Page 69 of The Reckoning of Starlight

But Serenna’s lungs were hers for a breath.

She filled them until her ribs strained.

“COLLAPSE IT!”

The command cracked against the walls before the response came.

Wraith and druids broke from the fighting and warped to the walls, claws hovering above the braziers.

A chorus of keening swelled, the deafening shrieks of Starshards waking.

Ayla spun, hands clamped over her ears. “What is that?”

Serenna met her sister’s eyes. “The one thing you didn’t ask about.”

The braziers detonated.

Essence erupted in blinding columns. Force punched through rock, through the ceiling, through the bones of the cave itself. The ground buckled as stone screamed, dust avalanching as the cavern shuddered.

Serenna didn’t see Fenn cross the distance. One moment, stone was falling between them. The next, his hand found hers, fingers closing tight. The bond blazed between them, carrying everything neither of them could say as the cavern crashed down.

CHAPTER 17

LYKOR

Lykor’s fists locked at his sides as Galaeryn crossed the atrium toward him.

The king moved through the library with effortless grace, crystal-edged armor drinking the firelight through the windows, rings glinting with Essence across his fingers. His face remained too smooth. Too young. The same ageless mask that had loomed over Lykor while he lay chained to the marble slab in the prisons.

His magic twitched to rip open a portal, but he strangled the impulse just as fast. The king would shred the rift before he even formed it.

Resisting would end as it always had when Lykor had been stupid enough to try in the dungeon—with Galaeryn peeling him apart until his body learned obedience while his pride snarled under it.

The king halted at the window. Beside him. Close enough that the Essence thundering off him crawled across Lykor’s skin as if hunting for a way in.

The stolen talents Lykor had ripped from those in the palace still circled above, faint as sparks beside a sun.

“I suspected this was your doing.” Galaeryn swept a pale hand toward the city, where a wraith blazed past, hurling fire at a lower tier. “It took you decades longer than I expected before you mustered the nerve to strike.”

“And yet you stand here.” Lykor bared his fangs. “Spectating.”

Galaeryn exhaled, the burning city reduced to an inconvenience. He reached into the pouch at his waist and drew out a Heart of Stars.

Lykor’s hackles rose as all eight colors ignited the Heart. Scales rippled down his forearms, locking over skin in obsidian plates. His beastblood knew which dragon this controlled before his mind did.

Rimeclaw.

The Heart’s core spun with fractured radiance, staining Galaeryn’s knuckles with broken light. “The beast will extinguish your rebellion soon enough.”

On the southern horizon, darkness swallowed the stars.

The Tidecrasher descended.

Even through the blur of night, Lykor saw the veil of rain trailing from those vast, tattered wings. The limp was gone from Rimeclaw’s flight, though the wounds Skylash had carved still scored his membranes. Galaeryn must’ve mended the Tidecrasher only far enough to keep his siege engine airborne.

Ice and rain fell in curtains, sluicing over the rooftops, snuffing the blazes his warriors had set. Obedience made weather. Every fire drowned under a tide stolen from the dragon.

“I hadn’t anticipated seeing the rise of dragons in this century,” Galaeryn murmured, turning the Heart between his fingers. “I suppose I have your fixation to thank for their return.”