Page 198 of The Reckoning of Starlight

So did Aesar in his skull. A cold pressure gathered in Lykor’s chest as Veyrix aimed at Skylash, lightning webbing the night around her.

Skylash roared, fury and grief given fangs as she folded her wings and dove.

The dragons collided above the lake.

Cyclone clashed with lightning. Thunder detonated in widening rings, shearing through smoke and striking the ridge hard enough to send chips of stone skittering over the cliff.

Dracovae screamed, the blast hurling riders and mounts sideways. One beast dropped nearly to the water, talons skimming the surface before its wings punched down, the stroke blasting spray outward as it climbed back into the air with a screech.

The shockwave hammered through the wraith and druid fliers next, flinging bodies loose from their ranks.

One formation never recovered.

Veyrix’s wind shear hurled them through the branching veins of Skylash’s lightning. The charge leapt from wing to wing, body to body, every silhouette burning black against the flash of light.

Then the formation disintegrated—wings shredded, armor burning, fliers tumbling toward the lake in trails of fire.

Jassyn drew a sharp breath through his teeth, that surgical stillness cracking around the edges. He took a step toward the ledge, one hand lifting, as if wanting to follow where the bodies fell.

Fatal, if indulged.

The muscles across Lykor’s shoulders twitched, wings nearly shifting from the impulse to surface. Every instinct pulled toward the slaughter below—to warp in, find a threat, make himself useful with violence.

Veyrix and Skylash could tear the sky apart. It changed nothing. Their plan lived or died on Galaeryn stepping onto that platform. Until then, twenty circles of Starshards hung dark above the water with no king to burn.

Along the shore, Fenn, Vesryn, and Serenna still blazed like a constellation, holding half the army’s attention with their prismatic light while they ripped portals through the enemy ranks.

Above the lake, Skylash lunged for Veyrix’s throat, lightning raking across his scales. He twisted clear with a speed that made even her look slow and wrenched the currents against her—air meant to carry her now knifing across her wings, every gust turned from lift to execution.

The king still hadn’t shown his face, but his will moved through the dragon’s flesh.

Then Rimeclaw stirred.

The Tidecrasher lumbered to the platform’s edge, crystal groaning under his weight. Frost erupted from his jaws and struck the lake, racing straight across the water until a broad white path stretched into the dark.

Rimeclaw planted one webbed foot on the ice, and the surface creaked.

Then he heaved into motion.

Fractures raced ahead of each pounding step before the cold sealed them shut, his enormous body gathering speed in a brutal charge across the frozen road.

His wings hammered down.

Ice shattered behind him as he launched, sheets of frost tearing from his talons as he climbed toward Skylash.

Lykor reached for the Tidecrasher, hunting for any break in the silence Galaeryn had sealed over him.

Nothing answered. Only the same abyss he’d found in the Aetherveil, closed over the place where the dragon’s mind should’ve roared.

“The hatchlings,” Jassyn said.

Lykor’s gaze dropped back to the platform. Blossom remained where the others had left her, crouched over the crystal with roots spilling from her foreclaws. Around her, the soldiers Veyrix had flattened with the wind hauled themselves back to their feet and closed ranks.

Lykor flared his dragonsight.

The hatchlings huddled together, each cinched in bands of force, five scraps of scale cowering in Blossom’s shadow. One Emberhart pressed its snout against a Stormstrike’s wing, trembling hard enough for Lykor to see across the lake.

Jassyn took another step closer to the ledge and Lykor’s claw snapped around his forearm. “No.”