Page 33 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Ayla’s lip curled. “I’ll give the king what’s valuable when I choose. As for our sire…” She stepped closer, Serenna’s Starshard gleaming at her throat while the gem in her diadem caught the morning sun. “The less he knows, the stronger my position.”

The shape of Ayla’s ambition sharpened. The king might’ve put an heir in her womb, but he’d denied her a place in Kyansari. So Ayla had made Centarya hers instead. And Serenna and Fenn remained unsurrendered, weapons the queen hadn’t yet laid at the king’s feet.

Ayla smirked. “Careful. You look dangerously close to having a thought.”

Her fingers clamped around Serenna’s Starshard.

Serenna’s first step launched out of her. Then another. She stumbled toward the door before her balance caught, the gem yanking obedience through her limbs. Ayla followed close behind, shoving a hand between her wings to steer her from the chambers.

Guards lined the corridor in Kyansari plate armor, but Ayla’s shrike stamped every tabard.

Conquered uniforms. Rebranded loyalty.

The door across the hall swung open on silent hinges. Fenn stepped out behind Taryn, wings shifted like Serenna’s.

Serenna halted, her fingers curling at her sides, trapping the impulse to reach for him.

She knew it was still Fenn. But at the same time, it wasn’t.

Every piercing had been stripped away, every stud and ring torn from his face until he looked presentable for court. His golden hair, no longer the wild cascade she knew, had been bound into a single warrior’s braid that pulled his features sharper.

And his eyes…

His eyes were wrong, twin skies where fire should’ve burned. All traces of wraith had been scoured from him, replaced with the arch elf they’d decided he should’ve been all along. The gold at his throat matched hers, smothering the bond between them to nothing.

His name pressed against the back of Serenna’s throat, but she swallowed it.

Fenn didn’t speak hers either. His wings twitched behind him, the clawed tips reaching for her before they clenched tight.

“Walk,” Ayla hissed.

Serenna obeyed before the Starshard could clamp down.

Fenn and Taryn fell into step behind them. Armor clattered as their escort began the long descent—five hundred winding stairs circling down the Spire.

They walked.

Down and down.

Serenna counted the marble steps to keep herself from glancing back at Fenn.

The need to touch him ached through her fingers, to find his pulse under altered skin. To prove the body behind her still belonged to him despite the golden hair and those ocean eyes.

Somewhere past three hundred stairs, Ayla spoke. “Tell me where you found your artifacts.”

Another question. Another seam ripped open around one of the few secrets Serenna had managed to keep only because Ayla hadn’t thought to ask.

Serenna kept her eyes on the steps. “We found them on the other side of the world.”

Ayla’s footsteps didn’t falter. “Taryn,” she called back, pleasant as a request for tea.

Serenna tensed.

That was all it took.

Taryn would make Fenn the consequence for her defiance, forcing fire into his hands and making him watch while it burned.

Serenna could endure the pain. What she couldn’t survive was Fenn’s face afterward.