Page 88 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Lykor was wrong. Jassyn had ended lives. He’d fed guards to Blossom’s jaws and coerced a soldier into slitting throats.

But now Lykor stood before him, waiting for permission he didn’t need, unwilling to steal the choice from him, offering to carry the violence so Jassyn didn’t have to.

Jassyn exhaled through his nose and nodded.

Frost raced along Lykor’s arm, solidifying into a spiked gauntlet of ice and shadow.

“Please,” Farine breathed. “I protected him. Ask him. I gave him everything. He knows what they would’ve done.”

Lykor’s lip curled back from his fangs. He pivoted so fast he blurred, the ice-crowned gauntlet smashing through Farine’s skull with a crack that silenced the grove.

CHAPTER 23

LYKOR

Lykor blinked into the dawn spilling over the stony peaks outside the Everfrost Caverns, where what remained of Asharyn had been driven underground. Wind scraped across the ridge, skinning frost over black boulders. Behind him, the cavern mouth, guarded by wraith and druids, cleaved the mountain, rimmed in ice and old snow packed hard as bone.

Beside him, the last of Serenna and Vesryn’s sunfire guttered out. At their boots, the Heart of Stars Jassyn had secured lay cracked into broken shards. Fenn kept close beside Serenna with one claw braced at her back, tracking the open sky. They all stood ash-streaked from the battle, upright only because none of them could afford to collapse.

Blossom’s clear lids swept slowly across her eyes, peeling back to reveal moss-green irises.

A dragon named Blossom. Like a fucking pony. If anyone else had come up with it, Lykor would’ve made them regret saying it aloud. The insult rose by reflex but he smothered it.

She’d been with Jassyn in that estate. He had not.

Lichen raced under Blossom’s talons, green veins needling through frost as she arched her neck toward the rising sun. Her roar hit like bedrock cracking under Lykor’s feet, shuddering through his ribs and staggering him back a step.

She chuffed once, then bumped her snout against Jassyn’s chest.

Jassyn lifted a hand to her jaw, morning light catching the amber in his exhausted eyes as his trembling fingers scraped over her scales. Lykor had torn him out of Farine’s estate barely an hour ago, as if distance from its horrors meant anything.

“We should get underground,” Lykor said, attention cutting to the horizon. “If razorwing scouts catch us exposed, this refuge becomes a grave.”

Cinderax growled at his heels and blew a plume of fire, hoarfrost hissing to steam where it crawled over the stone. “The hatchlings will grow restless, sealed in so much stone. They were made for the sky, not a mountain’s belly.”

“They can resent the mountain with everyone else,” Lykor snapped. “We’re shoving three thousand bodies into a cave system and hoping it doesn’t become a tomb. Asharyn was already living on meager rations before the evacuation. Now it’s only a matter of time before we start starving in the dark.”

“I’ll lead the squads back to Asharyn,” Fenn offered. “Strip what’s left before Centarya musters a response.”

Necessary, if they meant to last another week.

“I’ll coordinate with my father and see who can be spared,” Fenn added. “If that’s acceptable.”

Lykor stiffened.

Jassyn’s hand stilled against Blossom’s jaw.

“Kal…” Lykor began, but the name snagged behind his teeth. His mind reached sideways, searching for the voice that should’ve been there to carry the grief.

Fenn glanced between them, frowning as he thumbed where a ring in his brow used to sit. “He’ll only take a minute to find. He’s probably—”

“Kal didn’t come back from the prisons,” Vesryn said softly.

Fenn went wraith-still, a breath leaving him without sound.

His head turned slowly to the prince. “He’s still there?”

Frost cracked over Lykor’s knuckles as his fists closed. “No. He fell. In the fighting.”