Chapter 58
LYKOR
Falling Essence scored the sky with shattered color, but Lykor only saw the silver in Serenna’s and Vesryn’s eyes as he clutched their throats.
“Lykor,” Aesar hissed in his skull the same time Jassyn’s hand landed on his arm, the touch cutting through the blood roaring in his ears.
Lykor’s grip loosened.
Fenn bared his fangs, crimson gaze igniting as darkness flooded his Starshard.
Shadows tore out of the gem, slicing through Lykor’s bindings. The unexpected backlash snapped through Lykor’s chest, hurling him aside.
Lykor struck the mud on one knee, fingers furrowing deep into the muck. He stayed there, staring at Fenn, before wrenching himself upright.
“They have his eyes,” Lykor snarled.
Serenna pressed a shaking hand to her neck. Vesryn’s silver stare pinned on Lykor, the shock in his face burning down into draconic fury.
Fenn kept them gathered against his chest on the ground, one claw locked around Serenna’s armor while the other held Vesryn’s shoulder. “I can feel them,” he gritted out. “Both of them. They’re mine.”
Serenna closed her fingers around the gem at her throat. Her brow furrowed, attention turning inward. “But the bond’s changed.”
Vesryn went still. “It’s just through the Starshards now.”
Fenn’s grip tightened. “Changed isn’t gone.”
“But the king is.” Vesryn’s gaze lifted to the expanse of stars where Galaeryn had vanished into light before turning those unnatural silver eyes on Serenna. Whatever passed between them completely shut Lykor out.
“His Essence disintegrated,” Vesryn said. “I felt it.”
Serenna leaned into Fenn with a shudder. “So did I.”
Lykor stalked closer. “You two came back from the dead. How can we be sure he won’t?”
Jassyn caught his wrist before he made it three steps, drawing him to a halt. “His body is gone and there wasn’t anyone to call him back.”
“The Starshards,” Aesar murmured, his attention fixed on the gems dimming at their throats.
Every instinct in Lykor recoiled. Ancient artifacts. Bound by blood, barely understood, still chained around their necks.
Salvation fastened like a noose.
Fenn hauled Serenna and Vesryn to their feet.
Serenna sagged into his side. Vesryn straightened long enough to lose the support of Fenn’s arm, then buckled. Fenn caught him before the mud did and locked them both against his body.
Beyond the lake, Galaeryn’s ranks were shedding everyone privileged enough to save themselves. Portals opened and snapped shut in quick bursts, each rift taking an elven officer, a shaman, any coward with enough magic left to flee.
The humans remained.
Thousands stood stranded around shore, weapons hanging loose in blood-slick hands. A few stumbled after the portals but were met with empty air.
Lykor’s lip curled. This was Galaeryn’s legacy. Power fleeing first. The humans stolen from their realms left with no order telling them where to die.
Wingbeats battered the smoke overhead. Kaedryn and Koln descended while wraith and druids hovered above the shallows. Kaedryn landed first, then Koln struck down beside her, blood running from an arrow puncture in one wing.
Kaedryn’s attention found Jassyn before she spoke. Lykor knew that posture and what followed. Questions. Decisions. Every fresh disaster laid at Jassyn’s feet, responsibility returning like a collar latched around his throat.
Lykor wanted to tear open a portal far from the shore and shove Jassyn through it. Somewhere beyond the reach of everyone who looked at him and saw a future to follow instead of a male whose knees were barely holding him upright.
If Galaeryn was truly gone, peace would only bring another kind of war. Slower. Politer. Councils instead of battles. Pardons instead of slaughter. Rebuilding instead of revenge.
And Jassyn would stand at the center of it all, bleeding usefulness into every grasping hand.
“We found where Skylash and Veyrix fell,” Kaedryn said. “Cinderax is with them.”
Lykor’s mouth opened around an order, but Aesar stirred with a rebuke. Lykor ground the words back behind his teeth. Not his command to give.
If the dragons still lived, their wounds would become Jassyn’s to mend. If Galaeryn still controlled Veyrix, they would expect Jassyn to break those chains too.
But whatever Jassyn decided came next, Lykor would make the world obey it.
“Koln,” Jassyn said, his voice steady. “Set a perimeter around the army. Don’t engage unless they advance.”
He turned toward the ruined formations sprawled around the shore, thousands of humans stranded where their commanders had abandoned them.
“It’ll take days,” Jassyn murmured, and Lykor heard the weariness in the words. “But we need to sort through their forces and send them home. If soldiers run, let them. If a company leaves together, put scouts on it. I want to know whether they’re fleeing or regrouping.”
Of course Jassyn looked at an army that had tried to kill them and saw a problem to solve instead of a threat to destroy.
