Page 53 of The Reckoning of Starlight

He stumbled through darkness to the other side, his boots scraping against a marble path. The portal sealed shut behind him, cutting off Elashor’s fury with it as the world lurched back into the silken hush of the Vallende estate. He caught himself before his knees folded, Farine’s court attire hanging disheveled on his body.

His wing claws kept curling and releasing. Curling and releasing. Every limb haunted by the shape of what had almost unfolded. He stood frozen in place, some conditioned instinct waiting for Elashor to return.

This would never stop. As long as he remained prisoner inside these walls, one command would follow another, each taking more of him until nothing remained that still knew how to resist.

Bile surged, searing and acidic, his body rejecting what his mind kept trying to survive. Jassyn forced it down, but pieces of the morning and the night before blurred through him.

Farine’s perfume lodging in his lungs. Serenna’s cheek pressing to his, her voice cracking on It’s Elashor, not you while his body strained toward compliance. Nobles reclining in the Drowned Spires, their laughter ripe with indulgence, wine sweetened by desire and control. Their hands. Their entitlement. His own smile, rehearsed and obedient.

There was no line anymore. No moment untouched. No part of him that still belonged to himself.

Jassyn flinched when a voice lashed in from the left. “Get back to the estate, half-breed.”

Jassyn turned slowly toward the guard, morning sunlight glinting off the male’s armor. One of the newer staff, a ‘half-breed’ himself, though the distinction hardly mattered. His gaze raked over Jassyn, clear and alert, untouched by coercion or the haze of Stardust.

Jassyn knew that look. Willing and devoted. Cruel by choice. He’d seen it before, on the faces of those who watched his body obey the pleasures Farine arranged.

Jassyn said nothing. His wings folded tight to his spine as he scanned the portaling courtyard. Morning mist veiled the marble, curling low around his ankles. Beyond it, the estate crouched beneath its polished quiet. Farine likely wouldn’t leave her chambers for at least another hour.

He had time.

But this area stood too open for what he needed to do.

If this guard knew anything of the Heart of Stars—where Elashor kept it, what door guarded it, what traps the Vallendes had built around it—Jassyn would extract that knowledge where the hedges could hide the damage.

The night before, he’d threaded coercion through the nobles’ sighs, sinking stupor into minds already dulled by wine and Stardust. One by one, those who touched him had slackened beneath his reach, desires blunted. Farine included.

It hadn’t saved him, only shortened the night. Farine had reached for him later in the dark, but he’d driven oblivion into her skull before her hand ever found skin.

A victory too thin to trust. But a start.

Unclenching his fists from his sides, Jassyn returned his focus to the guard. He could do this. If obedience was the cage they’d locked him in, coercion—shaped by his own hand—was the key.

He stepped forward, igniting Essence. A sliver of telepathy slipped from him, fine as a needle. The male’s eyes barely began to widen before Jassyn sank hooked barbs into his mind.

“Follow me,” he said, cinching the command tight.

Resistance rose, panicked and reflexive, but Jassyn sheared through it before the guard’s instinct could harden into defiance. The mind under his grip shuddered once, then yielded.

Jassyn turned and traced a path through the Vallendes’ maze of clipped hedges and ornamental lies, toward the hidden center where Blossom slept beneath their curated paradise.

No one would glance twice at a guard escorting Farine’s pet through the grounds. And those who looked too long could be made to look away. Besides, if Jassyn was discovered, his body had already forgotten how to imagine a punishment worse than being kept alive for use.

The hedges along the path stirred as Jassyn passed, branches bending beyond their manicured shapes. Flowers split open at the marble’s edge, petals reaching for his boots.

Jassyn glanced back over his shoulder. The guard followed without question, gaze blank, limbs slack with the weight of Jassyn’s command.

He remembered coercing Lykor in a hot spring, long before they shared anything else. That had been desperation, a weapon drawn blind in the dark. Lykor had looked at him after as if Jassyn had proven himself monstrous, and Jassyn had apologized until his voice gave out, frantic to make Lykor believe otherwise.

Now?

If this guard broke, if his thoughts unraveled like frayed thread, Jassyn wouldn’t mourn it. Maybe this male held no secrets, had nothing worth ripping free behind his eyes.

It didn’t matter. This was war. Jassyn was rotting alive in this estate, and the decay needed somewhere to go.

If Elashor dragged him back to Serenna, if the general forced another command through him…

Jassyn would lose himself. Entirely. The end would arrive in increments—a command obeyed faster, the need to please beginning to feel like his own—until his body no longer waited for permission to betray him.