Page 249 of The Reckoning of Starlight

“I found something for you.”

Sharyne’s eyes widened as Serenna tossed the fang to Koln.

He caught it with one claw and turned it between his fingers, his gaze dropping to the torn leather at Serenna’s shoulder. “Tussle with Skylash?”

“One of her little terrors this time.”

Sharyne leaned over his head to see. “Mine?” Her hands stretched toward the fang, but Koln kept the tooth out of her reach.

Serenna nodded toward him. “He can add it to your collection.”

It had begun in Asharyn with a brass dragon Fenn and Vesryn bartered for at a market stall because Sharyne refused to put it down. Not long after, her shelves started holding pieces of every place she visited. A shell from Vaelyn. One of Trella’s white feathers. A black Asharyn stone veined with ruby, its edges worn smooth.

Lately, some of those treasures had begun finding their way back to Serenna, pressed into her palm whenever Sharyne decided she needed one. Serenna kept them all.

They took Sharyne wherever life allowed. Human villages and druid jungles. Kyansari’s library and Centarya’s halls. Wraith dwellings loud with too many voices around the table. Crowded markets where wings and claws drew less notice every year.

Serenna wanted difference to become ordinary to Sharyne before anyone taught her otherwise.

In Asharyn, Sharyne spent half her days at the home Velinya and Kaedryn had built for those orphaned by the war, where human, elf, wraith, and druid children learned one another’s games faster than anyone else had learned peace. Sharyne would return filthy from whatever mischief they’d invented, her pockets stuffed with spoils.

Serenna knew everyone indulged her. Too many people carried sweets for her, too many chicks and hatchlings permitted her touch where they tolerated no one else, and neither Vesryn nor Fenn had ever managed to deny her anything with conviction.

Sharyne reached again toward the fang in Koln’s claw.

He closed his fist around it.

When he opened his fingers, the tooth was gone.

Sharyne gasped and grabbed Koln’s wrist. “Where?”

Koln turned his empty palm over for her inspection. “Magic.”

Sharyne stared down at him, silver eyes narrowing with suspicion. She searched his sleeve, then hooked two fingers at the edge of his eye patch and pulled.

Koln caught her hand before she could peel it off. “Not there.”

He reached behind one of her pointed ears and drew the fang free.

As she squealed, another horn rolled across the Aetherveil, followed by the rush of wings. A crosscurrent shifted against Serenna’s wings, nudging her toward the island until she corrected with a harder beat.

Movement flashed between the iron spires at the station she should’ve been holding.

Ice had replaced her lightning, covering for her. Spears erupted across the route in staggered waves, forcing one flier into a wild dive and another into a turn sharp enough to nearly clip the stone. From this distance, Serenna couldn’t tell if it was Aesar or Lykor hovering.

Then a wall of ice scythed across the course and scattered two novice fliers in opposite directions, a volley of sharpened hail chasing them from the turn.

Probably Lykor.

She needed to take over before he put someone in the healer’s tent.

Serenna angled toward her station, but her attention snagged on the empty space beside Koln and Sharyne. “Where’s Fenn?”

Koln readjusted his eye patch. “He had something to take care of.”

Serenna raised her brows. “Did he?”

Koln’s expression gave nothing away.