Page 207 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Lykor grunted. “Should’ve known. Neither did you.”

Jassyn let his hand fall from Blossom’s snout and scanned the battle—druids and wraith cutting through the sky, the army still massed below in ranks built to overwhelm them.

“The humans,” he said. “We could open portals along the shore and have Blossom drive them through, clear enough of the field to give our fliers room.”

“It won’t matter.” Lykor stared where Skylash’s lightning flickered thin through smoke and falling ice. “Galaeryn can wait until the end of time. Rimeclaw and Veyrix will wear Skylash down. The army will wear us down. Then he’ll take Skylash when she falls, break Blossom open again, and claim every dragon that remains.”

He was right. Every second their forces spent tearing through a human army built to absorb slaughter cost them strength Galaeryn never had to spend. Twenty Starshard circles still hung dark over the water, their sunfire banked, waiting on a king who had no reason to rush.

Lightning flashed overhead. A gust slammed into Jassyn hard enough to send his boots skidding across the earth.

He staggered as the dragons swept above them, Lykor’s hand snapping around his arm before he could fall. Over the lake, Veyrix rammed into Skylash’s side, the gale crushing one of her wings inward and hurling her toward the water. Rimeclaw followed through their wake, frost streaming from his jaws as he descended after her.

Skylash caught herself three spans above the surface and clawed her way back into the sky on fury alone.

But her lightning flickered where it had blazed earlier. Jassyn knew the same losing pattern from mending wounds—blood leaving faster than he could staunch it, each intervention buying less time than the one before.

A healer knew when a body had lost too much.

A commander knew when a battle had.

Beside him, Lykor’s focus narrowed on Rimeclaw. “Blossom tore islands out of the sky. Can she ground him?”

Blossom’s head swung toward the Tidecrasher. A rumble built low in her chest, dry as grinding stone.

“If she holds him down,” Lykor said, voice roughening, “could you free him?” His gaze dropped to the dried blood smeared across Jassyn’s hands. “Could you survive it?”

Jassyn’s fingers curled. Forcing his way through Blossom’s ruined mind had nearly buckled his own, yet Galaeryn’s control had yielded under his magic with horrifying ease. Once inside, Jassyn had known exactly where to cut, and that certainty frightened him more than the blood it had wrung from his body.

Jassyn nodded. “We have to try.”

Blossom chuffed and turned before the words finished leaving him. She descended back toward the shore, each footfall burying her claws until mud heaved around her legs. Roots unfurled from her talons and plunged into the water, their passage roiling the shallows as they spread beneath the lake.

Rimeclaw wheeled above the water, turning for another strike at Skylash.

The shore erupted.

Roots burst from the mud and shallows, thick as anchor chains, slick with lake weeds and silt. They speared through the sky and cinched around one of Rimeclaw’s hind legs.

The Tidecrasher bellowed.

He kicked hard enough to rip the first tangle free. Ice flashed down the rest, shattering the bark.

More roots ripped from the mud at the water’s edge and seized his other leg, the fin of his tail, the base of one wing. Blossom wrenched, and Rimeclaw’s weight betrayed him.

He dropped from the sky, striking the lake in an explosion of spray and fractured ice. Water surged outward in a wave that swallowed the nearest shore. Horses screamed and soldiers disappeared, burning tents extinguishing under the wash.

Rimeclaw vanished under the water, colliding with the lakebed like a mountain falling. His head burst back through the surface, jaws wide, frilled spines streaming frost, the rest of him trapped in Blossom’s hold.

On the shore, Blossom crouched low, her massive head sunk between bunched shoulders, claws buried until the flooded earth swallowed her talons. Her scales shuddered with each thrash of Rimeclaw’s body. Roots heaved from the mud around her legs, thickening and knotting over one another as she anchored herself against his strength.

Jassyn tracked her roots boring through silt and stone, cinching around Rimeclaw’s limbs as the lakebed entombed him. Mud packed across his tail, his wings, the massive ridge of his spine, grounding the dragon with the weight of water and earth.

Frost detonated from his body in violent pulses, whitening the waves. Ice sheathed the roots and hardened the mud around them.

Fresh growth forced into the frozen seams, tangling earth around ice until Rimeclaw’s own defense braced the prison holding him.

Frost against root. Tide against earth.