Koln’s single eye didn’t even flick toward Lykor for permission before he nodded, and Lykor didn’t know whether to take offense or promote him.
Koln released a sharp whistle and cut two talons toward the sky. “You heard him.”
Above the shallows, wraith and druids peeled away in pairs, wings carving toward the foothills beyond the army.
A ragged volley rose to meet them, arrows scattering wide through the smoke, some falling short while others crossed paths overhead. Fire and shadows sheared from claws, shredding through the arrows before they struck flesh or wings.
The fliers wheeled on without returning the strikes, spreading along the fringes of the army.
Jassyn turned back to Kaedryn. “Skylash and Veyrix. Did they survive?”
“They live. For now.” Kaedryn’s wings furled tight to her spine. “But the winds around them still writhe with battle.”
Lykor locked his jaw hard enough to ache before his patience finally snapped. “Then stop dressing uncertainty as prophecy and take us to them.”
Kaedryn’s nostrils flared. Her Starshard flashed in her palm, and she tore open a portal rather than responding.
Fenn hauled Serenna and Vesryn closer and started for the threshold with both.
Koln intercepted him and hooked an arm around Vesryn’s waist, bracing half the prince’s weight against his side. “I’ll take the pretty one if you’re sharing.”
Fenn grunted. “You remember what happens when we share.”
Vesryn’s head turned slowly toward Koln, but exhaustion had apparently stripped him down to tolerance. He accepted Koln’s support without even mustering the strength to knock away the wandering claw.
“If you let him fall,” Fenn muttered, “I’ll remove your remaining eye.”
“These two have softened you,” Koln said with a grin. He patted the close-cropped side of the prince’s skull as he steered Vesryn toward the portal. “That was barely a threat.”
The others vanished through the rift. Lykor remained at Jassyn’s side until he stepped forward, then crossed with him.
The lake disappeared, replaced by a splintered outcrop jutting from the spine of a sheared mountaintop. Stone plates had split and heaved from the earth, their edges glassed where lightning had fused them, stray sparks crawling across the ground.
Skylash had Veyrix pinned, one taloned wing claw driven into his scales, her neck bowed over him. Her jaws clamped around his throat, fangs buried deep enough that one hard bite would crush his neck to the bone.
Her wings lay shredded against the rocks, membranes twitching in tatters. Lightning stuttered over her scales, each uneven burst catching on the blood slicking her hide.
Chest heaving, the Zephyrfang lay beneath her, one wing twisted at an angle that made even Lykor pause. Wind stirred around his body in broken currents, skittering gravel across the ground.
Cinderax stood near Veyrix’s head, dwarfed by the pair of dragons, smoke coiling from his nostrils.
As the portal sealed shut, Skylash’s eyes rolled toward them, still bright and feral.
Jassyn was already moving, crimson Essence gathering at his fingertips.
Lykor caught his wrist. “You’ve given enough tonight,” he said, words low so that they only belonged to Jassyn. “Send for the magus.”
Jassyn’s mouth tightened, his whole body leaning toward the wounded dragons.
Lykor didn’t let go.
At last, Jassyn gave a grudging nod. “Kaedryn. Send for anyone with enough power left to help them.”
Kaedryn pivoted, her command carrying across the outcrop as portals opened to summon reinforcements.
Lykor kept his attention on Veyrix’s closed lids.
Cinderax stalked closer to Skylash’s snout, his tail whipping against the ground. “Let the tempest go.”
Skylash’s lips peeled back, baring the fangs sunk into Veyrix’s throat, a spark jumping to his scales.
Then an unfamiliar voice rolled through Lykor’s mind like thunder trapped under stone. “She wasn’t so merciful on our first mating flight.”
Skylash went still, every charge across the mountaintop snapping bright.
Then her jaws tightened.
Veyrix hissed as blood welled between her fangs and spilled down the curve of his neck. Lightning surged over Skylash’s hide before splintering into jagged forks.
She snarled against his throat, the vibration shuddering through the ground. “The storm would never have claimed the wind by being merciful.”
At last, her jaws eased apart.
Veyrix’s eyes opened.
Lykor tensed, waiting for Galaeryn to wrench control through the dragon and prove that he’d survived inside the last creature his command could still reach.
Veyrix only stared up at Skylash, white irises clear where the crystalline lattice had once caged his mind.
Proof that the king’s grip had finally broken.
Lykor’s chest loosened so suddenly his knees buckled. Jassyn caught him before he hit the stone. Lykor dragged in air too sharp, too deep, stretching ribs that only knew how to brace.
Galaeryn was dead.
For the first time in a century, Lykor drew a breath that belonged to no king.