He turned his palm, and fire leapt to life. Lykor stilled as the glow struck the scar he’d carved into Jassyn’s face, loathing the brand he’d seared across cheek and brow.
“The beastblood…” Shoulders dropping, Jassyn sighed as scales rippled down his arm, fire reflecting off the plated obsidian. “It feels like something wild shoves me away while it takes the reins. And the part in control would tear through anyone. Becauseitdoesn’t fear.”
Color burned Jassyn’s cheeks beneath the fractured starlight. His eyes snagged on Lykor’s before slipping away. “And I’m scared of how much I want that. The way it drowns my thoughts.”
The fire died as Jassyn’s scales withdrew. “It’s just another escape,” he whispered, eyes distant past the ridge. “Another way not to sit in my own head. Different edge. Same fall.”
Lykor’s throat cinched tight, his voice failing because he had nothing to offer. The beastblood didn’t blur him with the frenzy Jassyn spoke of. It brought stillness. Precision.
Cinderax had nearly choked on smoke laughing when Lykor dared to ask about it. He’d claimed Lykor didn’t need a dragon’s gift to be dangerous. He only needed half a reason, with rage already etched into his marrow.
Jassyn idly traced the stitching of his bracers—the pair Lykor had thrust at him after trading his gauntlet in Asharyn’s market. He hadn’t expected Jassyn to keep them, much less wear them until the leather had shaped itself to his skin. But seeing them snug on Jassyn’s wrists sparked a quiet, unwelcome satisfaction.
“You know,” Lykor said at last, grasping at anything to pull them back from this silent ledge. “You didn’t have to choose the highest stars-forsaken cliff in the city.”
Jassyn huffed a breath. “But if I can’t jump here, I won’t be able to anywhere. And if I fell…” He nodded toward the lake. “Not the worst place to land.”
Lykor meant for the tension to shift, to break. But the air only stretched taut as Jassyn’s gaze drifted back to him. Lingering too long.
“I haven’t seen you fly either,” Jassyn said suddenly. Pointedly. His wings flared a fraction before clamping tight again.
“You won’t,” Lykor said. Too fast.
He’d shadowed Jassyn for days, blind to the fact that the watched had been watching back. Now the fracture in his armor lay bare, and Jassyn drove it wider.
“Why not?” He tilted his head, curls spilling across his eyes. “You’re not afraid of the sky. You warp like the ground’s a suggestion. I’ve seen you on Trella. So what’s stopping you?”
The intensity in Jassyn’s gaze scorched away every deflection.
“I have…” Lykor began, feeling like he owed Jassynsomething. “A limitation.”
Jassyn frowned, and Lykor could almost hear the questions scraping for shape.
“A limitation,” he echoed slowly. “Like an injury?”
“No.” The word snapped between them. “A defect.”
The claws on Jassyn’s wings twitched, and Lykor’s breath rasped sharp in his ribs. He could warp off the cliff. Or portal away. Slam the door shut before Jassyn forced the conversation open.
But some traitorous part of him refused to retreat and held Jassyn’s stare as he waited for the strike.
“I told you why I can’t fly,” Jassyn pressed. “Will you tell me why I’ve never seen you try?”
Lykor clenched his jaw. “I don’t want you to see me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Less.”
The word rang like iron hammered wrong, the echo sharper than the sound itself. He’d survived imprisonment. The king’s torture. But this—naming what Galaeryn had mangled, what no magic could mend—split deeper than muscle and bone.
“It’s your spine, isn’t it?” Jassyn asked, quiet as an incision.
Lykor swallowed, throat seared dry.
Jassyn inched closer, measured now. “Can you not shift because of it?”
“It’s worse than that,” Lykor grated. “Icanshift. But I can’t fly like the rest of you.”
