Page 19 of The Reckoning of Starlight

“They stay tethered,” Ayla ordered Taryn. “Until their compliance is absolute.”

The laugh died in Serenna’s throat. The metal collar sat cold against her skin, smothering both her magic and the bonds.

Vesryn would feel their absence, but he wouldn’t know where to hunt.

Ayla flicked her wrist, and a portal split the air in a whirl of darkness.

“We’re returning to Centarya,” she said. “And you’re going to give me everything you tried to save.”

CHAPTER 4

LYKOR

“Please!”

Saundyl’s voice cracked through Asharyn’s courtyard.

Lykor didn’t blink. He kept the rending taut across the square, chains of shadow wound tight around the female’s throat. More human than elf, she stood with dark hair hanging in twisted clumps, matted from the mountain prisons. Dirt streaked her cheeks, the sun sharpening the bloodless pallor of someone dragged from a cell into light. Her arms locked around an infant, both of them shackled by his shadows.

Saundyl collapsed to his knees in the sand, still dripping from the water Lykor had forced down his throat. “Don’t—please…”

The words meant nothing. They wouldn’t change what came next.

Lykor kept one hand raised, the noose of power obedient, his attention on Saundyl. “Where. Are. They.”

Silence clenched like a fist. Kaedryn and the magus had started sorting through those freed from the prisons while he and Vesryn were out at sea, but a handful of families still lingered in the courtyard, unclaimed and waiting for the guildmasters to decide where they belonged.

The druids had begun to gather again, eyes wide and crimson bright.

No one spoke.

Essence flared through the rift Lykor had left open to the ship. A storm of stolen talents hurtled from the void, spheres of power spinning in fractured orbits. They told him what Vesryn had done before the prince crossed the threshold.

Smoke still coiled around Vesryn’s wings as he stepped from the dark, his mouth set in a hard line.

Lykor had expected hesitation. Refusal, perhaps, when asked to do what Galaeryn had done—plunder Wells and name the theft necessity.

Instead, Vesryn stood with soot blackening his hands, his fingers trembling before they clenched tight.

Lykor sealed the rift, and both he and the prince dispelled their wings. Vesryn’s gaze roved over the courtyard—to Saundyl on his knees, the female snared across from them in shadows—before focusing on Lykor.

His eyes blazed emerald. Unflinching.

Vesryn would do what needed to be done. For Jassyn. For Fenn and Serenna.

Good.

The prince wouldn’t slow him down.

Vesryn strode to Lykor’s shoulder, close enough that the Essence orbiting him prickled like static before a strike.

Lykor focused on the male crumpled at his feet.

“My–my orders were to send all traitors to Elashor,” Saundyl stammered.

“So you do remember where you sent them.” Lykor crouched on his heels, bringing his face level with the elf’s. “If I have to ask where they are again, you’ll choose who dies first.”

Saundyl’s eyes flew toward the female and child.