Page 79 of The Reckoning of Starlight

“Jassyn?” Just the name. A demand already halfway to violence.

Serenna’s wings missed a beat. She knew where Jassyn was. And he’d already been sacrificed too many times by people who named it duty. The thought of offering him up to another night of imprisonment soured her stomach.

But Asharyn was dying below, and if Lykor abandoned the fight, Centarya’s soldiers would break through and reach the fleeing families.

Serenna hated the justification before the words even left her mouth.

“He wasn’t with us.”

Lykor’s fangs caught the moonlight, ice crusting over his clenched wing claws. He wrenched his focus from the empty sky, killing a snarl before it finished.

“Koln and the wraith hold the eastern district. What’s left of it. Kaedryn’s druids are scattered west with our Essence-wielders. Most of the citizens are through the portals.” His jaw tightened. “Daeryn and Bhreena are already on the other side with the rangers. Presumably keeping order.”

He sliced a hand toward the streets buckling under fire and smoke.

“You three push north and keep them off the evacuation route.”

A strike of rending cracked against Lykor’s shield hard enough to make Serenna flinch. Lykor didn’t blink.

“I’ll hold here. Mara and Thalaesyn need the minutes we can give them.”

“Can we take the city back?” Serenna already knew the answer, but hearing it from Lykor would make it final.

“We can kill what’s in front of us. That doesn’t mean we can win the night.” Lykor didn’t look at any of them. “The king knows where to gut us now.”

Flames sparked between Fenn’s claws. “So we hold until every last one of ours is out.”

“Then get to it,” Lykor muttered.

He shattered the shield and warped to the streets without warning.

Jassyn’s name stayed behind, lodged in Serenna’s throat.

CHAPTER 20

SERENNA

Wind sheared past Serenna’s ears, the city blurring in a smear of smoke and flame as they flew north. Vesryn locked into place at her left, scales rippling into armored plates along his jaw and throat. Fenn cut into the descent on her right, indigo skin glinting in the firelight.

Below, a squadron of Kaedryn’s druids swept over the lower streets, fire coiling from their wing claws. Each gripped a staff crowned with a Starshard, and Serenna tensed each time the gems shrieked their power loose.

Her own gem pulsed against her ribs where it sat buried in her leathers, bound with her blood. Anyone with the knowledge could seize it—lock her wings, force her to her knees, aim her magic at those she loved.

Serenna’s hand twitched toward the shard, wanting to tear it free. Fenn could open a rift to the volcano at the wraith fortress. She could throw the gem through and never feel its weight again.

But a battle was no place to disarm herself, no matter how much the risk made her skin crawl. And Kaedryn’s druids…

Serenna couldn’t warn an army already scattered through the battle, and even warned, how many would cast aside what their people had carried for generations? Without the gems, they had no Essence to fight.

The streets below Serenna resolved through the smoke into bodies packed shoulder to shoulder and wagons jammed wheel to wheel. Families clogged the alleyways, spilling from doorways. A druid hauled a cart forward with a single hand while the other arm cradled an infant too small to fly. Behind them, an elder stumbled over rubble and went down, wings crumpling under the blind press of the crowd.

Centarya’s forces owned the rooftops, hurling Essence into the evacuation line. Bolts of force cratered the cobblestones, close enough to spray rock into the crowd. A child screamed when a shard lodged above her brow, blood washing over an eye.

Kaedryn’s warriors flew over the magus and reavers in diving runs, fire and Starshard volleys hammering the casters’ positions. But Centarya struck back from behind shields and broken cover, force and rending raking upward through the smoke.

A net of force snapped across a druid’s legs and ripped her from the sky. She hit the side of a building hard enough to shake dust from the stone, wings buckling around her before she dropped in a heap among the bodies below.

Serenna flared her wings into a hover, smoke billowing under her. “We need more portals,” she said as Fenn and Vesryn drew close. “Where are they evacuating to?”