He didn’t stop until heat returned. Until Asharyn’s towers pierced the desert sky and no scent of blood clung to the wind.
Only then did he let the prince go.
Vesryn crumpled into the sand, wings shedding fire. He struck the ground. Then again, knuckles splitting on impact. His breath hitched, cracking into a sound that might’ve been a sob, but no words followed. Only choked gasps and the brutal rhythm of his fists, pounding out a grief that had nowhere left to go.
Spine locked, Lykor stood silent beside him, banishing his wings and scales. Horror perched high in his throat, lodged where his voice might’ve been if he dared to use it. He swallowed the burn of loss, of wreckage and failure. Everything they hadn’t saved.
As Vesryn broke beside him, fists bloodied, shoulders shaking, Lykor held for both of them.
Motion tugged his gaze toward the city square. Druids and magus wove like threads stitching a frayed tapestry, steadying the freed and tending the wounded.
Families collided. Shouts broke into sobs as bodies collapsed into waiting arms. Scattered laughter spilled between the tears as if the survivors didn’t trust they’d lived through the darkness.
Lykor felt none of it.
The reunions dissolved into noise, joy bending around him like wind skimming stone. Detached, he stood just outside the swell of return as blood that wasn’t his own crusted along his jaw. Ice still clung to his claws, thawing in rivulets that hissed into the sand.
Kal had died to make this happen. So had others.
As Vesryn continued to shatter his fists on the ground, Lykor folded inward. He reached for Aesar but found only a void. He sensed Aesar buried somewhere beyond reach, retreated so deep that even Lykor’s thoughts rang hollow.
As he blinked against the desert light, his gaze snagged on those who stood at the edges of the square, unmoving and untouched by the reunion’s tide.
Elderly with trembling hands. Children with wide, vacant eyes. Survivors who hadn’t yet stepped back into their bodies.
Some flinched at cries of joy as if struck by the sound. Others only stared, lips parted and waiting, as if someone might notice them.
But no one did.
It shouldn’t have mattered. Their grief wasn’t his to carry. But something in Lykor splintered anyway, watching those who still believed someone might call their name. He stood, no longer certain whether the ache in his chest belonged to their loss or his own.
Of course, Bhreena was among those who had someone to hold. Relief blazed across her face as she clutched a young girl. Their cries and disbelieving joy rose together, haunting in the aftermath bought in blood that hadn’t been their own.
As Lykor watched her cling to what she’d salvaged, he darkly wondered if whatever hope she’d clawed back from the wreckage had been worth the cost.
Worth Kal’s broken body, crushed between a dragon’s maw.
Something flickered at the edge of Lykor’s awareness. Distant. But a familiar presence. His eyes snapped toward the horizon before the first druid stilled.
The city didn’t fall silent all at once. But slowly, one by one, heads turned in an eerie cascade of motion, every gaze lifting to the same patch of sky.
Lykor moved first.
His wings reappeared, snapping open as he launched upward in punishing strokes. Air fractured across his face and Asharyn dropped away beneath his boots.
Pressure pounded behind his eyes—a silent, blinding signal so raw it tasted like desperation itself.
Cinderax.
Flying high above, the dragon spiraled. Wings faltering, his body buckled in a broken fall.
Instinct bent Lykor’s path before understanding caught up. He warped through the sky, vanishing into the distance to reappear in a burst of displaced wind.
He caught Cinderax against his chest, wings hammering as he fought to steady them both on a rising draft.
Smoke curled from the dragon’s nostrils as he shook in Lykor’s grip, exhaustion rolling off him in ragged waves that Lykor nearly felt as if it were his own.
A low growl rattled from deep in Cinderax’s chest, his breath steaming around the Heart of Stars clutched between his jaws.
