Jassyn shook his head. “No, after Vesryn returns from the north, we’ll portal to the jungle with Lykor.”
Fenn stared at him, thumbing the edge of a dragonscale earring. Jassyn had spoken only vaguely of the agreement with Lykor to return across the Wastes. He hadn’t explained what his plan entailed—or why he’d need Fenn’s help—but Fenn had agreed without question.
The silence between them stretched, expectant.
“So,” Fenn drawled, “should I tell Zaeryn her favorite mender is sending a backup in his place?”
Jassyn frowned. “I…could ask Magister Thalaesyn to send a few healers with the rangers instead.”
With a nod, Fenn glanced toward a pair of wraith Jassyn hadn’t noticed trailing them until now. When he tapped his temple, one warrior responded, and a shimmer of telepathy unfurled between them.
“I’ll have your order relayed to Thalaesyn and inform Zaeryn she’s free to proceed,” Fenn said, turning back.
Jassyn opened his mouth, ready to argue that it wasn’t anorder, but then closed it. Somehow, whenever Fenn was around, he became the mouthpiece for everyone’s questions, leaving Jassyn to keep answering and deciding.
He couldn’t say exactly when it had begun, only that it had been this week. At first it made sense. He and Serenna had the most experience wielding elements, so of course they helped guide the others with the gift.
But lately, it had spread beyond training. Vesryn and Kaedryn had drawn him into their councils, pressing for his opinion on where to scout and who to send. The questions kept multiplying. And the worst part was that every faction began deferring to him as if he’d volunteered for command. But he didn’t remember stepping forward.
Jassyn bit back a sigh and kept walking. No sense tugging at threads that only knotted tighter.
“Once the princeling’s rangers finish charting the threshold,” Fenn continued, outlining every spoke of the camp’s wheel as though Jassyn had asked, “those with your earth magics will start flying closer.”
Jassyn gave a distracted nod, his gaze snagging on a scorched ring of stone where druids, wraith, and elven-blooded circled a fire that writhed without fuel. Fully shifted, the warriors drove it higher, feeding the blaze with flames searing from their palms.
“And the wraith who received the talents Lykor…acquired from Vaelyn’s shores have been training with your magus,” Fenn reported, igniting a coil of fire and twining it lazily through his talons. “No one’s been idle in preparing for the Maw.”
Except for me.
If everyone else was ready for the storm, Jassyn couldn’t stand outside of it. But before he asked them to follow, he had to confront it. Serenna had already flown across the Splitfang witha confidence that made his stomach twist—wings cutting the air, making it all look effortless.
Faces blurred as they passed scattered groups in training, yet Jassyn felt their eyes clinging to him.
He tried not to wonder how many among them might carry his blood, assuming former initiates hailing from Alari did. Maybe that’s why he’d never asked the names of those from Centarya, unable to bear matching faces to contracts.
So Jassyn kept his gaze forward. But their stares burned into his back as he strode toward the cliff. Toward whatever waited with open jaws.
The stormfront loomed in the distance, a wall of black sky. Clouds boiled in place, endlessly churning but never advancing beyond the peaks. Lightning pulsed at its heart, the static ringing deep.
He would have to fly into that, and the truth curdled uncomfortably in his gut. The height terrified him nearly as much as what might take wing if the shift took hold.
Yet the pull scraped at his chest anyway, louder each time he resisted. The feral hunger of beastblood promising relief if he would only surrender.
Still shaken from the cliff last night with Lykor, he hadn’t shifted today. Not after fury had seized him and the snarl in his throat hadn’t felt like his own.
But Lykor hadn’t flinched.
Jassyn still didn’t know what had startled him more—that he’d shoved Lykor, or that Lykor had simply absorbed it. Some dark part of him had risen, savoring that awful tilt of power. But when it had receded, it left him hollow with the memory of how close he’d come to losing control.
Just beyond the reach of the camp, a lone figure stood at the cliff’s edge. Arms folded across his armor, unmoving as the stone beneath him, hair a dark tangle whipped by the gale.
Lykor.
He scowled at the peaks leading into the Maw, into that storm tearing the sky apart. Then, as if he’d followed a shift in the air, he looked straight at Jassyn.
Their eyes locked across the outcrop, distance and everything unsaid humming between them.
Jassyn’s breath stalled in his throat.
