Page 157 of The Reckoning of Starlight

And above it all, Rimeclaw circled.

Lykor’s chest caved at the sight of him while he and Jassyn fought their way upward toward the peak.

Ice plated Rimeclaw’s obsidian hide, crusting every scale. His ragged wings struck the air in steady strokes. Too measured.

Nearer now, Galaeryn resolved on top of the dragon’s shoulders, silver hair still despite the wind.

Aesar flinched, and Lykor’s muscles locked. Terror shuddered awake where he’d buried it deep enough to believe it dead.

Centuries of hoarded power sat motionless on Rimeclaw’s back. No army darkened the sky behind the king. He never lifted a hand, and still the world strained against his grip.

He wheeled the dragon through the sky, and Lykor’s gut clenched.

Stiff. Exact. Obscene. Rimeclaw’s neck wrenched first, then his shoulders, then his wings, obedience passing through him joint by joint.

Violet lightning split the storm clouds. Skylash plunged through the breach, a spear of thunder aimed at the king.

Galaeryn rolled Rimeclaw beneath her, turning the dragon’s chest into the strike.

Skylash crashed into him hard enough to hurl both dragons sideways. Her talons scraped against the scales at Rimeclaw’s throat and locked between the plates. Lightning gouged trenches through his hide as she clawed over the armored slope of his body toward the king, wingbeat by savage wingbeat.

As the dragons reeled, Galaeryn sat untouched.

Lykor braced for Rimeclaw’s bellow, but his jaws never parted. Frost detonated from his scales, smashing Skylash across the ribs and tearing her loose. She tumbled through the storm, lightning snapping between her fangs.

Jassyn’s voice cut through the wind beside him. “We need to get to Veyrix!”

Lykor sliced hard through the current and locked into formation at Jassyn’s wing as they ascended the crown island. Below, the alliance broke itself against the king.

Kaedryn’s druids battered upward in staggered ranks, buying height by inches. Fire burned channels through the frost streaming from Rimeclaw’s wings, bursts of steam erupting into vapor.

A drone cut through the battle’s roar, and Aesar groaned in Lykor’s mind.

The vibration struck Lykor’s teeth, boring into his skull. Translucent wings flashed through the haze as razorwings poured from the clouds, six-limbed bodies twisting through turns no spine should survive.

They broke direction. Folded. Vanished sideways. Reappeared in the blind seams between wingbeats, striking from angles the eye caught too late.

Their riders lay harnessed flat along chitin, bodies pressed low as loosed arrows. Essence crackled around them, scoring the sky with violent color.

The swarm locked around the king until every path to him closed.

The alliance hacked into them.

Fire burned razorwings to ash. Circles of Essence blazed in prismatic clusters, bolts of darkness shearing through glassy wings and thoraxes, scattering the creatures in glinting fragments. Dracovae carved broad arcs through the sky, ripping riders from their harnesses and flinging them screaming into the drop.

But razorwings infested every unclaimed space, folding under feathered wings and snatching fliers out of the sky. They forced the alliance wide, keeping Rimeclaw’s shadow beyond reach.

And for every razorwing that fell burning toward the islands below, two more surged into place.

Lykor plunged through the white churn of fire and frost, rime streaming from his wings.

Aesar’s awareness snapped through his. A flicker under one wing sharpened into a hooked shape climbing for their ribs. “Below!”

Lykor twisted.

A razorwing shrieked out of the haze, mandibles closing on empty air.

Vines lashed from Jassyn’s hands and cinched around its thorax. He ripped it sideways from its flight path. Glass wings shrilled through the violent turn as the rider bucked against the harness.