Page 164 of The Reckoning of Starlight

They fell with a scream, vanishing into the clouds.

Jassyn streaked past, his mount veering toward the next razorwing trailing after the Heart of Stars shining in the prince’s grip. Jassyn stripped the coercion from its mind and tied his own around its instincts as vines snapped upward and wrenched its rider from the saddle.

The first two wheeled in his wake. A third joined them. Then a fourth.

Six. Eight. Twelve. Each mind he took yielded another body to the flight unfurling around him, translucent wings beating to the same rhythm. Riders tumbled screaming through the clouds while their mounts swung into formation at Jassyn’s back.

Having cleared the sky behind Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn, Jassyn tracked the razorwings still harrying the retreating alliance. He turned toward the melee and went hunting.

At his command, the swarm divided and streaked toward the razorwings bearing the king’s soldiers. The first line struck broadside with the force of falling stone. Chitin burst against chitin. Saddles snapped sideways, hurling enemy riders into the second line surging from below with mandibles spread wide. Jaws sheared through plate and flesh. The wet crack of bone reached Jassyn through the wind before what remained fell below.

Thirty became forty. Forty became sixty, then more, until translucent wings crowded behind him.

Another clash hurled the dragons across the sky. Wind slammed into Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn, driving them wide while Rimeclaw climbed beyond their reach again, Galaeryn unmoved between the Tidecrasher’s shoulders.

They needed an opening long enough to close the distance.

Jassyn’s thoughts crossed into the razorwing beneath him, then spread through the swarm until every creature moved on the same command.

He flared a shield around himself and aimed his mount upward.

His swarm followed.

Wind struck like a wall. Ice fragments raked his ward and punched through translucent wings. One razorwing spiraled away. Then another, its shredded membranes thrashing uselessly as it dropped.

The vine harness bit into Jassyn’s thighs as the gusts tried to peel him from the creature’s back. He tightened his hold on its mind and steered it higher through currents that splintered the edges of its carapace.

The razorwing shuddered beneath him.

Jassyn bore down until the resistance vanished into obedience.

He read Veyrix’s gales as terrain written across the sky, following the wind where it bent, narrowed, and broke apart. Rimeclaw’s frost was easier to see but harder to survive, white sheets and jagged spears erupting through the gaps.

Strike. Recoil. Then the stillness between.

Jassyn flew there.

He sent the first wave.

Six razorwings broke from his formation and speared upward toward the king. Jassyn spent them to measure the distance between threat and response.

Rimeclaw’s head swung toward them, frost erupting from his jaws in a white torrent. All six froze, vanishing from Jassyn’s awareness as ice locked wings and bodies in an instant. The next gust struck before gravity could claim them, shattering the frozen razorwings into a storm of chitin and snow.

Jassyn sent another rank of razorwings.

Then another.

Galaeryn never looked away from Veyrix. But each formation Jassyn forced upward drew Rimeclaw’s jaws after it, frost obliterating the razorwings while Vesryn, Serenna, and Fenn climbed through the space torn open.

Behind Jassyn, the drone of wings thinned. He sent more anyway, feeding bodies into Rimeclaw’s path, every burst of frost buying the three another stretch of sky and Veyrix another chance to dislodge the king.

Prismatic light flared as Vesryn lifted the Heart of Stars. Sunfire swelled around his fist until the surrounding snow burned gold.

Then he hurled it into the Tidecrasher’s flank.

The impact tore a bellow from Rimeclaw. Black scales blistered, glowing trenches splitting through his hide as the reek of scorched flesh reached Jassyn through the wind.

Dread sank through Jassyn, deeper than Rimeclaw’s frost, as Vesryn stowed the Heart and its radiance vanished. He understood the failure before the smoke cleared. He’d torn coercion from too many minds now to mistake where its violence lived. Galaeryn had barbed his control so deep into the dragon’s consciousness that sunfire could scour Rimeclaw to the bone and leave every hook untouched.