Page 91 of The Reckoning of Starlight

Then she exhaled harshly and disappeared down a side tunnel.

Stone shuddered ahead, and Daeryn remained where he was, studying Blossom as another chamber arched open beyond them—the same steady stare as Jassyn but set in another color. Lykor had noticed the resemblance the first time they’d met, and it still unsettled him.

“The current tunnels are charted,” Daeryn said. “I’ll walk the new tunnels myself and have the routes marked by nightfall.”

Jassyn nodded. Whatever history lay between him and Daeryn stayed sealed in the silence.

Daeryn pressed a fist to his heart and turned toward the groaning stone, already dispatching scouts after Blossom’s magic as it tunneled deeper.

Jassyn started after the dragon, and Lykor fell in beside him.

Kaedryn matched their pace, wings drawn tight enough to rustle with each step. “Some of the guilds do not wish to abandon Asharyn.”

Lykor scoffed. He understood the instinct to bare fangs over the last piece of claimed ground. He also knew a dead city when he saw one. Asharyn could be mourned later. It couldn’t be defended now.

This wasn’t his battle. Though he would’ve given every ugly answer himself if it meant Jassyn could stop holding the mountain upright for everyone else.

But the druids wanted their First Keeper, not a half-wraith with frost on his knuckles and Farine’s blood crusted under his talons.

So Lykor stood silent beside him and let Kaedryn carve another piece from what little Jassyn had left.

“You know the city isn’t safe,” Jassyn said finally. “Not while Centarya can portal their forces into its streets without warning. The tunnels are defensible, and Blossom can keep changing them beneath our feet. We hold here until we free Veyrix.”

Kaedryn’s wings twitched. “And if we fail?” She clutched the satchel strapped against her ribs, where the Heart of Stars meant for Veyrix waited in her keeping. “Even if we free him, what then? Galaeryn still hunts us. He has five of our hatchlings—he’ll want more.”

Five.

Lykor’s beastblood writhed.

Five hatchlings in the king’s grip. Five small throats waiting for a leash.

Kaedryn’s eyes glowed as she watched Blossom’s path ahead. “What if they’re already…”

She didn’t finish, her silence landing heavier than anything Bhreena had thrown. Lykor heard the fracture under it. Asharyn’s guilds wanted a city to defend, their hatchlings safe, a familiar place to shelter. Fear would sharpen every need into a weapon, and without an enemy to aim at, they would turn those edges on each other.

“Galaeryn told me himself that he wants one of every elemental dragon chained,” Lykor growled.

Jassyn missed half a step beside him. His attention stayed on Lykor, quiet with concern and full of questions Lykor had no intention of answering in front of Kaedryn.

Lykor kept his eyes locked on the druid leader. “We can keep running, keep burrowing deeper into the earth, but distance won’t change what he’s hunting. Blossom is the only Bramblemaw. Sooner or later, we’ll run out of tunnels. We can wait until the fight comes to us, or we can prepare and choose where to stand.”

“For now, we survive the next hour,” Jassyn said. “Then the one after it. Small teams can go back to Asharyn for whatever can be carried, but every trip risks more than the people we send. If one of them is taken, these caverns are exposed. No one goes back to stay. Asharyn is marked, and this refuge survives only while it stays hidden.”

Kaedryn absorbed that, throat working once. Then she bowed without another word and turned toward her waiting guildmasters.

Lykor tracked her, but he and Jassyn continued on.

They followed the curved tunnel deeper into the mountain, until it opened around them. Blossom had carved a vaulted cavern, its stone ribs veined with bioluminescence. Slender trees rose from moss-softened ground, dividing the chamber into fragile territories families had already begun to claim with bedrolls, salvaged packs, and bundles of ash-stained cloth.

Children clambered over rock ledges and roots thick enough to serve as benches. Wraith hauled cauldrons into place above smokeless flames, drawing water from a shallow stream that wound through the stone.

Near a far wall, unclaimed children from the prisons huddled away from the others, underfed and glassy-eyed. At the edge of their gathering, a druid girl crouched and offered one of them a piece of dried fruit, careful and wordless.

Lykor hadn’t realized he’d stopped walking until Jassyn touched his arm.

“The magus have already tended to the worst of the wounded,” Jassyn murmured, nodding toward strands of Essence weaving from a healer’s hands. “We might actually stand a chance.”

Lykor said nothing. They were surviving. For now. He’d seen enough to know what borrowed time looked like, and this was it—warm and temporary.