Page 149 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Relief moved through Jassyn in a treacherous wave. Lykor was alive, crimson burning behind his eyes, his mouth steady against his own. He’d heard the confession and still chosen this closeness. For the span of the kiss, Jassyn let their survival wear the face of absolution.

Then he swallowed, pain tightening his battered throat.

The tenderness split, exposing everything beneath it—the memory of turquoise light in Lykor’s vacant eyes, his claw clamping around Jassyn’s neck, Jassyn’s coercion forcing him to stop.

And Lykor had just asked Jassyn to compel him again.

The request carried a confession of its own. Lykor already expected a next time—another secret kept until Jassyn was left to choose whether to save his body, his mind, or whatever remained of them both.

Jassyn twisted his fingers in Lykor’s hair and pulled him into a kiss that gave his anger teeth, biting into Lykor’s lower lip.

Lykor snarled, but not the way Jassyn wanted. Jassyn had meant the pain as a punishment, but Lykor took it for an invitation.

Lykor seized Jassyn’s leathers and hauled him closer, returning the kiss with fangs and tongue. Jassyn surrendered to the collision, letting the fury and terror inside him break outward before they split him apart.

The kiss became a shoving match—hands yanking at armor, mouths breaking only to crash again, Lykor’s chest driving against his.

Lykor kissed him like he’d been saved.

Jassyn kissed him back like he’d barely survived the saving.

The difference never reached Lykor. Jassyn felt that blindness in every desperate press of his mouth—no reckoning with how close they’d come to losing each other, only the certainty that he’d walk into the next danger alone and call it strategy.

Love and fury ground together inside him until each made the other more violent. Jassyn planted both palms against Lykor’s chest and shoved.

Lykor stumbled away.

Jassyn’s fists clenched at his sides, trembling. Blood dripped from the talon marks under his jaw, trickling down his swollen throat. His voice emerged hoarse and quiet.

“You lied to me.”

Lykor’s brow drew tight. He started to speak, but Jassyn didn’t let him.

“You stood beside me this morning while we planned. You listened while I argued with Kaedryn over every flight corridor, every angle of approach, because I meant for everyone who entered this crater to come out alive.” His voice cracked. “Then you came here without a word. As if your life was the one we could afford to lose.”

Beastblood surged through Jassyn’s skin. The earth carried the fury he could no longer contain, vines splitting the fractured floor around his boots.

“You told me you were fighting for us,” he hissed. The words came scarcely above a whisper, stripped to the wound. “Then you walked into this place alone.”

Lykor came closer and stopped within reach. His hand rose toward the bruises at Jassyn’s neck.

Jassyn stepped back before Lykor could touch him.

Lykor’s hand remained suspended, then lowered to his side.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You keep doing this.” White flowers opened along the vines, withered, and opened again. “You keep walking into danger like your survival is an afterthought.”

Lykor’s gaze swept the ruin—the shattered reliquary, the scattered Hearts, the roots jutting through broken crystal. Frost crackled across his shoulders as he set his jaw. “You came alone too.”

“Because you gave me no choice! You took every careful thing I built and cast it aside. What was I supposed to do—wait on that island and wonder whether you were already dead? Send everyone into this crater blind after you?”

Lykor opened his mouth and Jassyn cut him off with a slash of his hand.

“Don’t give me tactics,” he bit out. “You don’t get to fly into your own grave and then judge me for digging you out of it.”

Lykor’s shoulders drew tight. “You don’t know what I—”