Page 206 of The Reckoning of Starlight

“Fine,” Lykor snarled.

And dove back into the fray.

CHAPTER 54

JASSYN

Jassyn’s boots struck the ridge above the shore as Lykor landed. The world lurched sideways, and he caught Lykor’s shoulder before his knees chose betrayal. Beside him, Lykor remained taut, wings vanishing as he angled toward the next threat. Jassyn steadied himself and straightened.

Barely.

He dragged his palm under his nose, wiping away the blood left from forcing his way through Blossom’s mind. His hands still trembled, the strain of that mental breach lingering in every movement.

Above, Skylash struck Veyrix in a violet blast. He reeled, scales smoking, but Rimeclaw’s jaws split wide in pursuit, unleashing shards of ice across Skylash’s exposed flank. Her roar sundered the clouds, lightning flashing ragged from her fangs.

Thunder rattled Jassyn’s teeth as Skylash climbed, but one wing faltered. Veyrix and Rimeclaw closed on her through the haze and smoke, their crystalline eyes vacant.

Below the dragons, Blossom charged from the platform across the fractured span of Rimeclaw’s ice. Her talons punched through the thinning shelf, water and frost shearing up around her legs. Her mind vibrated against his with rage older than the realms as she struck the shore under him.

Soldiers nearest Blossom broke first, stumbling over one another as she towered over the front ranks. The panic spread behind them faster than any officer could contain, each line collapsing when the one before it fled. Formations twisted against themselves as mortals remembered, all at once, that some things in the world had never belonged to kings.

Blossom let the fleeing soldiers spill around her. Through smoke and thrown mud, her head lifted toward the ridge until her viridian gaze found Jassyn.

He’d hunted Galaeryn’s control through her awareness and found it anchored in damage far older than the king. The Aelfyn had broken her mind first, severing thought from language and leaving fractures Galaeryn had pried wider. Jassyn had torn the king’s hold from those wounds piece by piece until Blossom stirred beneath the wreckage, changed beyond his power to mend.

She reached for him through the earth, a tremor moving under his boots. Images followed—chains breaking inside her skull, Galaeryn’s hand closing around a Heart, Skylash trapped between Veyrix and Rimeclaw. Roots spread beneath all of it, branching once, twice, again. Then they stilled, every buried tip turning toward him.

Jassyn understood.

She wanted a direction.

“We need to get her out,” Lykor said as she climbed toward the ridge, mud surging around her claws with each step.

“I know.”

Prismatic light wheeled overhead as Serenna, Vesryn, and Fenn swept through a rising storm of arrows. Serenna banked sharply, lightning lashing from her palms. Vesryn ripped open a portal across the volley’s path that swallowed the iron rain before it could puncture their wings. Fenn plunged beside them through the smoke, fire braided in his wake as he drove a broken knot of soldiers toward a rift gaping across the ground. Vasharax streaked ahead, embers scattering from her jaws.

Blossom’s head rose level with the ridge. She stood close enough that her exhaled chuff rolled hot across Jassyn’s face, stirring the curls away from his eyes.

Her power pulsed. A vine shouldered through the churned earth and forked between them. One tendril wound around Jassyn’s wrist, the other wrapping around Lykor’s as green light seeped through the connection.

The tremor stilled in Jassyn’s fingers first, strength returning to his limbs. Then the bruised pressure behind his eyes dissolved until the battlefield sharpened around him with familiar clarity.

Beside him, tension eased from Lykor’s shoulders as the green glow tunneled under his armor. Blood welled from the punctures torn through his leathers, slowed, then ceased.

When the vines released them, they slipped back into the ground, leaving a dark ring of loam around Jassyn’s wrist.

He lifted his hand to Blossom’s snout.

She lowered her massive head until his palm met the rough slope above her nostril. Moss clung cool and wet, thorns rising from her scales in cruel little crowns.

Through the place where their minds still touched, Jassyn offered her horizon after horizon, each one farther from Galaeryn’s reach. The hidden dark of the Everfrost Caverns. Then Asharyn’s sun-warmed stone. A jungle canopy gleaming after rain. An island alone in turquoise water, salt wind combing through empty reeds.

Blossom’s head lowered until viridian eyes filled Jassyn’s sight. Her answer shuddered through the earth with the slow weight of settling bedrock. Impressions followed, crushing in their certainty—her roots driving deep below the shore, gripping the bones of the world. Her claws sinking into this battlefield.

In her mind, Jassyn’s portal opened. Her roots seized its edges and choked it shut.

Jassyn’s throat tightened. “She doesn’t want to leave.”