Page 81 of The Reckoning of Starlight

The portal detonated open—wider than she’d meant, its edges braided with fractured radiance. The currents wound together, fighting her grip until she forced the wild rift smaller, the market waiting beyond it.

She shoved the Starshard staff into the druid’s arms and helped her limp through the opening, but Serenna stayed behind, sealing the void shut.

Across the gap between the buildings, the magus who’d been battering her shield lifted his hands for yet another barrage.

Serenna dropped the ward and snapped rending across the divide.

Shadows ripped from her with borrowed brutality, bolstered by Vesryn’s and Fenn’s magic, woven through her own. The caster ruptured where he stood, leaving only an afterimage of Essence burning in his place.

Serenna collapsed on the empty rooftop, palms flat against the broken tiles, her whole body shaking. Fractured light arced from her chest, ribbons of color stretching through the smoke in two directions.

One strand plunged toward the streets, where Fenn burned through the fleeing chaos, fire clearing a path around families. The other climbed into the haze, where Vesryn raced through the sky, portals tearing open in front of druids in flight.

With every heartbeat, the light connecting them pulsed. She hadn’t reached for their Wells through the bond. The Starshards had connected on their own.

Serenna launched from the rooftop, but she barely caught the air before Vesryn’s alarm cut into her mind.

He slammed into her before she cleared the smoke—arms locking around her, wings beating hard as he hauled her sideways.

“What did you do?” An array of light leaked through his armor where his Starshard lay hidden. “I felt you pull Essence straight through my gem.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Serenna said, too fast. “It just happened.”

Her Starshard glowed under her leathers with Vesryn’s and Fenn’s magic still flowing through it. She’d reached through her gem before, but never with all three shards reunited since the accidental bond had fused them into something none of them understood.

Vesryn’s grip on her arms loosened. His gaze dropped to the light between them, stretching down toward Fenn.

He yanked the bond in summons.

Fenn warped beside them in a rush of displaced air, tracking the magic, fangs bared in something that wasn’t quite a grin.

“Well,” he said. “That’s new.”

“Our Starshards linked again somehow,” Serenna said. The pressure of their magic still crowded her chest, too much power straining the cage of her ribs. “Like the gems are pulling all three of our Wells into the same current.”

“Can you hold that much?” Vesryn asked, gaze flicking from her to Fenn and back.

Serenna flexed her fingers, her Starshard humming for more. “For now.”

“Then keep tapping into it,” Vesryn said. “We’ll finish clearing this district.”

She nodded and they wheeled through the sky, a cord of fractured light haloing their flight through the wreckage of Asharyn.

Vesryn’s scattered portals still held—safe for now, each one funneling civilians out.

They followed the pull of Essence through the northern district, drawn from one flare of power to the next. Each pulse led them to another rooftop, another alley, another reaver or magus turning escape into slaughter.

Fenn warped through the streets, fire billowing from his claws. Around him, magus broke from positions they’d held all night as his flames engulfed them.

Serenna cracked lightning across the district in forking arcs that left stone scorched and smoking. She hauled force from her Starshard to bleed the overload of Essence, and the burst punched through a rooftop and the floor beneath it. The recoil rang through her teeth, her Starshard still ravenous after the strike.

She gasped as the current of power rushed out of her and surged through Vesryn instead. His shadows ripped through another building, and the entire structure crumbled to dust. He stared at his own hands but kept flying.

One pocket of resistance crumpled. Then another.

A reaver tore open a portal and lunged to flee. Serenna snapped a coil of force around his ankle and yanked him back from the rift. Vesryn’s shadows punched through the portal’s edge. It collapsed around the reaver’s waist, leaving only his legs to strike the cobblestones on their side.

A druid pinned under rubble reached for Serenna as she swept low over the street, one wing severed, her cry buried beneath the city’s breaking stone. Serenna banked hard, but Fenn was faster. He warped to the ground beside the druid, one claw already outstretched.