Serenna went weightless.
Her body moved before thought returned. Lightning surged as she wheeled midair and dove—fast, reckless, the storm screaming around her.
She raced toward the bonds.
Toward the ones she couldn’t lose.
CHAPTER 38
SERENNA
The Blackreach churned with unrest as Serenna flew over the lake, racing toward Fenn and Vesryn.
Battles still raged in splintered pockets, haphazard clashes between the king’s forces and their own. Burning ships groaned beneath rising smoke, the sky thundering with the collisions of Essence and earth.
But the chaos blurred as Vesryn’s panic battered the bond. Serenna’s hand flew to the Starshard at her throat, fingers trembling as she gripped the crystal hard enough to grind its facets into her palm. She didn’t have time to cross the mountain ranges to their location—not with Vesryn’s pleading urgency.
Flinging her awareness into the gem, Essence surged to her call. She seized the portaling talent fused within the crystal’s core and reached toward Vesryn’s distant beacon. A rift tore open in the air, a void shearing across her vision.
Tucking her wings tight, Serenna plunged through.
She dropped from the sky, wings shuddering as wind tore past the shattered cliffs of the Maw. Fire and lightning had carved their vengeance into the peaks, blackened veins still smoking where power had scorched stone. A gust yanked hersideways, and she battled the current, breath catching the instant she glimpsed the wreckage below.
On a jagged ledge, Vesryn knelt over Fenn. Half of the prince’s silvery hair had been burned clean from his scalp. His armor clung in charred strips, melted leather curling like seared bark.
Naru circled them in a restless, limping arc, one claw hovering off the ground. Even from above, Serenna heard his breath heave in labored bursts.
Nearby, a razorwing carcass lay sprawled in a bloody heap, iridescent wings shredded to ribbons where the dracovae must’ve torn it apart.
The moment Serenna’s boots struck stone, the world cinched to a single, unbearable point. Pain slammed through her—Vesryn’s, Fenn’s—agony crashing across the bonds in a jagged rush.
Her knees nearly buckled, but she shoved the onslaught back, bracing a barricade inside her mind. Only then could she see straight.
Vesryn’s left arm hung useless at his side, shoulder clearly wrenched out of joint. One eye was swelling shut beneath a crust of soot. His hands shook where they hovered above Fenn’s chest, mending light spilling in frantic waves.
Again and again he slammed Essence into him—too much, too wild. Each surge burst apart, disintegrating into useless fragments before it ever sank deep enough to mend.
“You stars-cursed, reckless bastard,” Vesryn hissed at Fenn, voice breaking on every word, as if she weren’t there at all. “That lightning was meant for me.”
His shoulders trembled as he tried again. And again. Each attempt more desperate than the last.
“Why would you do that?” he choked, fury and despair scorching through the bond. “I don’t even like you, remember?”The words fractured into a growl. “And I won’t know how to hate you if you die on me.”
Serenna nearly slipped on Fenn’s blood as she rushed forward, dropping to her knees beside them. Drawing on what remained in her Well, she ignited Essence, sending out threads to assess him.
Fenn’s wings lay splayed, membranes ragged where lightning had punched through. His legs twisted at angles that made bile rise in her throat, bone jutting white through the split seams of his armor.
Her stomach lurched as blood pooled outward from his skull in a creeping sweep. For one devastating heartbeat the world tilted. Terror drove a spearpoint straight through her ribs, whispering that she’d come too late.
Serenna swallowed hard and forced her breaths to steady. She anchored her focus into place as she began threading together healing lattices.
Fenn’s chest rose once with a rattling inhale. Then another. Each breath a battle.
But he was breathing.
Relief swept through her, only to shatter the moment Vesryn’s panic slammed down the bond.
Ignoring her magic unspooling around them, he drove a hand against Fenn’s chest. Essence lashed outward in a chaotic burst—wild, unshaped mending light scattering in broken arcs.
