Page 94 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Fenn.

She lunged into the silence after him—grasping, desperate, panic scrabbling through her.

He shut her out.

Every emotion vanished behind a barricade he’d never raised between them before.

Breath left her in shallow pulls. The cavern returned in fragments—cool moss beneath her spine, the sour heat of too many bodies thickening the air, green-blue light spilling over faces slack with exhaustion. Wraith, druids, magus, and everyone caught between lay where two sleepless days had felled them, scattered through the chambers Blossom had shaped.

Her hand shot sideways and closed over cold space where Vesryn should’ve been.

Serenna shoved upright, and the cavern lurched around her. A few paces away, Koln lay on his side, dark hair spilled across his arm. Beside him, the patch of moss where Fenn had settled for the night lay flattened and empty.

Her pulse struck high against her throat. She reached through the bond again, searching for Vesryn this time.

There.

Somewhere in the tunnels above her. Moving with the grim certainty of someone who’d seen Fenn leave and had followed.

Serenna snatched up her cloak, flung it across her shoulders, and followed the steady burn of Vesryn’s presence through the mountain.

She wove through the dim passages, past sentries braced against exhaustion, past crates and bedrolls, until the tunnel opened onto the mountain’s eastern face.

Cold bit her cheeks. Her boots skidded on frost-slick stone, and she caught herself against a jagged seam beside the cavern mouth. Below, the Everfrost fell away in broken shelves of rock and pale scrub toward pines gathered thick at the mountain’s feet. Steam lifted from fissures along the slope and thinned among the trunks, dawn silvering the outermost needles.

Serenna followed Vesryn’s trail down the ridge, where frost-stiff grass spread below the dying stars and the forest pressed close beyond it. Vesryn stood at the meadow’s rim, shoulders tense through his cloak.

He didn’t turn when she approached, but when she stepped beside him, his hand found hers and squeezed tight.

Near the center of the meadow, Fenn crouched low in the grass, his back to them. With only his leathers between him and the cold, he held wraith-still, each breath too shallow to lift his ribs.

Three hatchlings prowled through the first light, wings tucked tight as they stalked movement near the tree line.

Vasharax led with a Stormstrike creeping at her flank, their obsidian scales glinting with every step. Behind them, a Tidecrasher lumbered, cold mist pluming from his nostrils.

Fenn lifted one claw toward a shadow darting through the exposed roots.

Vasharax pounced and pitched snout-first into the grass. She surfaced hissing, frills flared, an ember snapping between her jaws.

The Stormstrike’s tail lashed. She crept forward, muscles bunching under her scales, then shrieked, spraying sparks as she sprang. Her jaws clamped shut around the fleeing shape. She reared back, whipping the creature side to side before dropping it at Fenn’s knees.

Serenna flared her dragonsight. The shape sharpened into a vole, limp and still.

Fenn stared at it. His talons flexed, scoring pale furrows through the frost-crusted grass. When he spoke, his voice barely crossed the meadow.

“You have to learn this. No one else is going to do it for you.”

The Tidecrasher struck, snatched the vole, and bolted away. Vasharax and the Stormstrike hissed and tore after him in a blur of scales.

Fenn’s shoulders sagged. He rose to one knee, then stopped there, each draw of air coming too quick for a body held so rigid.

Across the bond, the barricade inside him splintered. Grief drove into Serenna, cinching her lungs around the next breath. He held wraith-still while each pulse struck her harder than the last.

She’d known Fenn through nearly every emotion the bond could carry—rage that choked like smoke, joy like sunlight flung wide, desire so deep it hummed in her marrow. Now the bright warmth of him had withdrawn into a silence that left his presence cold in her chest.

Beside her, Vesryn stood unmoving, his thumb tracing a slow arc across her knuckles. The Tidecrasher swallowed the vole before Vasharax and the Stormstrike piled on him, all three rolling through the frost in a tangle of wings and offended shrieks.

Fenn stared at the grass while the hatchlings fought and tumbled around him.