He prowled to the center of the chamber, pivoting on his heel to study her. To think. Swept away in capturing the elf, he’d put no thought into what questions he’d ask of a prisoner. Lykor supposed he should begin by gouging out her knowledge of the king’s intentions, to bridge the gaps a century had hollowed in his.
He had no doubts the elves were doing the same to those Aesar had abandoned on the island. Lykor’s fangs drew blood from his gums, dwelling on the wraith left behind. All those lives lost. Deserted. His people would break under torture. Reveal the location of their fortress. Lykor’s objective became clear—he needed to learn how much time remained until the elves confronted them in force.
“What do you know of the wraith?” Lykor demanded.
The warrior dragged in breath through her nose before spitting at him, the spittle hardly landing halfway across the room.
Lykor’s lip curled away from his teeth. In one step, hewarped, materializing in front of her. With his gauntlet, he snatched the elf by the throat, lifting her to her toes. He wrenched her neck to make the restraints cut into her collarbones, flashing his fangs at her insolence.
“I will ask one more time,” Lykor clipped, rage boiling beneath his ribs. Shadows whipped around him in a tempest, fury evoking rending. “Answer unsatisfactorily and I won’t hesitate to plait your entrails after I peel the flesh from your bones.”
The warrior whimpered, eyes rolling with fear, but remained silent.
Lykor struck out with a sliver of darkness. Cutting like a blade, he channeled the rending, splitting the female’s skin under his gauntlet. She swore as he withdrew the metal from her throat. The flesh from her neck sloughed away, stuck to the steel like sap dripping off a pine.
The way she stubbornly set her jaw had Lykor snarling. Eyes flicking to her broken arm, he detected the next key to try to unlock her secrets. He grabbed the exposed bone, twisting it farther in the wrong direction.
The female shrieked through her teeth as she panted. Eyes glazing over, she slumped in the chains, passing out.
Lykor growled in disgust. With a flick of force, he wiped away the sticky mess sullying his armor. He crushed his claw into a fist, letting the squeal of the steel soothe him as he started pacing the room.
Like a bolt of lightning, a violent thought collided with him. His head whipped back to the elf. During his imprisonment, he’d learned of dark magic that the king and his general had meddled with. Lykor had no reservations about exploiting those same techniques against their own.
He could take her power.
Like the king had done to him—to all the wraith—pilfering Essence from the elves they used to be. Not anticipating an escape, Galaeryn had returned a handful of talents to Lykor tosee if he’d retain strength over his abilities. The wraith wouldn’t have survived this long without the Essence Lykor possessed, but he was far from the arch elf that Aesar used to be.
Ripping off his gauntlet and flinging it aside, Lykor exposed his dominant right hand, the claw that belonged to some beast. Skin to skin contact worked best. How many times had Galaeryn extracted and inserted abilities while experimenting on him? Hundreds? Half hadn’t survived the siphoning process, perishing from the unbearable agony of talents cleaved from the Well.
Dissolving the horrors of the past, Lykor prowled forward as shadows spilled from his claw like noxious fog. He yanked the golden blade out of the elf’s shoulder, sheathing it back at his side before shredding her leathers with a slash of rending. Lykor plunged his talons into the slumped warrior’s chest.
And pillaged everything.
CHAPTER 4
JASSYN
Jassyn shifted his feet at the edge of an outdoor training yard a quarter mile from the massive dracovae stables. The midmorning sun glinted off various weapons arranged on multiple racks. Perched in a mountainous plateau near Alari’s northern border, the Ranger Station towered over the far end of the practice fields.
“This isn’t necessary,” Jassyn said. One last attempt at a futile protest.
Standing in the center of one of the sandy circles, Vesryn tied back his hair with a leather strap. “My face begs to differ.” The prince gestured to his unmarred jaw, where an hour ago, Jassyn had healed the bruises he’d apparently bestowed upon Vesryn in his previous incapacitated state. “I need to teach you to throw a punch properly so you don’t fuck up your hand again.”
Jassyn had awakened that morning feeling resurrected. Most of the Stardust had vacated his system after two long days locked away in the prince’s chambers.
Wary of Vesryn’s notorious lack of skill, Jassyn rubbed his bruised knuckles, unwilling to allow the prince to mend him inreturn. Scattered bits and pieces were all that Jassyn could remember—yielding his stomach, attempting to escape, and evenbrawlingwith his cousin.
“And I’m not forgetting that you stabbed me!” Voice pitched high with scandalization, Vesryn pointed to his shoulder’s unblemished skin, another spot Jassyn had healed. “Seven concealed daggers is rather excessive, but if you insist on carrying so many, then you’re going to learn how to use them.”
"Shredding my leathers to recover the blades was completely uncalled for,” Jassyn grumbled. “I had that armor broken in.”
He vaguely recalled the confrontation that had occurred in the middle of the first night when he’d attempted to sneak out of Vesryn’s chambers, intending to retrieve his supply of Stardust. Instead of slipping out of the prince’s apartment undetected, Jassyn had tripped over his cousin, who’d been sleeping on the floor like a guard dog.
While in his deranged state, knifing the prince had been the only reasonable course of action. In a mad dash toward freedom, Jassyn had made it halfway down the hallway before Vesryn had tackled him, dragging him back into his lair.
Enduring his crazed assaults, the prince had dutifully played caretaker. Vesryn’s dedication tilled up a twinge of guilt.I suppose I should be thanking him.
As he inhaled the crisp mountain air, a breath of relief cleansed Jassyn’s lungs. Now freed from the clutches of Stardust, the world sharpened around him.
