Page 162 of The Reckoning of Starlight

The impact heaved the bank as it punched into the riverbed. Water erupted around the descending mass, swallowing Blossom to the shoulders and blotting out the army beyond her.

Blossom’s roots overran the wreckage and wove through every fracture, fastening the island to the riverbed. Above her, more vines lifted toward the next isle.

Through the settling spray, Lykor realized the army needed no portals to reach him. Blossom would drag the Aetherveil down one island at a time until thousands could march across the river.

Toward him and a grounded dragon.

CHAPTER 44

JASSYN

Jassyn watched Lykor dwindle between islands until the chain swallowed him. He chased Skylash, chased death, chased the kind of duty he only believed in when it demanded his own life.

And Jassyn had told him to go.

Wind sheared across the crown island, driving frost against his armor and scales. Jassyn dispelled his wings before the crosscurrents could seize the membranes and wrench him off balance. Ice glazed the rock and groaned as the surviving forces closed ranks around him.

Veyrix and Rimeclaw tore the sky apart.

The Zephyrfang climbed in spiraling fury, each downstroke twisting the currents sideways and beating thunder through the clouds. Rimeclaw met him with frost and mass, ice and tempest colliding hard enough to hammer the air outward.

Galaeryn sat motionless atop Rimeclaw’s shoulders. His siphoning rolled outward in waves, invading Wells before surging back to him in a tide of stolen talents.

Kaedryn held the line at Jassyn’s side, her vertical pupils constricting as she tracked those in the sky. “Do we take the fight to him?”

Linked Starshards remained their best defense—a single strike might wound the king once they had the strength and coordination to build it. But every circle bright enough to threaten Galaeryn marked itself for his plundering.

“Retreat to the lower islands,” he said. The order tasted like defeat because it was. “Small groups. We stay alive.”

Kaedryn’s wing claws curled tight. She held his gaze, resistance locked through every line of her body as a silent argument lived and died between them. Dispersal meant abandoning any unified defense, but staying would only gather their strength into one target for the king to slaughter.

She looked away first, cutting two fingers through the air in signal.

Their perimeter broke apart, wraith and druids flying into a sky swarming with razorwings.

The creatures carved through the cloudy haze in angular bursts, chitin flashing before they vanished. They reappeared to rip dracovae riders from saddles or punch through wings whenever the scattered formations tried to close.

As the surviving ranks peeled toward the lower islands, Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn hunted Rimeclaw through the storm, the Heart of Stars burning in Vesryn’s fist.

The Tidecrasher and Zephyrfang crossed vast reaches of sky faster than the three could safely follow by portal, their collisions casting walls of frost and violent winds across every route. Fenn warped them through one onslaught only to emerge with the dragons already tearing away again.

Jassyn measured the treacherous path. He could send warriors and channelers to shield their approach, buy them time to reach the dragon. Yet the three were already exposed to Galaeryn’s siphoning, and every fighter he committed would place another Well within the king’s reach.

Jassyn was still calculating when the air beside him fractured into a glassy shimmer.

A razorwing burst forward, wings blurring fast enough to raise a metallic drone. Six legs hooked around Jassyn, their barbs biting into his armor as the creature ripped him from the island.

He flung a shield around himself as mandibles closed, violet light detonating between jaws and flesh. The creature surged straight down, pinning him to its plated thorax while it sliced through frost and wind.

The frenzy of its wings shuddered through Jassyn’s body. He swung in the creature’s grip, armor grinding against chitin as the mandibles snapped at his ward a finger’s width from the meat of his shoulder.

Wind scoured the breath from his lungs. Ice, clouds, and the dark undersides of islands reeled past until the sky overturned. Terror struck his ribs, and his mind betrayed him with distances, turning every island below into a measure of how far he would fall if the creature dropped him.

Jassyn clawed for the razorwing’s thorax, vines bursting from his palms.

The creature rolled.

His body wrenched sideways in its grip, vines skidding over slick chitin without purchase. No ground below him. No wings to lift him. No handhold beyond the razorwing carrying him.