Page 46 of The Reckoning of Starlight

The prince’s head snapped back, but he didn’t slow. He seized Lykor’s wing and wrenched.

The world spun—stone, sky, lake—before pain ruptured through the joint. Lykor twisted free, launching a spike of ice that shattered against Vesryn’s chest and drove him back a step.

Vesryn didn’t seem to feel it. Or chose not to.

The prince buried a knee in his ribs and Lykor raked a claw across Vesryn’s scales.

He could end this. Pin the prince with ice and shadows and walk away.

Instead, Lykor swung again.

He’d punished his own warriors for less, flaying hides and stripping rank from those who struck without thinking.

But every hit spent a little more of the fury festering in him since Kal’s death. Since Jassyn vanished behind enemy lines.

Lykor reached for Aesar’s memories, hunting for the prince’s tells, his patterns, which side he guarded after a blow.

Nothing answered, the absence hitting harder than Vesryn.

Lykor paid for the lapse.

Vesryn’s elbow cracked against his temple. Lykor’s vision strobed, stars erupting behind his eyes.

He hit the ground.

Warped.

Sheathed his fist in ice and smashed it across Vesryn’s mouth.

Vesryn staggered. Spat blood. Bared his teeth and flew back burning.

Lykor let him.

This solved nothing, and they both knew it. Neither of them could strike what was actually killing them, and that was enough to keep them swinging.

The sun had crested the distant dunes by the time Vesryn’s knees gave out. Lykor didn’t have enough strength left to press the advantage. He went down with the prince, hitting stone, the impact jarring through every bone.

Fire guttered from Vesryn’s fists, smoke curling around his fingers. Frost pooled beneath Lykor’s palms, melting into the ridge.

Below, Asharyn stirred while they gasped for breath.

Vesryn collapsed on his back, wings splayed beneath him, staring at the sky.

For a while, only the wind moved.

“We can’t hold this city the way Jassyn did,” Vesryn said, chest heaving around the words.

Lykor’s ribs cracked when he inhaled. “I know.”

He watched as druids unbarred shopfronts in the market. Smoke thinned from cookfires lit for bread no one had enough flour to make.

A morning that didn’t know it was borrowed.

“But if I let any of this fall apart,” Lykor added, “Jassyn comes back to nothing. And I refuse to hand him ashes.”

The wind carried the words off the ridge. For once, the prince didn’t argue. Instead, he rose, his right eye already swelling shut. He didn’t offer a hand.

Lykor didn’t need one.