Page 160 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Lykor’s jaw locked, but the logic held. Vesryn and Serenna had freed four dragons between them. Both still stood, though smoke curled from Vesryn’s scales. If anyone could liberate Rimeclaw, it was them.

Their Starshards blazed back to life. Fenn warped them from the island and flung them toward the dragons.

Lykor watched them vanish toward Rimeclaw. The debt should’ve been his to carry. Instead, it disappeared into the storm in other hands while his closed on nothing.

“There’s still something we can do,” Aesar murmured, steering their gaze down farther.

Skylash had already plummeted below the first chain of islands. Her wings hung frozen, every membrane entombed in ice as she dropped with the dead weight of stone.

The landmasses vanished past her one by one. Lykor counted those still beneath her, each worth only another heartbeat of sky.

Too few.

Rimeclaw might’ve already killed her.

Kaedryn struck the ground behind Lykor and Jassyn, her druids landing around her with wounded borne between them. Orders cracked from her before her wings closed. She planted herself beside Jassyn and snapped the nearest warriors into a living shield around him.

Snow sifted from Lykor’s shoulders as Skylash continued to drop. His wing claws opened a fraction, reaching for her, before he forced them closed.

His gaze cut to Jassyn. Kaedryn stood at his side, her warriors braced between him and the killing sky. A sliver of survival. Protected but never safe.

Their eyes met, and Jassyn saw the question Lykor refused to ask.

“Go.”

Lykor didn’t let himself hesitate.

He warped from the island and dove, trusting Kaedryn to keep Jassyn alive while every urge clawed at him to turn back.

Wind screamed around him. Veyrix climbed toward the king, but below, Skylash plunged through the lower chain, rolling slowly around the rigid axis of her spine. One frozen wing rose while the other sank, her body revolving in the same death-stiff sprawl as island after island rushed past.

Lykor matched her descent, waiting until Skylash’s rolling body exposed her spine, then warped closer.

Then again.

The void swallowed the sky and spat him into her fall.

He struck Skylash hard enough to empty his lungs. Pain jarred his teeth together, his boots punching through the ice before wedging between her scales.

Her rotation dragged him sideways. The horizon reeled, and an island scythed past. Wind rammed into him and ripped his torso from her body.

Aesar surged through his limbs. Their hips sank with Skylash’s pitch, one knee locking behind a spinal ridge while their wings canted into the roll.

Their weight settled into her rotation, Aesar’s skill of riding dracovae holding them where Lykor’s strength had only given the wind purchase.

Skylash’s snarl rumbled through him. Alive. A storm dragon imprisoned inside her own frozen body and still furious enough to kill whatever touched her.

“I know,” Lykor growled back.

Aesar crouched low and rode the roll as Lykor surrendered everything but his hands. He drove his palms against her spine, invading Rimeclaw’s winter until the casing cracked from within.

Fissures split outward from his fingertips. Lykor ripped the frost from Skylash’s wings in jagged plates, freeing the joints while ice remained fused thick across the membranes.

The lower islands whirled past in broken tiers. Mist streamed around them, cold and wet against his face, while each passing shelf left less sky between Skylash and the ground.

Her wings convulsed through a fraction of a stroke, ice grinding against strained muscle. Sparks battered the casing, charges still trapped inside a body built to wield the storm.

The final island vanished above them.