Page 197 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Too many kept coming.

Vesryn tucked his wings and dropped low, arms snapping wide. Shadows fanned across the sky and shredded the rest of the volley before it struck. Splintered wood and iron heads clattered across shields and armor while Fenn wheeled through the opening untouched.

Vasharax tumbled once in his wake, wings flailing before a frantic beat righted her. She darted back beneath Fenn with an indignant puff of smoke, every scrap of dignity apparently recovered.

Fenn slashed both claws toward the earth. Fire ripped a crescent across the mud ahead of the ranks. He banked over them and raked his claws down again. A second eruption tore along their inland flank, cutting off another escape. Bodies collided as the formation buckled shoreward. Shields crashed into armor, soldiers stumbling over one another.

Panic finished what the fire began. Soldiers burst through the gaps, trampling mud and the fallen in their rush to flee.

Fenn’s flames drove the broken ranks toward the shoreline, heat snapping at their backs and sealing every path but one.

Serenna was already there.

She tore a portal open across their retreat.

The first soldiers vanished into the void at a run. Those behind crashed into the opening before they could stop, fear and fire driving the column into the dark. Armor clashed against armor. Bodies tripped over bodies as the rift swallowed them by the column.

Serenna sealed the portal shut and circled back toward Vesryn.

“Again,” she said as Fenn reached them.

They found their rhythm.

Serenna carved rifts across the paths of channelers whenever Essence flared. Fenn broke formations with fire, driving soldiers into motion. Vesryn guarded the sky around them, shadows shredding arrows and weighted nets until the fleeing ranks bunched tight enough for broader portals to be torn open, sending whole clusters spilling into the marshes.

Vasharax burned arrows where she could with bursts of flame. More than once, Fenn snared her in a loop of force and ripped her clear of incoming Essence. But her frantic wingbeats were slowing now, the little dragon losing height between strokes before hauling herself level again. Serenna’s own shoulders burned, every correction through the flashing air harder to force than the last.

She risked a glance toward the Drowned Spires.

Skylash still hammered the platform, lightning breaking over Veyrix’s unmoving body and splintering the crystal around him.

The circles still held above the lake, hatchlings guarded at their centers, every Starshard hoarded for a king who had yet to appear.

Their distraction worked, but the effort was costing them.

Every portal Serenna tore open spent Essence she’d need against Galaeryn. Every wave of Vesryn’s shadows drew more from the current binding them. Fenn’s fire still roared, though strain had begun to build from the effort.

A sudden gust hit Serenna hard enough to wrench her sideways.

Wind shrieked across the lake. For the first time since Skylash struck the platform, the lightning stopped.

Veyrix had taken wing.

CHAPTER 52

LYKOR

Veyrix rose like the king had ripped him up by the spine.

From the ridge, Lykor tracked the Zephyrfang snapping skyward—a weapon wrenched from its sheath. Wind shrieked as his wings unfurled, the gust flattening soldiers still scrambling at the platform’s edge.

And then he was climbing.

Fast.

Too fast for something that size.

Jassyn tensed beside him.