Page 86 of The Reckoning of Starlight

“Not him,” Jassyn rasped, his voice raw as splintered bark. “I need what he knows.”

She growled, low and disapproving.

“I don’t have time to tear answers out of him here. Not when we need to get out.” He lifted a hand and touched the ridge of her snout. “Can you…carry him?”

Blossom bared her fangs, images flooding his mind. Roots choking marble. Moss suffocating starlight. The taste of their captors still hot on her tongue.

The rumble in her chest deepened. Nothing in her wanted to preserve what she could devour. Roots crept toward Elashor’s body, hungry for permission.

“Blossom,” Jassyn said softly.

Her gaze landed on him. Beneath blood and the reek of starlight, she found the scent of him—earth, roots, her own power planted in his chest. Her scalebond.

Images pressed behind his eyes again—Elashor pinned by her claws, his body split between her fangs, his blood feeding the moss.

Jassyn exhaled through his nose, understanding her bargain. “When I’m finished with his mind, he’s yours.”

Blossom’s nostrils flared. One grudging breath steamed over his hand. Then she struck, snatching Elashor across the shoulder and ribs.

The general jerked with a strangled noise, claws scrabbling uselessly against her scales. Blood welled between her fangs as she growled, tightening just enough to still him.

A small metallic chime rang through the grove. Jassyn’s attention flicked past Elashor to find the source of the sound.

Farine.

CHAPTER 22

JASSYN

With heavy-lidded eyes still dazed by Stardust, Farine watched Jassyn, possession gleaming through the fog. A jeweled comb had slipped free and struck stone as she sat swaying against a vine-strangled column, one hand braced in the moss.

The coercion was gone. Jassyn knew that—he’d torn every scrap of magic from his skull. Yet his body still locked at the sight of her, instincts trained deeper than compulsion.

Farine pulled herself to her feet against the column, tangled hair falling across her face. Her gaze flicked to Blossom, to Elashor restrained between the dragon’s jaws, then settled back on Jassyn, sapphire eyes bright with calculation.

“You forget,” she murmured as she straightened, “without me, you’d never have survived the elves. I gave you a place.” Her lips curled, almost fondly. “The highest honor the Vallendes ever bestowed was your position in my court.”

Jassyn’s ears rang as her words slithered through him, old bindings tightening. He knew that voice best in darkness—the murmur that came after she’d used him, softening ownership into affection, turning violation into something he was meant to appreciate.

“They would’ve discarded you,” Farine said, almost gently as she took a step closer. “I saw what you were worth. I made you mine because I was the only one who knew how to protect you.”

Jassyn swallowed, acid burning the back of his throat. He lifted a hand, reaching for thorns, for roots, for any life that could end her.

But the earth didn’t move.

He tried again. Reached for the bloom, for the lash of vine that had obeyed him only moments before. But the magic slipped through his grasp, frayed and failing.

Power waited, thrumming, poised to answer his call. Jassyn’s breath tore from his chest. It wasn’t the earth failing him.

He just couldn’t do it.

Stars, he couldn’t. He’d come this far but couldn’t raise a hand against the one who’d conditioned him to yield. She’d taught him that stillness hurt less, that silence cost less, that survival could wear the shape of willingness if someone else arranged his body carefully enough.

The guard he’d bound with coercion approached Blossom’s flank. Knife in hand, blood drying to her wrist, stare vacant. Waiting for the next order.

The last of the soldiers.

He could end Farine with one command. If his own body wouldn’t obey him, he could make someone else’s.