Page 189 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Hot blood and singed fur rode the faintest stir of air.

Skylash hunched over the steaming carcass of a moose on an adjacent island, tearing through the kill she’d hauled up from the plains. Every few moments, her head lifted south. Past the islands. Toward the empty stretch of sky where Veyrix had vanished.

Serenna leaned into Vesryn without meaning to. Tomorrow, he or Fenn could become the absence she kept searching the horizon for.

Seventeen hatchlings crowded around Skylash in a restless tangle of wings and claws, dark scales glinting in the pale moonlight. Cinderax perched above them on a jut of stone, tracking every dragon.

Emberharts tore strips from the carcass, smoke curling from their snouts. Two Stormstrikes wrestled over a rib, sparks snapping between their fangs, while Tidecrashers gnawed at a discarded haunch, cracking the bone.

Skylash tolerated the feeding frenzy until one hatchling edged toward the choicest meat at the moose’s flank. She bared a fang longer than Serenna’s forearm. The hatchling froze, frills half-flared, then backed away three careful steps while Skylash tore another bite from the kill.

Wingbeats pounded through the sky.

Lykor dropped to the island’s edge and shifted out of wings and scales as he crossed toward the fire. He settled beside Jassyn with one knee drawn up, snow whirling around his shoulders.

He kept his attention on Jassyn, though his voice carried to the rest of them. “The scouts we sent south confirmed the human army has been portaled to the lake ringing the Drowned Spires. Close to fifty thousand, by their count.”

Serenna’s stomach plunged at the number.

“The army isn’t the target,” Jassyn murmured, Essence streaming from his fingers into a Starshard.

“They become the target when they’re standing between us and the king,” Lykor growled, frost creeping outward from his boots.

Vesryn slid his blade into its sheath. “So we fly over it.”

“What do you think would happen if we crossed over the army lining the shore?”

Serenna recognized the finality in his tone. Lykor had already decided how the flight ended. Worse, he was right. She answered before Vesryn could mistake the question for a challenge.

“Those with Essence might reach us in the air,” she said. “And the king’s shamans could surely bend the wind and rip us out of the sky.”

“Then skip the army,” Fenn said, his talons never pausing in Koln’s hair. “We could portal straight to the Drowned Spires.”

Lykor shook his head. “The king would either sever our portal or siphon our magic if we got close. And that’s not even accounting for the dragons that might be waiting with him.” His eyes flared. “Rimeclaw. Blossom. Veyrix. Five hatchlings.”

Serenna made herself count what remained. Wraith warriors. Kaedryn’s druids. A few score of magus. Even a number of prisoners dragged from the king’s dungeons and the Maw who’d taken up arms beside them.

“But we hardly have three thousand,” Koln said, tying off the braid Fenn had finished weaving.

Three thousand. Against fifty thousand humans. Against a king who could plunder their power before they came close enough to strike.

The number soured the longer she held it, her mind placing people where they might die. Every path to Galaeryn ran through faces she knew, through bodies that would have to hold where the fighting broke hardest so others could strike.

Fenn leaned back on his claws. “We still have the Starshard circles.”

“Because those worked brilliantly against the king last time,” Lykor muttered.

“We weren’t ready,” Vesryn shot back. “Rimeclaw’s ice scattered us, and that was when the king picked everyone off.”

“Then we have to keep the circles intact,” Serenna said. “We can cloak them around the lake and wait until the king is in view. Then every circle strikes together.”

“And you think that will be enough?” Lykor growled. “We already threw everything we had at him, and he didn’t flinch.”

“The circles didn’t use sunfire,” Vesryn said quietly.

Serenna’s fingers tightened around the crystal in her lap, its light pulsing in her grip.

Vesryn’s jaw settled, the stubbornness he wore once his choice was already made.