Page 47 of The Reckoning of Starlight

They stood on opposite sides of the wreckage bleeding in the dawn.

“Tomorrow, then,” Vesryn said, opening a portal.

“Tomorrow.”

Vesryn stepped toward the rift, then stopped. “How is Aesar? After Kal…”

Lykor’s throat closed around the answer.

He shook his head.

Vesryn nodded and vanished without looking back.

Lykor remained alone on the ridge with frost melting off his knuckles and a fang loose against his tongue. He probed it once and left it be, wiping sweat from his brow and blood from his mouth.

Aesar offered no dry correction. No warning. No voice at all.

Lykor portaled to the council chamber. Standing still had become more dangerous than moving.

The assault waited on the war table, maps of Kyansari spread across the stone in Vesryn’s scrawling hand. Ink marked the estates, Stardust dens, storehouses—every place the capital kept its wealth fat while the realms starved. Lykor braced his palms on the edge and stared until the lines blurred.

The wraith would fan through hidden alleys, drop from the rooftops, and strike from the sky, turning each district into a separate pocket of chaos and panic.

But Elashor wouldn’t be in the streets bleeding with his soldiers. If he was in the city at all, he’d be in the palace, behind walls that had never been breached.

Lykor and Vesryn would go directly. If Elashor was there, they would seize him.

If Galaeryn was waiting, the raid would end at the gates.

Others filed into the chamber. Lykor rolled his shoulders, cracked the reforming ice from his knuckles, and began assigning sectors to the wraith lieutenants whose names Koln had scratched into the maps’ margins.

The capital would burn tomorrow.

He’d find Jassyn. Or die on the way.

CHAPTER 10

SERENNA

Serenna groaned as consciousness ripped her up from the dark. Her eyes peeled open, vision filmed by the receding wash of pain.

Two days since Taryn had lifted Fenn’s Starshard and Serenna’s world had erupted in his fire, leaving her more ash than flesh before the menders stitched her back together only to burn again. The hours bled together, measured in injuries and the number of times she’d woken in the Infirmary, healed into usefulness and sent back to the ring.

She blinked hard, forcing the blur into shape just as a magus in white leathers withdrew from her bedside. The latest fragment of memory was a punch of force that had knocked her from the sky.

Taryn waited at the foot of the cot, arms folded, chin lifted with satisfaction. Behind her shoulder, Fenn stood with his jaw locked, a muscle jumping beneath the skin.

He didn’t look away from Serenna. He couldn’t speak with his sister standing between them, but his silence reached her anyway, heavy with apology, fury, and the same helpless dread for whatever came next.

Ayla had begun sending reavers and magus against them two, three, four at a time, and Fenn had fared no better. The menders had erased the blood and burns, but not the way Fenn held himself too still, as if one wrong breath might give Taryn an excuse to aim his Starshard at Serenna.

With a wince, Serenna pushed upright, her mended ribs pulling tight as she swung her legs off the cot. A cup waited on the table beside her, and she drained the water, hating the small gratitude that followed.

Ayla had kept them bathed, clothed, and fed. Like prized hounds patched between fights, returned to the kennel when not in use.

In one fist, Taryn rolled Serenna’s Starshard necklace and Fenn’s matching gem, their facets clicking against each other.

So. Ayla had handed off the leash again.