Page 195 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Skylash had promised to kill Veyrix rather than leave him bound.

She’d never promised to wait.

CHAPTER 51

SERENNA

Lightning struck the Drowned Spires, the impact rolling across the lake.

Light and sound slammed through Serenna’s chest hard enough to throw off her next wingbeat. She dropped half a span before a pulse of Vesryn’s force caught her. Fenn’s cloaking shadows writhed around them, thinning under the violet-white flash.

Over the lake, twenty circles flared into view—five Starshard wielders suspended in each formation above the water, hidden by a wraith until Skylash’s lightning ripped the dark open. Then the night rushed back.

Skylash wheeled above the platform, violet charges branching across every scale.

Veyrix stood motionless, staring at nothing as lightning raked his scales, its glare trapped in his crystalline eyes.

Skylash’s sparks spilled over and battered Rimeclaw and Blossom, yet they gave no more response than the crystal under their claws. Only the five hatchlings bound behind the Wardens thrashed against their harnesses of force, shrieking as Skylash turned her vow into a storm.

Kyansari soldiers scattered from the blasts as lightning skittered over the platform in jagged veins.

“So much for waiting on the king,” Fenn growled.

Heated air bucked off the platform and pitched Serenna sideways. She wrenched her wings level as Skylash struck again and again. Fury lashed through the spark in her chest, sharp enough to seize her gut.

Skylash had to stop. Every bolt stripped the darkness from the circles and laid them bare to the army around the lake.

If Serenna could pick them out through the glare, so could every channeler on the ground.

Below, shamans and elves woven through the army were already hurling magic skyward—stolen druid fire, lances of force, rending that scored black scars through the smoke.

Cinderax’s shrill roar cut between the thunder as he arrowed along the shore, scales flashing in Skylash’s light.

Seventeen hatchlings broke from his wake and scattered toward the exposed circles, each bringing an element the children of earth and starlight could harness. A Stormstrike dropped into one ring’s heart, lightning bleeding between his scales. An Emberhart swept into another, fire kindling behind her fangs. At a third, a Tidecrasher claimed the edge, snow spilling from his jaws into the dark.

One dragon didn’t follow.

Vasharax raced toward them instead, wings beating hard through Skylash’s storm. She tucked herself beside Fenn, tiny body sheltered under the sweep of his wing.

Serenna still thought they were too small for war.

Too young.

She swallowed the protest. The hatchlings were already airborne, beyond the reach of wishing them anywhere else.

“Vesryn, tell the Starshard wielders that our plan stands. Hold position and stay cloaked. Don’t ignite sunfire until the king steps onto that platform.”

Vesryn’s eyes went unfocused. A faint pressure brushed Serenna’s awareness as his telepathy spread across the lake, carrying the command silently from circle to circle.

His attention returned to her. “They’ll hold. But if those channelers below start picking them off…”

“They won’t.” Serenna closed her fingers around the Starshard at her throat. “Because they’ll be aiming at us.”

Fenn’s eyes glowed. “You want us to be bait?”

Serenna angled toward the shore where the fighting churned thickest. “We’ll open portals to strip the Essence-wielders from their formations and dump them somewhere out of the fight. Like the marshes to the south.”

Some would travel back if they had the talent. But by then, the lines they’d left behind would already be broken.