Page 113 of The Reckoning of Starlight

The gliders drew closer with every circuit, crescent mouths gaping in sequence. Each pull emptied the air from another side of the ring, driving the three of them toward its shrinking center.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Vesryn asked, eyes wild as they latched onto Fenn.

Fenn’s lips curved back from his gritted fangs. “I can warp faster than you can open a portal, princeling.”

Lift tore from Serenna’s wings again.

She dropped.

Then air slammed back into her lungs, but the next pull stripped it away before they could fill.

Fenn tracked the gliders’ circuit until two swept apart, opening a narrow gap in the ring. Beside him, Vesryn fixed his gaze somewhere beyond the island. Their intent aligned before Serenna could decipher the plan.

They reached for her together, Fenn gripping one arm, Vesryn the other.

Fenn warped.

Serenna went weightless, pressure driving through her joints before the world released them outside the gliders’ ring. Wind tore across her face, flooding her lungs.

Essence flared from Vesryn.

Behind them, ten Starshards screamed.

CHAPTER 30

SERENNA

Serenna’s boots struck stone and her knees buckled.

The portal Vesryn had torn open in their path snapped shut behind them, severing the Starshards’ wail.

She caught herself against a boulder outside of the Everfrost Caverns, rough rock scraping her palms. Her lungs dragged in air, then cinched tight, braced for the sky to wrench it away.

Fenn landed on the stone beside her and kept his feet, his wings vanishing with hers. Vesryn shifted and remained turned toward the dissipating rift, Essence whirling around him, his hands flexing with nowhere left to strike.

Kaedryn’s sentries flanked the tunnel entrance. One took in their battered state and warped deeper into the Everfrost, news of their return already racing ahead of them.

Zaeryn’s telepathic sending reached Vesryn before Serenna had steadied her breathing. She circled above the caverns on Trella, with Naru at her flank. The western scouts had sighted Skylash and broken off their sweep rather than provoke the dragon.

Kaedryn arrived on the heels of the report and marshaled them underground for a meeting, already asking questions before Serenna had brushed the grit from her palms or shaken the wind gliders from her mind.

Guildmasters and wraith lieutenants were crowded into one of Blossom’s dim chambers deeper in the mountain. Mismatched cushions scavenged from Asharyn formed a rough circle beneath them, their wool and hide crushed thin.

Jassyn was already there, mapping the threat he and Lykor had discovered in the rainforest—the human army marching north toward the Aetherveil. Each measured detail shortened Serenna’s breath. The king’s razorwings could outpace the column by days. One glimpse of the island range, and Galaeryn could claim Veyrix before their own alliance ever reached his chains.

Lykor paced through the report, his boots grinding the same route into the stone over and over, his restlessness scraping against her own.

Sitting still allowed the flight to collect its debt. By the second hour, the muscles under Serenna’s shoulder blades had drawn into hard cords. She resettled on the flattened cushion, only for the ache to migrate somewhere new.

Worse, every few minutes, her lungs remembered the air vanishing into the wind gliders’ throats. Her chest hitched around an inhale until she forced it out.

At last, the meeting broke apart. Jassyn’s voice brushed through Serenna’s mind, drawing Vesryn and Fenn into the sending as he asked the three of them to meet with him and Lykor in private.

A route unfurled behind her eyes, descending toward a secluded hollow farther in the caverns. Kaedryn and the guildmasters still had Jassyn pinned under questions, but he and Lykor would follow when they could. Serenna was on her feet before his words faded.

Vesryn sent globes of illumination ahead through the winding tunnels. Their light slipped around each bend, leading them downward as moisture gathered on the walls and heat dampened Serenna’s skin.

The passage opened into a chamber veiled in steam. Centuries of condensation had burnished the stone to a glassy sheen. A pool filled the cavern floor, its water so dark it disappeared into bruised violet depths.