Page 151 of The Reckoning of Starlight

The crater, he didn’t regret. The risk had yielded five Hearts and a cache of Starshards to arm the next fight. What he regretted was the lie. Jassyn had given him trust, and Lykor had spent it without flinching.

He could’ve weathered Jassyn’s fury. He’d seen it surface in the crater, Jassyn’s voice shaking as he hauled Lykor back to himself, earth blooming and dying at his feet. Anger was a blow that Lykor knew how to take. But silence gave him nothing, keeping Jassyn beside him but beyond reach.

Aesar took their body as the sun brightened the horizon. Lykor let him.

He sank deep into their mind while Aesar flew across the scattered islands to find Vesryn. Lykor didn’t ask what passed between them, but the grief Aesar carried back in his clenched jaw was answer enough. Shortly after, Aesar retreated into the library, but he left the doors open as he disappeared among the books.

Lykor portaled near the council island to the east, where stone narrowed to a shelf above open sky. He flew the perimeter twice, traded words with his sentries stationed on a drifting isle, and found Jassyn already hunched over the stone table, his illusion map bright under his palms.

Of course he was.

Lykor’s attention snagged on Jassyn’s throat, smooth where his talons had bruised and torn. Aesar had healed the flesh, but Lykor still felt the heat of Jassyn’s blood. His gaze traveled to the scar cutting from Jassyn’s brow to cheek, the mark no magic could erase.

The map hovered below Jassyn’s hands, its threads of light reweaving as he drew each scout’s report into place. Faint markers climbed through the layered sky toward the crown island, tracing the ascent of their forces.

Lykor tipped his head back. The uppermost isle hung dark against the sky, its rim only beginning to catch the dawn. Somewhere in those heights, Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn searched for Veyrix.

Jassyn’s fingers moved over the map, illumination bending below his touch. He didn’t look up as Lykor set a canteen of water and a handful of dried apricots at the table’s edge, close enough that ignoring them would take effort.

A coward’s offering laid down where another apology should’ve gone.

Jassyn’s hand paused. He glanced at the canteen, then resumed drawing with his magic.

Lykor’s fangs dug into his tongue. He leaned against a stone outcrop behind the table, arms crossed, wings tight to his spine.

If Jassyn meant to grind himself to dust over every front marked on the map, Lykor wouldn’t drag him away.

The morning churned forward, broken by wingbeats and reports. Wraith and druids landed in squads, boots striking stone as they gave Jassyn new positions before vanishing back into the sky. The lights for Fenn, Vesryn, and Serenna climbed higher while Kaedryn’s formations fanned across the lower islands.

Jassyn kept reshaping the illusion, the canteen and apricots remaining untouched.

Koln stepped from a portal with his eye patch crooked and his mouth set hard. He’d taken on the reports, squads, and orders Kal once carried, though Lykor had yet to name him captain.

The lieutenant offered Lykor a nod before turning to Jassyn, his lone eye lingering on the measured space between them.

“Overnight reports from the Everglow.” Koln spread the contents of his satchel across the table—drawn patrol routes, tallies scratched on bark, a rough sketch of the army’s camp. “The humans are moving north toward the Aetherveil. Faster than yesterday. Elven officers are still embedded in every company.”

He paused, one talon pinning the river to the table. “And I spotted Blossom myself.”

Jassyn closed his eyes, the map flickering beneath his fingers.

Inside Lykor’s skull, Aesar went still. He knew the king had made a weapon of the dragon, and still Kal broke against her fangs in memory, the crack of bone lodged too deep for either of them to claw free.

“She’s approaching the waterway below us,” Koln continued. “Scores of shamans are with her. They’ve peeled the rainforest back from the shore and cleared it for miles.”

Moss raced outward from Jassyn’s boots, unfurling across the stone before it withered. He drew one measured breath through his nose and raised his head, his face sealed behind the same control he’d worn since Blossom’s capture left him gasping on the cavern floor.

“Then we need to assume they know we’re up here.”

Lykor’s talons bit into his biceps. “I’ll go after her.”

The words escaped before he remembered the promise he’d made to Jassyn.

Jassyn kept his eyes on the map. Sun, wind, Lykor—all weather he’d chosen not to acknowledge.

“We have more Hearts now.” Lykor’s voice came rougher than he meant. “If a Heart can break the king’s control—”

“You can’t wield sunfire,” Jassyn said, quiet and final, his attention fixed on the illusion. “You’d need someone with illumination to channel through the relic.”