Page 202 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Around them, the platform had gone still.

Three dragons kept tearing the sky apart above the lake while the battle raged on the shore. But on the platform, everything had stopped. Soldiers stood trapped inside unfinished violence, blades suspended mid-strike and Essence dying between rigid fingers. Blossom had halted, one foreclaw planted ahead of the other, every vine gone motionless.

Lykor hauled himself upright on unsteady legs. He’d seen this before on the shore of the Maw—a fragment of battle snared inside Jassyn’s coercion.

This was the entire platform.

Every mind controlled by Jassyn.

Jassyn’s pupils had narrowed to draconic slits, the amber around them bright with fury. For one treacherous instant, every instinct in Lykor urged him to flee. He crushed the reflex before a single muscle obeyed.

Lykor forced the words through his battered throat. “Let’s get back to the ridge.”

Jassyn shook his head and turned toward Blossom towering over them. “I can free her.”

Lykor’s jaw locked. “Sunfire failed when Vesryn tried with Rimeclaw.”

“I’m not going to use sunfire.” His focus stayed on Blossom. “I have to break the leash from inside her mind.”

Lykor’s talons dented into his palm. Only two living souls could force their way into a dragon’s mind uninvited. One wore a crown. The other stood before him already holding an entire platform with coercion.

“You use that Heart,” Lykor said, willing Jassyn to look at him, “and Galaeryn may be waiting inside her skull.”

“I know.”

Quiet. Steady. Unforgivable.

Lykor’s hand twitched toward the Heart. He could rip it from Jassyn’s fist, warp them both back to the ridge, force him to stay there until the danger passed. Or send Jassyn somewhere the battle could never reach.

But Jassyn had chosen his fight.

Lykor hated him for it. Yet he loved him enough not to make his own hands a cage.

Jassyn raised the Heart toward Blossom, light flaring between his fingers. Then his body went utterly still. His face emptied of everything Lykor knew how to read, leaving him upright and breathing while his mind went somewhere Lykor couldn’t follow.

Defenseless. Yet every soldier across the platform remained trapped inside his coercion while Jassyn faced the king’s magic.

Lykor snatched Aesar’s glaives off the ground with a pulse of force. As the blades spun toward them, he loosened his hold on their arms. Aesar slid into the space Lykor gave him, both hands closing around the hilts. Lykor stayed close, shadows reforming.

“Let them go,” Lykor said. “We’ll hold them.”

Jassyn’s lashes fluttered, knuckles blanching around the Heart. Still the soldiers remained locked in place, dozens snared in his coercion while he traveled deeper into the dragon’s mind.

“Focus on Blossom,” Lykor urged.

The stillness broke.

Essence snapped loose in every direction. Blades crashed through interrupted arcs. Shouts tore open across the platform as the king’s forces lurched back into motion.

Aesar raised both glaives into guard.

Lykor bared his fangs as they stepped between Jassyn and everything else.

CHAPTER 53

LYKOR

Five of Kyansari’s soldiers rushed Lykor in formation, wards flaring, Essence blazing at their fingertips.