Page 89 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Fenn looked from Vesryn to Lykor, then to the cavern mouth as if Kal might still come through it. “How?” The word broke on the way out.

Lykor glanced at Blossom, her lids lowered as she leaned into Jassyn’s touch. Pale blue flowers unfurled under her talons, impossibly alive around the same dragon who had killed Kal.

But she bore no guilt. Lykor should’ve called the retreat the instant she appeared. The dead stacked in his chest like stones. Kal. Rangers. Wraith. Two of Fenn’s sisters he still had to tell him about.

Serenna reached for Fenn, her hand landing on his arm.

Fenn flinched away, shaking his head. “He–he didn’t make it? Did the elves… Was it…”

He didn’t finish.

“The king made Blossom defend the prisons,” Jassyn said, his hand dropping from her jaw. “She didn’t have a choice.”

Fenn seemed to remain upright by denial alone, claws curling tight at his sides. Talons sank into flesh, and blood welled between his fingers, steaming against the frosted stone.

Then his knees unlocked.

He staggered back, and Serenna reached him first. She caught one bloodied fist between both hands, pressed her thumbs to his knuckles, and sent a thin stream of mending into his palm. One finger at a time, she eased his claw open. Vesryn hovered beside them but kept his distance.

Fenn stood where she held him, shoulders lifting on hard, silent breaths, the tendons in his throat drawn tight as wire.

Lykor swallowed and turned away. He’d failed Kal. That truth lodged behind his sternum, too deep to tear out and too late to make useful.

And in Aesar’s absence, Lykor stood alone inside a grief that wasn’t wholly his yet still knew every nerve.

Kal should’ve been here. Leaning against the mountain face with arms crossed, already primed with an argument about what came next.

But the wind had his place now. Nothing else.

Lykor exhaled through his nose and cracked his neck. The dead could wait. The living couldn’t.

Blossom shifted her weight, lowering her head toward the cavern mouth. Cracks webbed outward from her claws as she inhaled, nostrils flaring like she was scenting the tunnels below.

“She can feel where the earth runs warm,” Jassyn murmured to Lykor, his breath fogging between them in the chill. “She’ll take us deeper and shape chambers inside the mountain.” He buried his fingers in his curls before lowering his arm. “And for Elashor and Ayla, she’ll make cells that can’t be reached without a portal. They won’t see daylight again.”

Lykor nodded. Koln and his squad had already taken Elashor and Ayla below under guard.

Cinderax padded toward Fenn’s ankles, smoke curling from his snout. Whatever ancient wisdom the dragon was dispensing was likely useless. Comfort usually was.

Still, it was more than Lykor had offered.

Jassyn angled toward the cavern, and Lykor fell into step beside him. The entrance was too narrow for Blossom’s bulk, but he’d seen what she could do to stone.

Her power shuddered through the earth. Rock buckled beneath her claws, the mountain peeling open. Threads of pale green light lanced outward from her talons, the arch of the tunnel widening in every direction like an unhinging jaw. Lichen spread across the smoothed walls, mist rising where earth met frost.

The druids and wraith stationed at the threshold tensed, wings twitching as Blossom’s magic raced between their feet. Jassyn lifted a hand, stepping forward.

“She won’t harm you,” he said. “Her power will move around us.”

Blossom prowled ahead as the mountain remade its own throat. Her obsidian scales glinted in the glow that pulsed through the reshaped stone.

The air warmed in her wake, heat seeping from the mountain’s ribs into muscles Lykor had kept locked since Jassyn’s capture. Whatever rest he’d stolen since then barely deserved the name.

A few days underground. That was all they needed. Long enough to find another haven. Or long enough for the king to crack their refuge open and slaughter them in the dark.

The mountain had barely swallowed them before the world reached for Jassyn again. First Keeper. Child of earth and starlight. Titles polished bright enough to hide their chains.

Lykor’s fingers twitched as Kaedryn slipped around Blossom’s flank with her retinue in tow. Her ceremonial robes were gone, replaced by druid flight leathers.