Page 147 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Across the chamber, the figure turned toward a broad crystal pedestal fused to the dais. Five recessed housings formed a reliquary across its front, each cradling a crystalline core. Essence rose from them in glittering streams and entered the apparition’s waiting arm. As it drew from the cores, Jassyn’s control over Lykor wavered.

His pulse lurched. Five Hearts of Stars.

One could free Veyrix. Two more could liberate Blossom and Rimeclaw.

Enough to shift the balance. Enough to give the alliance hope.

Jassyn glanced back. Turquoise still burned through Lykor’s eyes, his stare fixed on nothing, his body imprisoned within Jassyn’s magic. Jassyn could enter his mind again and hunt for the place where the presence had lodged itself, though another descent offered no certainty he could cut the intruder free.

The reliquary offered a structure he could break, and though his mind accepted the choice, his body named the first step away from Lykor a betrayal.

Jassyn crossed the chamber and climbed the steps to the platform. The apparition turned, its features sharpening as cold pressure probed the edges of Jassyn’s mind for purchase.

Jassyn struck both palms against the reliquary and channeled Blossom’s gift into its seams. Roots speared through the fissures beneath the dais and heaved against its underside. Crystal shrieked. Panels bowed outward as fractures raced between the five recesses, and seamless Aelfyn craft that had outlived its makers split under the fury of living earth.

But the mechanisms fought him. The vines buckled the outer shell, yet five inner housings cinched around the Hearts, their joins closing against every root he drove through them. Jassyn forced the growth deeper, swelling wood inside the fractures until the ancient fastenings began to groan apart.

The first Heart tore free as its housing shattered. Crystal shards scattered across the dais, and the figure flickered.

The second set of brackets yielded with a series of brittle cracks, the apparition blurring like breath across glass. Jassyn sensed the presence reach through Lykor and shred the outermost layer of his coercion.

He kept both palms planted against the reliquary, focusing on freeing the Hearts.

The third housing split, and one of the figure’s hands dissolved into mist.

Essence ignited at his back.

Jassyn felt one vine snap, then another. Behind him, Lykor’s shadows uncoiled from his rigid frame, wielded by the foreign will inside him. The stolen darkness hacked through Jassyn’s earth while the presence pried at the coercion from within Lykor’s mind.

The second layer buckled, leaving only the deepest command between Lykor and the thing wearing him.

Jassyn forced the roots farther into the fractured reliquary. He could drive more coercion into Lykor, but if he abandoned the Hearts now, the violation would be for nothing.

The fourth housing shattered in an explosion of living wood. Across the dais, the figure thinned to a ragged outline, shedding the last pretense of form as it burrowed its remaining strength into Lykor.

Deep in Lykor’s mind, Jassyn felt the final threads of his coercion strain. The invading presence peeled the weaves of his magic, prying Jassyn’s hold wider with every beat of Lykor’s heart.

Then it tore the command free.

Lykor warped, striking his back with a century of warfare gathered into the impact. Jassyn slammed chest-first against the reliquary, his palms skidding across the crystal. A claw clamped around his throat and hauled him upright, talons biting into the flesh under his jaw.

The ruined figure guttered to a jagged silhouette, its fractured light streaming past Jassyn and into Lykor.

One Heart remained.

Though Lykor had torn Jassyn’s hands from the reliquary, every shudder of the roots buried within it climbed into his bones.

Blossom. Rimeclaw. Veyrix. Their names struck through him with each weakening beat of his pulse.

Lykor’s grip constricted.

Jassyn bore the roots through the final housing, swelling them into its fractures until crystal ground against crystal.

Still, the ancient fastenings held.

Lykor’s talons sank deeper. Darkness crowded the edges of Jassyn’s sight, and to survive, he’d have to make a battleground of Lykor’s mind.

But Jassyn refused to save himself that way.