Page 155 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Skylash descended in a storm of sparks. She struck the summit hard enough to jar Serenna’s teeth, her gaze locked on Veyrix. Her violet eyes swept the fractures smoking with light.

Then she hurled herself at the prison.

A roar tore from her, a thousand years of grief and fury breaking open. Lightning hammered the crystal. Her wing claws ripped trenches through the glassed surface, fangs gouging the weakened seams until sparks sprayed around her.

Each impact tolled through the summit and climbed Serenna’s spine. The crystal held, strong enough to cage a tempest dragon and withstand the fury of his mate.

With a hiss, Skylash whirled on them, eyes seething with sparks. “FREE HIM.”

Before the snarl left her throat, Vesryn reignited their circle. The linked Starshards converged in a single violent pulse. The pull hooked through Serenna’s chest, Essence surging before she could brace. Sunfire lanced from the Heart once more and slammed back into the crystal.

Skylash’s lightning chased it through the fractures, widening every break until both powers tore deeper into the cage.

Clouds massed along the southern horizon and pressure prickled across Serenna’s skin, gathering beyond the pulse of Essence. Skylash’s lightning already tore through Veyrix’s prison, yet the storm kept building.

Serenna drove more power through her gem until its facets burned against her skin.

Crystal cracked around Veyrix’s haunches. Vesryn held the Heart between both hands, narrowing the blaze into each fissure. The prince who’d nearly incinerated them while freeing Cinderax now wielded sunfire like a blade, carving where once he would’ve detonated.

The crystal veiling Veyrix’s eyes split.

White pupils contracted to vertical slits, and bewilderment surfaced behind them. His gaze moved, sweeping across the ruined island before lifting to the sky still held beyond his reach.

Then confusion ruptured into rage.

Wind thundered from him with enough force to shear them off the island, fragments spinning through the blast.

Serenna threw herself flat, wing claws screeching across the glass as Fenn and Vesryn struck the ground beside her.

Skylash bellowed.

Veyrix wrenched his jaws free from the crystal. A thousand years of silenced rage answered her in one ruinous roar.

The southern storm reached them in a roll of thunder, its black front heaving above the clouds and dragging winter over the summit.

Ice struck Serenna’s cheek. She touched the sting, her fingers coming away wet and freezing.

Then a deeper roar split the sky, ancient and bitter with frost. Her beastblood knew the dragon before her mind did.

And the cold that followed carried the weight of a king.

CHAPTER 43

LYKOR

The temperature dropped so suddenly it stole the air from Lykor’s lungs.

His exhale smoked white between him and Jassyn. Frost that wasn’t his raced across the island’s table, silvering the rock under Jassyn’s illusion map as warmth bled from the sky.

A roar tore from the southern cloudbank, deep enough to rattle his ribs, and rolled across the Aetherveil like thunder given voice.

Rimeclaw.

Lykor reached for the dragon’s mind in the distance, his wing claws curling toward the sky.

Silence answered. Vast. Glacial. A frozen dark where Rimeclaw’s ancient grief should’ve stirred.

The dragon broke through the cloudwall, his wings darkening the horizon. Each beat came slow and ruinous, dragging winter in his wake.