Page 83 of The Reckoning of Starlight

He groaned as he tried to move, pain lancing down his neck as he lifted his head. One wing sprawled beside him, cramped and trembling where it had caught in the roots. The other had fallen half over his body, membrane slick with moss and powdered with glass. Even unconscious, some part of him had tried to shield his body from the room.

The vault had been bright with morning sun when he shattered the urns. Now moonlight spilled through the canopy where the dome had been. Hours had passed, and the estate had remained sealed in silence.

The world spun as he sat up. His wings dragged after him, their weight pulling at the joints between his shoulders. Broken glass clinked, slivers sliding off his chest and arms, the jagged edge of an urn snagging his tunic.

He blinked through the blur until smeared light resolved into shapes.

Trees surrounded him, towering and dripping sap that pulsed faintly in the dark. Vines strangled the broken shelves. Roots split the marble floor, feral growth rioting until nothing the Vallendes had called sacred remained intact.

A laugh cracked from Jassyn’s throat before he could stop it. The Vallendes’ Starvault, their sanctum of power and pride, drowned in moss and bloom by their half-breed.

He slapped a hand over his mouth as another bubbled up. Stars. The drug was still in his veins, splitting his thoughts at the seams.

A presence waited behind him, too vast to belong to a person.

Jassyn turned too fast, and pain spiked down his spine.

Blossom.

The dragon loomed unmoving, crystalline eyes unblinking, still suspended in Elashor’s control.

Jassyn’s pulse lurched. He scanned the vault for Elashor and Farine, but first found a guard sprawled near a buckled shelf. Drool shone on the male’s chin as one arm lifted, fingers swiping at a floating orb of Essence glimmering above him. Countless vials of captive power had cracked, freeing hundreds of globes that drifted like loose stars among the vines and trunks.

If the guard was stirring, the others wouldn’t stay felled by Stardust for much longer.

Jassyn braced himself, glass slicing into his palm as he drove his fingers through the moss and into the new soil beneath. He didn’t feel the cut. Only the frantic need to purge his blood—draw life from the roots, burn the drug away, reclaim enough clarity to survive the vault before it woke around him.

Nothing answered.

Swaying in place, he tried again.

His arms shook as he drove past the drug’s haze, his awareness hooking on a filament of life. It came reluctantly—root by root, green vitality climbing through the slices in his palm and seeping into his skin. Moss blackened beneath his fingers, withering to husks.

His breath came faster with the effort, but he didn’t stop. He drew more life inward, isolating the poison, forcing power through blood and marrow until the Stardust began to burn thin.

The pulse steadied in his veins. Jassyn followed it outward, letting his awareness branch through root and vine. The estate reached back in broken impressions—moss over shattered tile, roots prying seams from marble, doors hanging crooked, halls drowned in unnatural stillness. Dust settled undisturbed along the thresholds, no reinforcements marching to the Vallendes’ rescue.

Jassyn couldn’t tell if the quiet meant safety or danger holding its breath. The Vallendes had already taught him what could wait in silence under their roof.

The Stardust receded enough for the wreckage to sharpen. This time, when Jassyn searched the vault, he found Elashor face down on the earth.

His stomach clenched. The Heart of Stars still glowed in the general’s fist, a beacon of all eight colors pulsing like a taunt.

Farine couldn’t be far. With one palm still buried in the moss, Jassyn pushed his awareness through the grove that had grown around the general—towering trunks, hanging veils of vine heavy enough to hide silk, skin, and sapphire eyes. Sap ticked from the branches. Leaves whispered over broken marble.

She could be waiting anywhere, still close enough to make his body remember obedience before his mind could refuse.

But he had no time to let fear assemble itself while Elashor still gripped Blossom’s chains.

Jassyn lurched to his feet, air rasping through his teeth. His wings sagged behind him, one catching on root, the other striking broken marble. The uneven pull wrenched him sideways, and he caught himself on a fractured pillar before furling them tight to his spine.

Claim the Heart.

Free Blossom.

Run.

The plan fell apart when he thought about the last step. Even now, with the Starvault shattered around him, freedom still stopped at the shackles in his skull. He couldn’t leave while the coercion kept his wings from belonging to him.