Page 72 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Lykor didn’t wait to see if the king stumbled.

His wings burst from his spine as he drove a blast of force through the window. Glass shattered outward in a razored sheet, and Lykor warped through the fracture before Galaeryn could reclaim him.

Wind slammed into his chest when he reappeared above Kyansari. Rain knifed across his face as rooftops spun below, steaming under Rimeclaw’s deluge.

Behind, the palace held its silence. Galaeryn stood at the broken window, watching his vessel run.

Letting him go.

Every freedom he’d ever claimed now wore the king’s shadow.

Across the capital, wraith wheeled through the smoke, the Essence they’d plundered whirling around them in glowing orbs. Their flames died almost as soon as they struck. Rimeclaw skimmed over the city, rain pouring from his wings, flooding the rooftops and streets.

He couldn’t help Rimeclaw. Not tonight. The promise festered, a debt collecting interest in blood. But that wasn’t Lykor’s only failure.

Elashor had never been here at all. The palace had been a husk with nothing but dust and a king who’d been waiting. If any trail to Jassyn still existed, it lay wherever Vesryn’s portal had opened.

Lykor gritted his fangs and beat his wings into the rain. He’d sound the retreat and drag his warriors back to Asharyn—the only move the king had left him.

CHAPTER 18

SERENNA

The collapse kept roaring in Serenna’s skull long after the stone stopped falling.

Fenn had shielded her just before the ceiling slammed down, the only wall between her and the rubble. Through the dark, she felt his heartbeat and counted it.

Dust packed her throat. Serenna coughed against Fenn’s weight, eyes streaming, each ragged breath scraping through debris still drifting from the crumbled stone.

Then pain took over.

Her leg spasmed, a broken rock crushing her ankle to the cavern floor. When she strained against it, bone ground under the pressure, agony spearing up her calf until her vision blurred.

The cavern she’d brought down pressed in from every direction. Somewhere inside all this broken stone was Ayla.

Ayla.

The name shoved the pain in Serenna’s leg to the edge of her mind. She didn’t know whether Ayla lay dead beneath the rubble or waited alive in the dark with Serenna’s Starshard still latched around her throat.

Serenna reached for Essence.

Power answered, rushing around her.

The breath trapped in her chest broke loose as she shaped the magic into light. A globe of illumination flared across the ruin, revealing stone where air should’ve been—slabs leaning at wrong angles, grit sifting through cracks in what used to be the ceiling.

The collapse had left them in a cramped pocket beneath the wreckage, rocks wedged overhead too low for Serenna to stand without striking it. A tomb with room enough to breathe. Barely.

Fenn lay half over her, unmoving, ash and powdered dust darkening his golden hair. A rock had split the skin at his temple, blood tracing a thin line down his skull. Yet through the bond, his presence held steady, sunk deep in unconsciousness but stable.

Far across her other bond, Vesryn burned at the edge of reach—realms away, but moving closer through the expanse between them.

Serenna pressed her forehead to Fenn’s shoulder, relief striking sharp enough to hurt. Then she steadied herself before anything else could follow.

Weaving a quick lattice of mending, she stitched the split at his temple and stopped the blood. That had to be enough for now while she found their Starshards.

She clenched her teeth and heaved Fenn sideways off her, desperation finding leverage where her strength had run out.

Serenna’s lungs opened fully for the first time since the cavern fell. She pushed herself upright, and pain flashed white behind her eyes. A shriek clawed up her throat, but she bit it back until blood mixed with grit in her mouth.