Page 255 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Lykor bristled, turning enough to bring Jassyn into the edge of his sight. “Are you going to get to the point? If I wanted to be punished by riddles, I would’ve visited Rimeclaw.”

Jassyn leaned closer, his voice dropping until every word sharpened. “I could’ve summoned the enclave. Bound you by the laws I forged.” His grip clamped against Lykor’s chair. “But I kept this in shadows. That makes the crime mine as much as yours.”

“I’ve done nothing against your new laws,” Lykor growled.

Jassyn’s composure fractured. “You’re feeding elves to Blossom!”

Lykor surged to his feet, sending the chair skidding backward.

Jassyn stepped aside before the carved legs clipped his knees. Lykor stood rigid before him, crimson eyes burning feral.

“And tell me,” Lykor snarled, “which law, precisely, forbids feeding Blossom their wretched hides?”

Jassyn’s hand shook when he shoved the curls from his face. He turned toward the balcony, where the jungle’s canopy moved in slow green swells, until his pulse steadied.

Then Lykor was at his back.

“You know who they were.” His words landed low and vicious. “Every one of them.”

His hand closed over Jassyn’s shoulder.

Jassyn’s muscles eased under the familiar grip, the surrender swift enough to shame him. That was the cruelty of Lykor’s touch—the shelter of it, the traitorous relief offered by the same hand that delivered bodies to a dragon’s fangs.

Jassyn closed his eyes. “It’s not justice. It’s…”

“It’s what they earned.” Lykor’s fingers tightened. “I won’t let this new world pretend it never happened. Not while I draw breath.”

Jassyn turned on him so fast that Lykor’s hand slipped from his shoulder. “You’ll make me a tyrant. You have to stop.”

“No.”

“You can’t—”

“I can.” Lykor stepped in close enough for Jassyn to feel the words against his mouth. “I won’t stop until every elf who touched you is nothing but bones.”

“There are hundreds, Lykor.” Jassyn shook his head, the number constricting his throat. “Sooner or later, someone will connect the vanishings. I won’t be able to protect you when they do.”

“Then I’ll silence them too.”

The room tilted.

The horror resolved into a purge wearing the face of love, a world built from unsaid permissions where Jassyn’s wounds became law because Lykor had mistaken devotion for mandate. And Jassyn had let him.

Jassyn stepped back before Lykor could touch him again. “No. This ends here. It has to.”

“Then write your laws. I’ll find the loophole.”

Jassyn closed his eyes.

Lykor’s vow remained between them, monstrous in its loyalty, and some treacherous part of Jassyn wanted him exactly like this, dangerous on his behalf.

“I’ll hunt faster than you can enact them,” Lykor said, crowding into Jassyn’s space again. “I’m not finished.”

His mouth grazed Jassyn’s throat.

Jassyn’s palms struck Lykor’s chest. But his fingers closed in the armor and pulled him closer instead of shoving him back.

“Lykor.” His voice scraped thin, stripped of command.