Page 25 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Nothing seized him.

An exhale scraped out. He hadn’t harmed her, only shoved her further into sleep. And Elashor’s coercion had allowed it.

Hours remained before sunrise dragged the estate awake and returned every gaze to him. Guards would still patrol, and servants would still drift between rooms, but he could test the reach of the leash with fewer witnesses.

Jassyn drew his legs over the edge of the bed and rose. A chill bit into the soles of his feet, the jolt restoring his focus. He found his trousers where Farine had torn them off, crumpled at the side of the bed, and hauled them on.

The tunic proved harder—cut with slits for his wings, tailored at her command to display more than it clothed.

He wrestled the fabric over one wing, talons snagging the stitching, maroon membranes bunching where they refused to fold flat. He would’ve dispelled them, but Farine’s order held them fixed to his body.

Jassyn stopped.

The tunic hung twisted in his fists, as useless as dignity.

He let it fall.

Bare-chested, he crossed to a window. Even the garment had been designed to remind him what he was. Even dressing had become another place for her fingers to touch.

Flying had been denied too, the estate’s authority reaching past stone and into air. He’d learned that on the first night, standing in the dark of an empty courtyard with his wings spread under the stars, muscles straining but unable to move.

Still, the corridors remained open.

He’d wandered them in stolen hours like this—portrait galleries watched by generations of Vallende faces, gardens clipped into obedience, kitchens where servants looked through him and guards let him pass because the estate itself had already decided how far he was allowed to go. No locks barred his path within its bounds.

Freedom shaped like permission.

But every other hour belonged to Farine.

Jassyn’s stomach clenched, bile climbing the back of his throat. He pressed a palm to his sternum, sealing the burn behind bone until it receded.

He wouldn’t follow that thought. His mind knew the fracture waiting at the end of it. What she might take next. What she might permit others to do.

He pressed his forehead to the window, his breath clouding the pane. Beyond the hedges and marble, the world moved without him.

Lykor was out there.

The glass was cold where warmth should’ve been. Jassyn rested his brow against it and traced the scar cutting past his cheek, then closed his eyes, imagining Lykor’s forehead against his own.

If he ever made it out, if they ever stood face to face again, Lykor would see the wreckage. What had been done to him. What his own mind had already begun trying to rename as allowance.

And Jassyn didn’t know whether Lykor would find anything left worth wanting.

A murmur stirred behind him. Farine turned in her sleep, fingers curling into the sheets as though claiming him even in dreams.

Jassyn straightened. Stillness draped over him before he chose it, a reflex older than the coercion.

He’d already found the gaps in the commands, redefined serve and devoted until they pointed at his own private war. But here, with her perfume clinging to his skin, those definitions blurred. Two nights, and the loopholes already felt thinner.

He had to move while he still remembered the shape of defiance.

Every command had seams. He kept touching them with thought, learning where they might yield and where they would close around him.

He slipped from Farine’s chambers, the door sealing behind him with a soft click.

The corridor stretched long and dim, silence weighted with the drugged haze of Stardust. Servants stirred behind lacquered doors, some indulged enough that their minds had loosened before sleep took them.

He couldn’t coerce them all. But Farine had folded with a single thread of telepathy, her unconscious mind too slack to resist.