“They’ll come back,” Lykor mumbled, watching water drip from his talons before the sand swallowed it. “And if they’ve already tethered themselves… Maybe they’ll be waiting forusin the palace by the time we return.”
The wind shifted as Kaedryn approached like a cloud draped in silks, her raiment trailing behind her.
“Keep this area clear,” Lykor ordered the druid leader as she joined them. Kal fell in beside him, and Lykor jerked his chin toward the open space, scanning the courtyard. “This is where we’ll return. Could be in waves, or all at once. Depends what kind of pit Galaeryn’s allowed to fester while we’ve been gone.”
Daeryn and Bhreena emerged through the ranks, their steps clipped with purpose as they closed the distance.
Vesryn slipped a knife from his belt and rolled the blade across his fingers, sunlight glinting off its edge. “How many of your people do you expect we’ll be bringing back?”
Daeryn rubbed the stubble along his jaw. “From those we know of? Fifty. But I doubt our families will be the only ones buried in the dungeons.”
Lykor turned away. It wasn’t Daeryn’s fault, but standing this close, he couldn’t unsee Jassyn in him—the quiet strength in the set of his shoulders, the tension flickering behind his eyes, the unruly curls framing a face shaped by the same blood. A living consequence of elven cruelty, born of choices Jassyn had never been given the chance to make.
Bhreena stepped forward, coiled fury sharpening the line of her stance. “We rescuewhoeverwe find and you won’t count their heads like livestock.”
Lykor’s lip curled. “I assure you, if anyone’s left behind, it’ll be over my corpse.”
Aesar murmured something low and cautioning beneath his breath—a useless attempt to steady him—but Lykor smothered his words.
“We’re prepared to handle the aftermath,” Kaedryn said, her voice smooth despite the strain Lykor had heard in it for days. Asharyn’s resources were thinning, and they all knew it, but this wasn’t the moment for fractures. “The scalebound and the magus are readying recovery chambers—water, healing, food. Whatever the freed might need.”
Lykor gave a tight nod. The city’s seams were already unraveling. They’d need to find another haven soon.
He flicked his wrist and Aesar tensed, but Lykor held firm as the portal tore open—closer to Bhreena than it needed to be. She sprang back with a curse, the rift throwing a band of shadow across her face.
“It’ll take a few jumps to travel the Wastes,” Lykor said, staring at the void widening before them.
Vesryn’s question came quiet at his side. “Where is it?”
Lykor glanced at him, but the prince didn’t lift his gaze from the ground.
“I never heard of any other dungeon,” Vesryn continued. “Just the prison in Kyansari, beneath the palace. If I’d known there was another place…”
Kal gripped the prince’s shoulder. “We can still make a difference for someone else. Let the past stay buried.”
“They’re carved deep in a mountain range north of the capital,” Lykor answered, studying the assembled warriors, reading resolve in their stances.
He didn’t elaborate. There was nothing more to say.
His stride carried him into the veil, back toward the nightmare that had forged him.
CHAPTER 46
JASSYN
The sun crested over the Shattered Reef, gilding the broken chain of islands in molten hues of dawn. As Jassyn flew above the sea, tide pools shimmered through fractured stone, turquoise radiance bleeding into a world half-submerged and drowned.
Ahead, Serenna and Fenn soared through the upper currents, their shadows skimming across the surf. Cinderax glided between them, scales scattering brightness each time his body angled toward the rising sun.
The dragon had insisted on joining their hunt for the Maelstrom to reclaim the Heart.“My ancestors knew the shape of the world before the breaking,”he’d told them.“I want to see what remains of it now—with my own eyes.”
None of them had found reason to deny him. Not even Lykor, who’d been beside Jassyn during the planning, muttering about “hatchlings with crises older than their scales.” The memory tugged at the corner of Jassyn’s mouth, but he fought the smile back down.
Instead, he clenched his teeth against the wind and let the others fly ahead, sheltering behind the excuse that someoneought to watch their flank in case razorwings joined them in the sky. But the truth burrowed deeper than the lie.
He couldn’t keep pace, wings dragging while Serenna bent the currents with practiced control and Fenn cackled into turbulence as he raced Cinderax through the rising drafts.
Jassyn hated how easily they moved through the air. Didn’t they feel what he did—the sky clamping against his chest, threatening to turn him inside out?
