He stiffened as Jassyn reached behind him, a strange release loosening from his spine as the elf dispelled the embedded golden spikes, seemingly with a thought.
“There’s no more coercion snaring your mind,” Jassyn continued. “You’re free of him.”
Lykor’s gaze flicked between Jassyn, the stone slab, and the chains, calculating as a growl built low in his chest. Now was the moment Galaeryn would materialize, emerge laughing from Jassyn’s face, mocking him for daring to entertain this notion of freedom. His lip curled at the mere thought of it. Jassyn slowly raised his hands, retreating a few steps.
Lykor blinked, the room seeming to spin at the edges. Skin prickling, he assessed Jassyn with a fresh wave of uncertainty. The king would never have done that—never would have retreated.
This couldn’t be real. He’d left Jassyn for dead. There was no way this phantom—this trick of the mind—could have freed him from the king’s control.
Despite his denial, a fledgling hope stretched out, testing its wings. Lykor took a hesitant step forward. He flicked his wrist. The door to his prison swung open.
Blinded by the flood of white light, he shielded his eyes, unable to see beyond the threshold. Not daring to breathe, Lykor took another step. When nothing happened, he took another stride closer to freedom, every muscle tensing in preparation for the sting of betrayal he expected to follow.
Every instinct urged him to run, to hurtle himself through the doorway, away from the chamber that had defined his existence. But Lykor resisted, still certain that the moment he crossed that boundary, he’d be dragged back. Back to the table, back to Galaeryn’s face hovering above him, those unnatural silver eyes spinning with madness.
“It’s up to you to walk out that door,” Jassyn said. And then he vanished, a whisper swept away by a breeze.
Heart thrashing in the sudden silence, Lykor stared at the spot Jassyn had vacated. Doubt crept in—none of it made sense.
A surge of urgency pierced the fog of confusion. Lykor released the air trapped in his lungs. He had to know if this was real.
He took another step. Then another, his feet moving of their own accord.
The dungeon receded behind him, the darkness of his mind peeling away as he stepped into the light, never once looking back.
Reorienting himself amid the ruined fortress streets, Lykor blinked, taking in the wraith’s demolished dwellings. He stood in a clan’s wrecked courtyard, the air pulsing with the charged weight of Essence.
Kal, ever the strategist, had herded the wraith to the edges of the plaza, where they lingered like shadows, all eyes fixed on him.
Lykor’s attention snapped to the girl, an irritating blaze in his mind, the bond between them glaringly bright. Concern and relief radiated from her, clinging to him like decay lingering around a corpse. He sneered, detesting her presence and her emotions seeping into his thoughts.
He felt her fumbling along his side of their Well, her clumsy attempts at control scraping against his nerves. She was actually trying to restrict his access to magic. He swatted away her feeble intrusion—he’d address the inconvenience of that connection soon enough.
Fenn stood beside her, tunic discarded but apparently healed. A flicker of unexpected relief kindled at the sight of the lieutenant alive. But he smothered it, unwilling to let such a feeling spark.
Then he noticed Vesryn on the girl’s other side. Instinctively, Lykor flinched, his body tensing in anticipation of coercion, the slithering touch he expected to seize his mind.
But…nothing happened. No sinister fingers reached for him, no whispered commands.
Suspended by disbelief, Lykor scoured the courtyard, hunting for the one supposedly responsible for his release. Jassyn couldn’t possibly be alive. Lykor turned to scan the square, but his own body betrayed him.
He couldn’t move.
Heart thrashing, an icy wave of panic seized his lungs as he struggled against the unexpected restraint. No rending coiled around him and Aesar lay dormant—not grappling for control—his presence still tucked away deep in the recesses of their mind.
This was something else. Something unforgivable.
“Aesar?” Vesryn asked, demanding his attention.
That voice was a familiar echo, but not from Lykor’s memories. His gaze veered back toward the prince. The question of how Vesryn had managed to reach this fortress drifted through his mind, but Lykor dismissed it as unworthy of his focus.
The prince addressed someone beside Lykor, just out of sight. “You can let him go.”
Lykor’s awareness sharpened as he felt the violating magic loosening its grip. The unseen hold unraveled and slipped away, a shiver racing through his bones as control seeped back into his limbs. A single, chilling certainty settled in Lykor’s mind.
Coercion.
Following the trail of Essence, Lykor whirled, latching onto the one true threat among this circle of fools.
