Page 218 of The Reckoning of Starlight

She’d have to go to him herself. While Vesryn kept Galaeryn fighting, she’d erase the last span of sky between them and release everything before the king had time to siphon the sunfire.

Every Starshard. Every Well. All the Essence they had left.

With Vesryn still locked against Galaeryn.

With the strike demanding her life as surely as his.

Vesryn had asked her to anchor the stars, but she needed to deliver him the sky.

“I’m sorry.” Serenna pushed the words through the bond to both of them—Fenn beside her, Vesryn above. Nothing followed that could carry her love, her terror, or the apology breaking her heart.

She gathered everything raging through her and stopped resisting the stars.

Fenn shouted her name, but his voice reached her from impossibly far away, from a world already disintegrating.

Sunfire tore through her chest, her ribs, her eyes. Essence filled every vein until blood and radiance became impossible to distinguish. She screamed as the boundary between flesh and light burned away.

Her Starshard ignited with what it could no longer contain, every Well behind her still funneling power through her as the crystal ceased to matter.

The stars beckoned, a vast spiral leading to a home she’d never known. This time, when they called, Serenna reached back.

Then there was no pain at all.

The lake, the battlefield, Fenn’s voice, the body that had carried her this far into the sky—all of it fell away. She fell away.

What remained rose from her abandoned flesh in a shape wrought from living light. The gathered sunfire ascended with her, a star dragging the whole broken sky in its wake.

Below, every Starshard blazed, their freely given power following her into the dark.

Vesryn burned above.

Without flesh to measure it, the vastness between them no longer felt like distance. Serenna raced toward him, beyond any sense of measured time.

Galaeryn had unraveled the prince to a failing silhouette of light, and still Vesryn held, spending himself in bright fragments until Serenna reached him.

The bond flared when her light collided with his. His love tore through her, wordless and helpless, still fighting.

Serenna plunged through Vesryn and into Galaeryn, ramming the sunfire into the king.

The king’s power crashed around them, vast and endless with all he’d claimed. The sunfire inside Serenna strained toward him, caught in the same pull that had stolen every attack before.

Vesryn’s light shuddered around hers.

Galaeryn’s command sank into the magic inside her, hauling it toward himself. White-gold light tore from Serenna’s form, searing heat and strength though neither belonged to flesh anymore.

Far below, the Starshards burned bright, every wielder still channeling their magic through her.

The king couldn’t wrench it all from her. Instead, he struck back through the Wells sustaining her power, trying to seize the wielders themselves.

But none of the power flowing through Serenna belonged to them. Every measure of that magic had been given freely, shaped by sacrifice rather than conquest. Each wielder had reached past fear and opened their Well to her by choice.

Galaeryn reached through one connection, then another, searching for the will that ruled the rest.

There wasn’t one.

Every circle flared. Prismatic light flashed from Starshard to Starshard and Serenna drove it against the king.

His might scattered through the Essence, reaching everywhere, mastering nothing.