Page 5 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Vesryn went still.

Lykor’s grip tightened until leather creaked in his claws. “Jassyn.”

Vesryn’s hand flew to his head. A primal sound ripped from his throat as his knees hit the sand. Flames erupted from his wings, veined down his arms, and spilled from his palms. Heat cracked through the courtyard as magic poured from his skin, unbound and screaming.

Sand fused to glass beneath him. Druids recoiled. Freed prisoners stumbled back, shielding their faces from the blast.

Lykor didn’t have time for this. Vesryn was the only one who could follow the bonds.

Lykor hauled on his druid gift.

Rimeclaw’s tide answered, water erupting from his fists.

He gritted his fangs and drove the stream over Vesryn’s body. The force of it struck hard enough to buckle the prince’s wings, drowning flame. Fire hissed back through the torrent, fighting every inch.

Lykor forced more water down.

Steam burst around them, rolling over the sand. Druids and prisoners vanished behind the boiling veil until there was only Vesryn’s burning shape and Lykor planted before him, driving the flood over the fire.

At last, the flames guttered out.

Lykor grabbed the prince by his soaked leathers and yanked him upright. “Just. Open. A. Portal.” His voice shook around the one name he couldn’t afford to break on. “Jassyn—”

“He’s gone,” Vesryn whispered.

The words punched through Lykor’s ribs, leaving no air behind.

“What do you mean gone?”

Vesryn shook his head. Water streamed from his silver hair, thinning ash into dark rivulets down his face. “The bond. It’s…” His words came out hoarse. “It’s gone.”

“Because he was retethered.” Lykor’s breath turned to thunder in his ears. “Right?”

“I don’t know what they did.” Vesryn grabbed at his hair, yanking hard enough that strands tore free. “I only know what I felt. The bond severed. Completely.”

Lykor staggered. His grip on the prince fell away, wing talons cracking as they clenched into fists.

“They could’ve drained his power,” he said.

The numbness in his voice frightened him more than the words. His gaze snagged on his own skin, glinting indigo in the sun. Before the raid on Galaeryn’s mountain prison, he’d given two Essence talents to Vesryn so he could walk in the dark as a wraith.

Power could be siphoned.

A body could survive the theft.

Sometimes.

“That would break the bond,” Lykor insisted. “If they turned him into a wraith.”

If Jassyn had lived through it.

Anything but death.

Snow began to fall around him, his magic racing wild. Lykor’s claws shook, but he forced them still, the way he’d forced everything still since Cinderax returned alone.

Lykor reached inward again, vicious now, raking through the silence for Aesar—for the mind that could carve a path through panic. He needed him. Needed the clarity that found answers where Lykor found only throats, the voice that could make impossible odds survivable.

But Aesar remained silent and distant somewhere after Kal’s last scream.