Page 42 of The Reckoning of Starlight

He would find the Heart of Stars, break Blossom’s chains, and carve a way out from the inside.

CHAPTER 9

LYKOR

One of the wraith woke Lykor mere hours after sleep had finally claimed him. The Maw prisoners, she reported. Unrest in the holding quarters.

Third time this week.

Lykor peeled a purring Aiko from his chest and settled the vulpintera on the bed. He dressed in the dark, pulling on flight leathers by memory, fastening buckles with fatigued fingers. Frost cracked over his knuckles and climbed his forearms, his body arming itself faster than his hands could follow.

Aesar should’ve surfaced by now with some tedious objection about prisoners and leverage, careful reasoning that made restraint sound noble.

Silence held.

Lykor flexed his fingers until the ice shattered.

Outside, Asharyn’s dirt-packed alleys swallowed his stride, torchlight catching the frost that bloomed and died with every footfall.

Beyond the sleeping walls, Jassyn, Fenn, and Serenna were in enemy hands. Inside, the city rationed grain it didn’t have among mouths still loyal to Galaeryn’s crown.

This holding quarter occupied a repurposed storehouse near the southern wall—windowless sandstone with slits cut high and narrow. Convenient, then, that the grain was gone. Asharyn needed the space for prisoners who gnawed through its food and repaid the debt by spilling blood.

The reek reached Lykor before the door did, stale with confinement and old fear gone sour.

Daeryn waited at the entrance, the leader of the Essence-wielding shamans reduced to prison guard. Jassyn’s son watched with hazel eyes that gave nothing away. Lykor killed the comparison before it could settle.

“Three of them went after a druid bringing morning rations,” Daeryn said without greeting. “Nearly strangled the girl before Bhreena put them down.”

“Put them down?” Lykor’s gaze cut past him, teeth grinding.

“Subdued,” Daeryn corrected, though his tone said she’d considered the alternative. “She’s still inside.”

Lykor shouldered past him.

Inside, urine and old hay choked the air. Seven prisoners lined the walls. Three had been dragged to the center.

Wreathed in Essence, Bhreena crouched over one, her knee driven into his spine. She ground his face against the stone while blood pooled from his broken nose. Two more lay bound in shadows beside her—one unconscious, the other staring at the ceiling with the fixed concentration of a male already planning how to finish what he started.

Bhreena’s knuckles were split, accounting for the first male’s face. But blood seeped through his shredded tunic in thin parallel lines, too precise for fists.

Lykor grunted. Rending, then. Sliced shallow enough to leave him alive. Punishing the nearest flesh still sworn to the crown that had hurt her sister.

The same sister that had been hauled out of the mountain prisons with the others. Safe, if that word could crawl out of a place like that and still mean anything.

“Took you long enough,” she muttered without rising.

Lykor ignored her. These ten prisoners remained, stripped of everything but loyalty to Galaeryn.

The others dragged from the Maw had found ways to survive. Many had sworn themselves to Asharyn, quick to cast off the king’s armor once it stopped protecting them. A few became bargaining pieces or stayed alive because fear opened their mouths.

Saundyl belonged with those cowards, comfortable and watched, his compliance lasting exactly as long as his wife and son stayed breathing.

But those in this cell had looked at Asharyn’s starving refuge and decided the king was still the safer bet.

Lykor reached inward once more, to where Aesar’s caution should’ve risen.

Nothing answered.