Page 190 of The Reckoning of Starlight

“You and Serenna are the only ones among us who’ve channeled it,” Jassyn said. “In untrained hands, sunfire could cost us more wielders than it’s worth.”

“Then we teach our people to harness it without burning themselves out.” Vesryn glanced toward the Starshards. “We have two days.”

Silence gathered around the fire, the stars cold and bright overhead.

Koln rose, adjusting his eye patch.

“I’ve learned worse in less.” He cracked his neck before his eye found Jassyn. “I’ll speak to Kaedryn and assemble the Starshard holders at dawn.”

Jassyn dipped his chin. Serenna didn’t envy him for being the one who’d ask their forces to channel a power capable of consuming them.

Koln shifted into wings. He warped over the island’s edge, vanishing into the dark.

Fenn leaned forward and sent another ribbon of flame curling over the bare ground, stoking the fire higher.

Wingbeats swept over from the adjacent island before Cinderax crossed the gap in a single glide. He landed on the stone with a click of talons, molten irises scanning the circle.

Skylash followed. The island shuddered under her weight, stone cracking beneath her claws. She curled at the edge with her spine to the fire, leaving enough distance that no one could mistake proximity for company.

Cinderax’s voice pressed into Serenna’s mind. “We will fly with you. All of us.”

“All of you?” Fenn asked. The fire around his talons thinned to smoke as he watched the hatchlings descend on the unguarded carcass in a tangle of flapping wings and gnashing fangs. Any other night, he would’ve cackled. “You can’t mean the hatchlings too.”

“We are dragons.” Cinderax’s tail struck the ground, stirring dust through the firelight. “Five of our clutchmates have already been claimed by this usurper. We will not cower while our kin remain leashed.”

“And what do you expect whelps to do against a king with grown dragons?” Lykor leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees. “One wingbeat from Rimeclaw would slap them out of the sky.”

“Rimeclaw scattered your warriors too.” Cinderax’s nostrils flared. “I am not asking the young to challenge the Wardens. Put them within your circles. Let their elements strengthen your children of earth and starlight as Skylash’s lightning did at the river. They carry fire and frost and storm older than this war. Let their power burn alongside yours.”

“They can barely control their elements,” Serenna said, sharper than intended, fear biting into each word. “They’re too young for a battle.”

“And yet they are what remains.” Heat rolled outward from Cinderax’s scales. “If that portal is opened to bridge the worlds, there will be no hatchlings left to shelter. No clutches laid in spring. No sky left for them to soar.”

His ancestral memory struck through Serenna’s mind, the mourning of dragons who’d watched their kind fall. Eggshells crushed by starlight. Scales scattered through the sand. Fire guttering in throats that would never roar again. The terrible silence left where wingbeats should’ve thundered.

“Balance dies with this world,” Cinderax rumbled softly. “Or it is defended by every fang, every wing, every breath of power we have left. You carried their flames into being, First Keeper. Do not cage what you kindled.”

Serenna set the Starshard she’d been holding among the others as his memories lingered behind her eyes. Every instinct urged her to keep the seventeen remaining hatchlings grounded, hidden, alive—beyond the king’s reach. Yet their lives were theirs to risk.

Serenna turned toward the dragon facing away from them. “Skylash. Are you flying with us too?”

Skylash remained still, her spine cut black against the stars, tail coiling tighter around her.

“I will fly.” Her voice scraped through Serenna’s mind like talons dragged across glass. “And if you cannot free Veyrix again…”

She turned her head, violet eyes flashing.

“I will kill him myself. He will not remain shackled while I still have freedom in the sky.”

No one spoke.

Sparks lifted from her scales in bright spirals and vanished into the dark.

Fenn broke the silence with a huff that nearly became a laugh before it died.

“So we have three thousand against the king’s entire army. Our newest recruits are hatchlings and a dragon vowing to strike down her own mate.” He shook his head, dark hair swaying across his back. “We’ve never had good odds. Dying just hasn’t been one of our talents.”

Vesryn flicked a glance at Fenn across the fire. “Then we make sure the king regrets leaving any of us alive.”