Page 139 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Lykor.

The name traveled deeper through every tendril.

Ahead, the crystal veins thickened until no stone remained between them.

His roots struck the crystalline wall and recoiled. The impact snapped through his arms and set his teeth humming with a resonance he knew from the Maw, from Skylash’s prison, from lightning screaming through glass.

Aelfyn architecture, beyond his understanding, crafted by hands a thousand years gone.

Jassyn turned the roots against it anyway.

They struck again. Cracks raced from the impact as the flawless surface gave with a groan, splitting wide enough for soil and roots to bore their way through. Green threaded the breach, claiming purchase where nothing living had grown.

Jassyn sent his telepathy through the roots until it struck a banked inferno. The contact seized his whole body—that snarl woven into silence, the shape of Lykor’s mind he would know in any dark.

But another presence had reached Lykor first, and Jassyn knew it wasn’t Aesar. Ancient and ruinously patient, it flooded the channels of Lykor’s mind, driving him away while its will settled into muscle and bone.

Jassyn’s breath caught hard enough to hurt.

He stopped searching and started tearing.

Pressure split behind his eyes, hot blood streaming from his nose. His knees buckled inside the tunnel he held open around himself. Lykor was on the other side.

Jassyn wrenched more power through the earth.

Crystal shattered as roots punched downward, a hundred green fists battering a throat through stone. He fell through, striking the floor on one shoulder, pain flashing white across his vision. Blood pattered from his jaw as he forced himself upright.

Vaulted walls rose around him, crystalline panels strobing with Essence. At the threshold, Lykor stood wraith-still, eyes emptied of focus, hands slack at his sides.

A figure wrought from turquoise light hovered beside him, fingers splayed along his cheek.

Jassyn’s ribs locked around the next breath. Light frayed at the figure’s edges—the same illusion magic Vesryn and Serenna had described from the Bramblemaw den. A preserved Aelfyn projection, sustained through Starshards and touching Lykor’s mind.

Jassyn crossed the chamber.

The apparition turned toward him with a predator’s brief appraisal. It judged him beneath notice, then returned its attention to Lykor.

“Lykor.”

Jassyn’s throat tightened around the name.

Lykor didn’t blink, his chest barely stirring.

Jassyn reached for his arm, the skin against his fingers ice-cold.

The figure’s hand remained against Lykor’s cheek. Jassyn pressed his palm to Lykor’s temple, setting his touch against its claim, and threaded telepathy through the contact.

The ancient will had driven both Lykor and Aesar deep, remaking every passage in its wake. Lykor’s presence blurred at the edges, his familiar fury dimmed to a failing ember as the intruder replaced him piece by piece. Soon, there’d be no one left to save.

Jassyn reached for that heat with deliberate care, coaxing Lykor forward until his own will found his body again.

The illusion’s light pulsed.

Lykor struck, his claw raking across Jassyn’s chest before he registered the swing.

CHAPTER 38

SERENNA