No choice remained.
Only one thing left she could destroy.
Them.
CHAPTER 52
JASSYN
Elashor shoved between Jassyn’s shoulders, driving him to his knees as the portal spat him out. Breath already thinning, manicured grass caught his palms.
The garden exhaled around him, trilliums and lilies reeking with sweetness so cloying that his stomach lurched. The perfume pressed into his lungs, sugared and wet, until bile crept up his throat.
No.
The voiceless denial died as his gaze dragged toward the arches ahead.
The Vallende estate.
Dread cinched his chest as Elashor’s rift sealed shut.
White roses bound marble pillars like shackles, captive veins of Essence seeping through the stone. Caged canaries trilled in melodic patterns while fountains released bubbled sighs.
The courtyard wore the mask of serenity, but Jassyn already knew what prowled beneath the lie.
Less than an hour ago, a harpoon had torn through his wing, yanking him from the sky. The sea had broken his fall, but everything after had dissolved into a fractured haze. He’d ripped off his tether hoping to give Vesryn a sense of their location butthe soldiers hauled him from the water, their Essence stitching him whole. Hands steered him through portal after portal until he staggered into a war camp buried in an unfamiliar rainforest. Vines slick with moisture had groped his shoulders as they marched him straight to Elashor.
Something had happened there.
He felt a chilling absence where the bond with Vesryn should’ve glimmered—severed completely, though he wasn’t tethered. Whether the connection had been sundered by another’s hand—if such a thing were even possible—or worse, because Vesryn himself had fallen…
The thought broke apart before Jassyn could follow it to its end.
What remained of his memories had vanished so cleanly he couldn’t even trace the shape of the loss. He didn’t know how or why—unless his mind had already begun to retreat, knowing what waited ahead.
Elashor’s armor flashed with radiance where he stood at the garden’s edge, his golden hair glinting in the midday sun.
“Welcome home,” he drawled, his voice smooth as silk twisted into a noose. His smirk curved as his gaze lingered where Jassyn knelt. “She’ll be delighted you’ve returned.”
Fury ripped through Jassyn. He surged to his feet, beastblood roaring for violence. He lunged, arm snapping toward Elashor’s throat as the memory of driving a golden blade into that collarbone burned down his muscles.
But his fingers never touched.
He froze mid-motion, body locked as though sculpted from stone. Captive and posed, no different from the statues scattered throughout the courtyard.
Art,she’d called it.
Jassyn plunged inward for Essence and slammed into a solid barricade, his Well sealed off. He clawed for Cinderax’sflame still flickering in his chest, but the fire slipped away, heat without purchase.
He bared his teeth at Elashor. Elements then.
Lashing his awareness outward, Jassyn reached for the fountains behind the general, to the pulse of water. He tried to seize it, twist it, drown the stars-cursed bastard in his own reflection.
The water refused him. The garden did too. No vines stirred at his call, no roots coiled, no breath of air bent to his will.
Desperation mounting, Jassyn flailed for his wings—for the ache of freedom, the memory of sky.
Nothing answered.
