Page 54 of The Reckoning of Starlight

He hadn’t meant to act today. Not like this. He wasn’t ready.

But if he found the Heart of Stars, he could free Blossom. If he could crack Elashor’s hold on his mind…

No. One lock at a time. Free Blossom first. Then find a way to free himself. Before obedience became instinct. Before coercion rewrote him completely.

There wasn’t time to plan anything else. No path remained except the one in front of his feet. Alone or not, he had already begun walking it.

At the center of the hedge maze, Jassyn stopped. Beneath the greenery, he sensed where Blossom lay buried, her hunger pressing through the earth.

Jassyn turned to face the guard. His hands remained loose at his sides as he tightened the command already planted in the male’s mind. Another spear of telepathic Essence lashed across the space between them, narrow and vicious, driving deeper.

The guard jerked, a startled sound escaping his throat, but all gentleness fell away. Jassyn tunneled through the breach until thought and memory ruptured behind the male’s eyes, spilling without order.

Training yards slick with sweat and blood. The Vallende sigil stamped into loyalty until it became indistinguishable from pride. Fragments blurred past—servants, other guards, whispered jokes about the half-breed pet.

The satisfaction of enforcing obedience. Cruelty made easy by permission.

The guard whimpered, eyes unfocused and leaking blood. Coercion burrowed through him, buckling resistance until the male’s thoughts submitted with horrifying speed.

“This is how it feels,” Jassyn hissed into the guard’s mind, “to be the one who can’t make it stop.”

The last of the male’s defenses disintegrated. Jassyn rifled through everything, coercion responding with a sickening readiness, eager for whatever shape he gave it. He hunted for what mattered—the Heart of Stars.

Corridors unfurled. Patrol rotations. Orders spoken low behind closed doors. The Starvault—the innermost sanctum of the Vallende estate, hoarding bottled Essence and mountains of Stardust. Buried deep in the manor, a cathedral dome of glass cupped a stolen view of the night sky. Other soldiers lined the approach, motionless as statues along the halls, but the path existed.

When Jassyn withdrew, the guard sagged forward with a broken sound, blood pouring from his nose.

The hedges around them rustled, leaves trembling as ivy curled tighter across marble columns and vines slipped between cracks in the stone.

Jassyn’s scales erupted across his skin as a deep rumble rolled underfoot.

The flower bed split apart.

Soil rose in dark curtains, roots snapping as dirt fell. Blossom’s massive snout breached the surface, veined with living thorns. Moss rippled from her jawline as her crystalline eyes opened in the morning light. The ground heaved as she hauled herself free, the earth crumbling beneath her claws.

Blossom’s hunger rolled through Jassyn, cracking memory against the inside of his skull—elves crushed in her fangs, vines dragging bodies into her maw, bone splitting so violently his stomach turned.

Then her nostrils flared, attention pinning on the guard.

Jassyn felt the shift through the earth as every ancient part of her narrowed toward the beating pulse. Her fangs gleamed wet. Tendrils writhed behind them, barbed and slick with sap.

Blossom lowered her neck, and Jassyn understood then that she wanted the kill.

Her body coiled to lunge.

The command struck first.

Jassyn sensed it seize through her jaw, muscles locking under scales, hunger snarling against a binding she couldn’t uproot.

Images bloomed in his mind. She’d tested the leash the day before, when the female reeking of floral rot made her grow the garden for show. Feral hunger had thrashed, but the star-defiled chains had clamped her jaws shut.

Just like now.

Remain on these grounds. Do not hunt those who dwell within the estate. Obey the Vallende line, or bleed.

“You’re not allowed to hunt,” Jassyn whispered.

Hunt meant pursuit, prey running and resisting.