Page 167 of The Reckoning of Starlight

The swarm pulled against him in a dozen directions, the boundaries of his own awareness blurring against the crush of borrowed minds.

Dive. Catch. Rise. Veer.

The impulses collided faster than thought.

Something inside his skull ruptured, and the coercion snapped with it. Every mind vanished from his awareness at once. The razorwings tore loose, scattering across the sky.

His mount shrieked and bucked, and Jassyn’s vines withered around his legs.

The razorwing rolled. Jassyn’s fingers skidded over chitin as the last tendrils slipped free, the saddle spinning out of sight.

Pain flared behind his eyes, stone and clouds smearing across his vision.

The islands spun above him as he fell.

CHAPTER 45

LYKOR

Asecond island hit the river like a fist from the sky.

Water exploded upward, mud and spray battering the northern shore. Lykor snapped a hand out and cleaved the surge around himself and Skylash, driving Rimeclaw’s gift through the current.

Stone and root ground into the riverbed, the weight shuddering through his boots. The island lurched, cracked, then settled half-drowned, one edge jutting above the water while the river swallowed the rest.

Blossom’s vines struck before the veil of water fell. Green coils speared through broken earth, cinching the mass to the first isle she’d ripped from the sky.

Atop the fallen isle, tents sagged into buckled ground. Blankets, packs, and overturned cookpots skidded toward the drowned edge, bodies scrambling around them.

Alive, then.

The useless, stranded ones. Their prisoners. Those without Cinderax’s gift of fire and wings. Left behind while everyone worth sending to the battle took to the sky.

“Worth sending?” Aesar asked. “I’m sure the king would admire how neatly you’ve ranked them.”

Lykor’s fist tightened at his side. Apparently a handful of silent days had been enough to make him forget how exhausting it was to share a skull.

Coughs and ragged shouts rose through the river’s roar. Survivors clawed toward higher ground over slick stone and exposed roots, some on hands and knees, others dragging the wounded.

Across the river, an army of thousands packed the southern bank, columns deep, elven officers shining with Essence.

“They could open enough portals,” Aesar said, the same calculation already forming in Lykor’s mind.

Lykor’s lip curled. “AND BLEED THEIR RESERVES KEEPING THEM OPEN FOR THE ARMY TO CROSS.”

Rifts would’ve suited him, every opening an invitation to kill. Collapse the passage as it formed. Sever bodies caught between places. Drown one squad in shadows before the next found its footing.

But Blossom could do the work for them. She could close the river with dead islands, bury Skylash, and grind Lykor down on the shore while the army waited behind her, their Wells unspent.

Another stretch of water vanished under stone and vine.

Minutes, then.

Beside him, Skylash lay where the current had spat her onto the shore. Aesar had mended the worst of Rimeclaw’s damage, but neither wing would bear her.

She had yet to speak to him through whatever bond existed between her and the fool who’d landed on her back and somehow survived. Lightning snapped between her fangs with every exhale, and the growl in her chest hadn’t stopped since the army had arrived.

“This position isn’t defensible,” Aesar murmured.