Page 29 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Jassyn gasped, trying to wrench free of the memory.

She held him fast.

Bone split like ripe fruit, blood bursting hot across her tongue. Entrails slid slick down her throat, and marrow followed—sweet, singing through her starved body like sunlight through leaves.

She liked the taste.

The satisfaction struck Jassyn before he could brace, a terrible warmth blooming through every place starvation had gnawed empty.

More lives followed in the dark. Kill after kill, each one faster than the last. Wraith. Rangers. Faces Jassyn knew.

Ice exploded in the tunnel. A figure advanced with frost sheathing his talons, fury rolling off him in waves that burned cold.

Lykor.

Jassyn knew that wrath.

But never like this. Fully wraith. Fully unleashed.

Sunfire followed, bright enough to bleach her sight.

Vesryn.

Flames poured into her skull until the world drowned white and even memory blistered.

Agony. Agony. Agony.

The word was his, the only shape Jassyn’s thoughts could give the pain she’d endured.

He reeled as she released his mind, stomach turning from the phantom taste of blood still clinging thick in his throat.

Kal. Gone that violently. Torn apart by a creature too starved to regret the ravaging.

She’d been forced to dig. Forced to build. Forced to kill.

Jassyn steadied himself against what she’d shown him. “What are they making you do now?”

Pressure bloomed behind his eyes again, slower this time. A seep rather than a strike, images creeping through him with the patience of rot.

Chains rose from her thoughts, grown like roots laced in crystal, winding through her skull. They glowed faintly, starlight drowned in mud. Around her claws, vines coiled like manacles, lashing her to the earth.

In the dark of her mind, Jassyn watched Elashor lift the Heart of Stars.

Remain on these grounds. Do not hunt those who dwell within the estate.

The order sank deep, settling into the bedrock of her bones.

Obey the Vallende line, or bleed.

The garden became the edge of her world. Earth she could touch, but never shape into escape. Death waited behind her fangs, permitted only when the command granted leave.

Starvation remained the worst of all.

No prey had been delivered. She’d tunneled roots beneath the manor. Turned stones under soil. Sent hunger moving through the earth.

No one listened.

They never did.