Page 227 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Lykor’s chest loosened so suddenly his knees buckled. Jassyn caught him before he hit the stone. Lykor dragged in air too sharp, too deep, stretching ribs that only knew how to brace.

Galaeryn was dead.

For the first time in a century, Lykor drew a breath that belonged to no king.

CHAPTER 59

SERENNA

Serenna had faced battles less determined to defeat her.

Sharyne screamed so loudly that Serenna’s vision pulsed, the chamber in the Drowned Spires distorting around the edges—the crystal walls, the silver basin, the folded linens. Even the drifting orbs of illumination trembled at the pitch.

“I’m trying,” Serenna said as she knelt, hating the pleading desperation in her voice. She’d sounded the same before, on her knees in front of this infant’s mother, begging Ayla to spare Fenn’s life.

Sharyne didn’t care.

The infant kicked both legs free of the swaddling cloth with fury too large for her body, one tiny fist punching the air. Her whole face had gone red with outrage, silver eyes squeezed shut.

Even dying, Ayla had made this look effortless. She’d held Sharyne against her chest with smug softness and unpracticed hands, as though infants only wanted warmth and quiet and not, apparently, to wage war on cotton.

Gritting her teeth, Serenna wrestled the cloth back into place. “Your mother had no right to leave you with me.”

Guilt split the haze of exhaustion when Sharyne went abruptly still. Serenna froze with her, her resentment for Ayla spilling over at the life she’d left behind.

Sharyne inhaled so deeply her ribs expanded under Serenna’s shaking hands, gathering the next wail with terrible purpose.

“I’m sorry,” Serenna whispered. “Please don’t.”

The scream punched through Serenna’s skull and rattled behind her eyes, bright as the sunfire that still haunted the dark whenever she closed them.

A week had passed since Galaeryn’s failed ascension. A week since Fenn had dragged her and Vesryn back from the sky with the Starshards at their throats. A week spent helping Jassyn send the human army back across the realms. Sleeping in fractures. Waking to whispers.

Serenna redoubled her efforts, drawing Sharyne’s arms close the way Saundyl’s wife had shown her.

Fold. Tuck. Pull snug.

Simple.

The cloth slipped loose. Sharyne wrenched one arm free with a furious jerk and smacked herself in the cheek.

The wailing doubled.

Fenn appeared in the doorway. His hair hung loose around his shoulders, the ends still dripping from bathing in the lake, his tunic unlaced at his throat.

His brows climbed as he took in Serenna kneeling beside the low cradle he’d pilfered from Asharyn, then Sharyne half-wrapped and shrieking, the swaddling cloth twisted around them both.

“What are you doing to her, she-elf?”

Serenna’s disbelieving laugh broke too close to a sob. She shoved disheveled hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist. “Changing her. Swaddling her. Ruining her life. I don’t know.”

Fenn crossed the chamber while Sharyne screamed until her fists trembled.

“She’s fed?” he asked over the wailing.

“Vesryn gave her a bottle before Veyrix summoned him.” Serenna looked down at the damp cloth balled near her knee. “Then she spat half of it up and decided I was the enemy.”

“So you pinched her?”