Page 38 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Flame and lightning tore from her palms, and she braided wind into their wake. The cyclone detonated outward, devouring the arena in a violent spiral. Sand lifted in sheets. Heat roared through the dust. Sparks cracked from grain to grain until the whole ring became a storm with teeth.

She wasn’t finished.

Serenna flung her awareness upward, reaching for the cascade spilling from the portal above the Spire. Water funneled across the sky toward her outstretched hand. She seized it, froze it in motion, and shattered the current outward into a spray of glittering spears.

Taryn cursed as one punched into her thigh. She staggered, a snarl ripping free. Her claw flashed beneath her armor.

Then she warped.

A hand closed around Serenna’s throat from behind and yanked her back hard enough to tear her feet from the ground.

She slammed into a solid chest, breath choked off. She clawed at the grip, vision swimming as her nails scraped against fingers.

“She-elf.”

Fenn’s voice, wrecked and pleading.

The fight bled out of her. Her body still strained for air, but her hands stopped tearing at him. Her fingers slid over his wrist instead and held tight.

“I’m not in control of my actions,” he gritted out, the words shaking with the hand crushing her windpipe.

“I—figured,” Serenna croaked.

Taryn limped closer, blood streaking down her armored thigh. She yanked the spear of ice free and hauled her talents back in. Her wraith form collapsed, leaving an arch elf between one step and the next.

Fenn’s Starshard gleamed in her grip as she stopped inches from them. “Surrender,” she hissed, “or burn.”

Serenna’s fingers tightened against Fenn’s wrist. She gasped for breath and found none. The world thinned at the edges, the ring dissolving.

Taryn bared her teeth. “Hard way, then.”

Fenn tensed behind her, a tremor passing through the fingers latched around her throat.

Serenna realized her mistake a heartbeat too late. She should’ve knelt. Not for Taryn.

For him.

Taryn lifted Fenn’s Starshard high, and the world erupted into flames before Serenna could draw enough air to scream.

CHAPTER 8

JASSYN

Jassyn had always hated heights.

Entrapment was worse.

In his own flesh. Bound to Farine’s claim.

At the Drowned Spires, he stood on an ancient platform anchored to the lake’s surface, the glass under his boots revealing a submerged city below. Towers rose through the crystal around him like a half-buried crown while deeper spires vanished into the gloom. Essence hummed through the Aelfyn palace, sealed beneath a thousand years of pressure and silence.

At evening’s fall, Farine had portaled him across the realms with a retinue of favored nobles, all draped in gossamer silks too sheer for court and too calculated for innocence, summoned to admire the king’s claimed sanctum under the lake.

Golden coronet braids framed Farine’s face, and her hands glittered with rings wrought in delicate shapes, each jewel holding a trapped pulse of Essence. She hadn’t looked at Jassyn once. Ornaments were displayed, not acknowledged. Her arm curled through his anyway, fingers settled in the crook of his elbow with the idle weight of ownership.

The platform swayed under his boots, and Jassyn’s stomach clenched as the lake opened dark and depthless in every direction. Wind coiled between the towers, rustling the membranes of his folded wings.

A noble’s voice spiraled across the platform, extolling Galaeryn’s claim of the Drowned Spires, but the words lost shape as pressure cinched around Jassyn’s throat. The jacket Farine had forced him into sat high-collared and rigid against his pulse, the back trimmed to display the viridian stretch of his wings.