Page 127 of The Reckoning of Starlight

At her left, Fenn’s restlessness skittered along the bond, his limbs already loose and waiting. At her right, Vesryn stood rigid, every line of him braced to make his body the first thing danger struck.

Serenna moved before either of them could turn the exercise into an argument. She hauled Essence through her Starshard, and the gem flared bright against her collarbone.

“In Asharyn,” she said, her voice steady over the vibration in her sternum, “I don’t know why the Starshards linked when I reached through mine.” She studied the three gems at their throats. “We need to learn how to connect them deliberately.”

Vesryn’s wing claws flexed. “I felt you pulling power straight through my gem. I couldn’t steer any of it, but I wasn’t cataloging technique while we were fighting for our lives.”

Fenn’s fangs flashed as he ignited Essence. He extended a claw and hauled a stone free from the ground with a sharp pull of force.

“I could throw a rock at your head,” he offered. “Simulate danger?”

Before Vesryn could dignify that with an answer, Serenna closed her fist around the gem at her throat. She bypassed the familiar channels of their joined Wells and cast her awareness toward their Starshards, two points of light pulsing at the edge of her senses.

She pulled.

Both males pitched forward, wings flaring behind them.

She struck the sealed threshold of their gems, the Essence beyond remaining untouched.

“A warning next time,” Vesryn muttered as he straightened.

Serenna scowled, dropping her hand. “Maybe it only works if you open the way. Summon your magic, but let me channel it through the gems.”

Vesryn’s gaze sharpened. Fenn’s grin faded, talons rising toward the crystal at his throat before he halted the motion.

“If we’re going to link more than just the three of us,” Serenna said, quieter now, “we can’t rely on the bond. Ayla said the Starshards could connect. We have to learn how to do it for everyone else.”

Neither male moved as wind scoured the stone between them.

“We can…try that,” Vesryn said too evenly, his attention cutting to Fenn. “If that’s what it requires.”

Essence whirled around them in twin streams of stars—Vesryn’s compressed and controlled, Fenn’s running wild and bright. Their Starshards remained dark, power banked behind each gem.

Serenna drew a slow breath and closed her hand around her Starshard again. Essence lit the crystal, heat sinking into her skin and winding inward.

Twin filaments of light slipped from her shard and drifted across the space between them, like smoke searching for a draft.

Fenn’s Starshard flared first. His magic rushed to collide with her waiting thread, pouring into her sternum until heat crowded the spaces between her ribs.

Vesryn’s Starshard remained dark as Fenn’s current wound through hers. His fingers tapped against his thigh, gaze narrowing on the light braided between them.

Then he sent his own power after it.

His gem flashed. Magic struck Serenna with the force of a breached dam, carving its own channel beside Fenn’s current.

Twin bands of prismatic light snapped taut—one stretching to Fenn, the other to Vesryn, with Serenna caught between them. The doubled force sent her staggering, boots scraping for purchase.

Yet the separate flows tore through her without joining. Serenna lifted her hands, trying to wrench them together, but neither yielded, each driving the other aside.

She was the place the current broke.

To keep it moving, they needed a circle.

Serenna released their power. The twin streams dimmed, leaving her Starshard burning alone at her throat.

She sent a single filament of light toward Fenn, spanning the space between their gems.

“Take my power,” she said. “Add yours and steer both to Vesryn.”