Page 84 of The Reckoning of Starlight

So he’d unravel it.

Break into Elashor’s mind while the general still reeled from Stardust. Turn Elashor’s power inward, force him to tear the hooks from—

Essence surged from the right.

Across the vault, a different guard staggered upright—glaive scraping a furrow through moss, a ragged snarl catching in his throat as he swung blind toward Jassyn.

Jassyn reached through the earth.

A vine cracked from the nearest tree, wrapping around the soldier’s throat.

Jassyn yanked.

The guard’s boots lifted from the ground. His weapon dropped with a dull thud, heels kicking at empty air as both hands flew to the vine cinched beneath his jaw. Essence lashed from his fingertips as he raked at his throat, but his power stuttered, his mind still mired in Stardust.

Jassyn tightened the vine.

Through the living coil, he sensed the moment the guard’s heart stopped beating. It was hardly the first life he’d taken—survival had never offered him innocence.

Creation and ruin were both woven into his bones by a dragon who’d trusted a captive with the only gift she had. He could feel how easy it would be to keep going, spreading his awareness through root and vine. Find every life still breathing in the sanctum. Constrict the earth around every throat.

He didn’t.

Jassyn took an unsteady step toward the Heart of Stars glowing between Elashor’s fingers, dragging him closer to the hand that had forced his body into compliance.

A retching sound broke the stillness. Another guard sagged against a tree, trying to rise.

A root unfurled at Jassyn’s call and brushed the nape of her neck. Through that contact, he found the edge of her mind and drove the command in before analysis could decay into hesitation.

“Silence the others before they wake.”

His throat burned as coercion sank in its hooks, making her hands do what he couldn’t stomach himself.

The guard hauled herself upright, limbs stiff as she drew a knife from her boot, head jerking toward the nearest collapsed soldier.

Jassyn didn’t watch, turning his focus back to Elashor.

A root erupted from the soil, snaring the Heart of Stars and ripping it free of Elashor’s grip. Jassyn seized the coil through the earth and wrenched the relic back to himself, the root tearing a jagged furrow through the moss until the gem slammed into his palm.

Jassyn closed his fingers around the Heart. The relic flared with his talents, its facets digging against his skin as Elashor’s command shuddered through it—a spike hammered deep into the vast darkness of Blossom’s mind. Jassyn drove his will into the binding and pried.

Elashor’s magic resisted, strands cinching tighter around her awareness, but Jassyn cut through them one by one, severing each hold that refused to yield, until the last command snapped loose and recoiled through the Heart.

Blossom’s awareness poured into his mind like a forest swallowing a field. Hunger woke with her, fastening onto the guard he’d left hanging from the tree—the copper tang of blood that would rush from the cooling body. Then the pressure of her presence broke, and the earth shuddered awake, roots remembering they could move.

She surged forward with a roar that split the canopy. The earth responded—trees groaning taller, mushrooms erupting in clusters, vines thickening as they bound the fallen. Moss swallowed weapons, and roots burst through the silver shelves left standing, buckling their polished frames until the Vallendes’ wealth spilled into the dirt.

Jassyn exhaled, but his fingers tightened around the Heart’s glow.

Shattering the relic—freeing Blossom completely—would require sunfire, and Jassyn had never summoned that destruction. The Starvault, broken open around him with Essence drifting loose, was no place to learn. For now, keeping the Heart from Elashor could buy the dragon time to run.

The soldier he’d coerced moved from one dazed warrior to the next through the glade, her knife severing throats. Blood darkened the moss, and as Blossom’s shadow fell over her, the soldier kept walking. The dragon reached the guard hanging from the tree and ripped him from the vine.

Jassyn flinched as bones cracked between Blossom’s fangs, his wing claws curling tight. He tucked the Heart of Stars into his pocket and steadied his breath, then forced himself to face the general sprawled only a few paces away.

Elashor lay slumped and still, fingers curled around empty air. Jassyn drove his will into the earth. Roots burst through the moss and climbed, flowering into spiked, venomous blooms. He held their darts at the general’s throat, death poised inches from his pulse.

Jassyn twisted the vines around Elashor’s limbs and hauled him upright, roots cinching tight as the general’s head dropped to his chest, the growth suspending him in a grotesque imitation of standing.