Page 245 of The Reckoning of Starlight

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

“Does this mysterious Waykeeper have a name?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t provide it. Vesryn would be relentless until he had every answer, and Aesar had no intention of rewarding him so soon. He opened a portal instead.

After sending word to Lykor and sensing Lykor’s presence coil back into his mind, Aesar stepped toward the threshold.

“I’m happy for you,” Vesryn said behind him.

Aesar halted.

The valley wind passed over his shoulders, carrying him for an instant into grief worn familiar by years.

Kal had died in a world that no longer existed. A harsher world. A world that had taught Aesar how to lose and called the lesson survival. He’d carried that lesson into the quieter aftermath and spent months believing that remaining alone was a form of loyalty.

But healing had never required him to love Kal less.

Marrek had buried someone in that broken world too and never flinched from Kal’s name or asked Aesar to leave it unspoken. There’d been no rivalry between their dead, only the understanding of two people who knew what it cost to survive someone they’d meant to grow old beside.

Somewhere along the way, keeping Marrek hidden had ceased to preserve anything. And Vesryn had simply been happy for him, without asking Aesar to defend it.

Aesar glanced back at his brother. “Well, are you coming?”

Vesryn crossed the grass in three long strides and hooked an arm around Aesar’s shoulders.

Aesar sighed. “You’re going to be unbearable.”

“Yes,” Vesryn said, drawing him through the portal. “Start at the beginning.”

EPILOGUE

SERENNA

Three years after the fall of Galaeryn

Lightning slipped into the eggshell in branching veins.

Serenna knelt with both palms pressed against the curved surface and eased another current through. Violet light kindled within the obsidian shell, revealing the unhatched dragon in flashes—a blunt snout, folded limbs, the hooked shadow of one wing.

Then the dragon kicked.

The blow struck Serenna’s palm through the shell, pulling a laugh from her. “Impatient already. Just like your mother.”

A low growl rumbled through the cavern.

Skylash’s violet eyes narrowed above the coil of her body. Brooding had only sharpened her temper. She’d packed the highest chamber of her nesting island in the Aetherveil with moss, shed scales, grasses, and strips of hide torn from stars knew what beasts, the bedding mounded around the clutch.

Cool air wound through the cavern’s mouth, stirring loose strands of Serenna’s braid against her cheek. Veyrix had taken the four older Stormstrikes hunting far below, where the floating islands gave way to plains blurred green beneath the clouds.

Serenna turned her attention to the next egg and drew a measured charge into her hands, static prickling across her palms. The dragon inside leaned toward the power as lightning flowed inward, violet veins tunneling through the dark.

When the current faded, Serenna rocked back onto her heels. “That’s three.”

“Your command of numbers remains an astonishing feat.”

Serenna rolled her eyes and reached for another Unbound egg nestled near Skylash’s forewing.