his sacrifice.
Before she broke, she turned from the prince’s body and took in the surviving wielders. They wavered over the lake like constellations with stars ripped out, their centers empty of dragons. Along the shore, the battle still raged through smoke and shattered light.
Serenna reached for Vesryn through the bond, his presence racing beyond her grasp. Whatever impossible shape ascension had made of him, every spark of it was bent toward the king.
“She-elf.” Fenn’s soft words cut across the wind.
Serenna inhaled sharply, sensing his unspoken question. The nearest circle held its formation, Starshards blazing, power churning between its wielders with nowhere to go.
“We gather what’s left.” Serenna hauled Essence through her Starshard. Prismatic light burst between her and Fenn while Vesryn’s gem stayed dark against his throat.
Fenn’s arms tightened around the prince’s body. “And him?”
Serenna’s wings missed a beat. She couldn’t look at Vesryn’s slack hand, the same hand that had been warm in hers moments ago.
“We stay together,” she forced out, swiping at her face to clear her vision.
Fenn’s eyes flared as he nodded.
Wind tore at Serenna’s face as her wings beat through air gone heavy as water, stripping the last tears from her cheeks. Vesryn’s light burned at the edge of her awareness, already gaining on Galaeryn’s slow ascent.
He’d reach the king before she was ready.
“Pass me control!” she shouted as she closed the distance to the nearest circle.
The five wielders angled toward her. Prismatic light flared from gem to gem as Serenna reached through her crystal. Their current surged into her Starshard and struck all at once, wrenching a hiss from her teeth and knocking her wingbeats out of rhythm.
The wielders assembled behind Serenna and Fenn, their power converging on her until the gem at her throat burned hot against her skin.
“The next,” she rasped.
Fenn opened a portal.
Lake, smoke, and sky vanished, then snapped back as the void cast them beside another ring.
The wielders were ready. Prismatic light arced between their gems, then stretched across the open air toward Serenna.
She caught the offered power.
The second wave crashed harder, bleaching her vision white. Serenna clenched her teeth and hauled it into the Essence already swelling her Well, forcing the separate currents to hold as one.
Fenn tore another portal through the sky, and the wielders swept next to the first group flying behind them.
Serenna gathered another circle into the formation. Then another. Druids, magus, wraith—whoever still held the sky above the lake—opened their Wells to her and joined the growing ranks.
Each new current struck deeper than the last, every Starshard linked to hers widening the prismatic wake around her. Heat flashed against her scales in luminous veins, smoke lifting through the seams.
Galaeryn had risen far above the lake, his ascent unbroken as the portal waited overhead. Vesryn’s light tore after him, a white-gold star closing fast on the king.
Another circle joined her, and pressure exploded behind Serenna’s eyes. The horizon pitched sideways before she wrestled her wings level. Scales clamped tighter over her arms, unable to shield against the amount of power searing her from within.
Fenn caught her elbow without slowing, Vesryn braced in his other arm. “You can’t hold any more.”
“Next circle,” Serenna gritted out.
“You’re bleeding.”
She blinked hard, clearing the red film from her sight.
“It’s not enough yet.”
Fenn’s jaw tightened, anguish flashing across his face, but he opened another rift.
The next wave of Essence nearly ripped her apart.