Page 120 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Then he pitched forward.

Lykor was already moving.

He warped to Jassyn’s side and caught him before his skull struck the water, wrenching him back onto the ledge. Jassyn collapsed against him, breath trapped behind clenched teeth.

Lykor shook him, frost cracking under his knees. “Jassyn.”

Vesryn lunged naked from the pool, but Fenn was faster—a blur of shadow appearing at Jassyn’s other side. Water spilled over the lip as Serenna hauled herself after them, crimson light gathering between her fingertips.

Jassyn’s chest hitched. Air tore into him in a ragged gasp. His lashes fluttered, and his eyes found Lykor’s.

One word scraped free.

“Blossom.”

CHAPTER 32

JASSYN

The world slammed back into place wrong.

The cavern gave way to open night air, frost-bitten wind scouring Jassyn’s lungs. His boots skidded across frozen earth as he staggered from the portal and fell forward, palms striking the ground while Blossom’s last sending remained lodged in his skull.

The final images strobed behind his eyes, fragmented and already fading. His jaw ached, teeth grinding against nothing.

Flesh tearing. Blood steaming against the earth as she devoured the offerings. Too small. Barely enough.

Hungry. Always so hungry.

She ripped a leg free. Hooves and bones cracked. Marrow sweetened her tongue.

She lifted her snout from the carcass and stilled.

A familiar scent threaded through the blood. One she liked.

An elf with auburn hair stood at the clearing’s edge, heart racing loud enough to taste.

One snap of her fangs would have ended the female.

But a promise held her jaws shut, one she’d made to the one who smelled of rain and roots and freedom. Those with two legs were not meat unless they asked.

She’d agreed. Reluctantly.

The elf raised both hands around a gem that screamed like burning stars. Its light clawed through her senses, a violation that set every scale ringing.

More elves emerged from between the trees. Power rose with them, closing into a ring. Earth—her earth—and starlight turned punishing.

She could have broken them all. Roots skewering ankles. Soil rammed past teeth. Ribs splintering between her jaws. The ground shuddered beneath her, ready.

She held it.

They struck.

Starlight bit into her scales. Shadows battered her flanks. Again. Again. Roots tore loose and whipped her forward across her own ground, toward the void waiting between the trees.

The sky closed too fast. Darkness became cage.

The sending had torn apart as Blossom went through the portal.