For a breath, awe flickered at the flight.No warping. No borrowed power from Trella. Just muscle, air, and will.
Refusing the pull of wonder, Lykor pressed faster. And for once, the body that usually betrayed him didn’t falter.
He glanced across the narrow space to Jassyn—face set, teeth gritted, but holding steady—and that was enough. There was no time to dwell on the ache beneath gratitude, not with Rimeclaw stalking toward the lake like a storm rolling through the jungle.
Rain hissed down in glinting strands, steaming in the dragon’s wake. Lykor rose, wings shearing the damp air. He arced, then dove, drifting just above the dragon’s spine, each scaled ridge a blade of ice.
Angling into the beast’s path, Lykor dropped hard, frost and underbrush splintering beneath his boots.
Jassyn landed beside him, wings folding with a leathery whisk. Together, they stepped in front of Rimeclaw, barely shadows before a titan.
Rimeclaw halted, talons sinking into brittle loam, frost misting from his breath.
“I’ll make a bargain with you, dragon,” Lykor called up to the beast.
Beside him, Jassyn tensed. Rimeclaw’s crystalline eyes narrowed, cold light refracting from within.
“If we reclaim the Heart that binds you, you’ll have a choice—freedom…or the eternal sleep you crave.”
The words left him colder than the rain. He’d meant them as mercy, but they sounded like a sentence. Lykor didn’t look at Jassyn, but he felt the wordless judgment at his shoulder.
“If that’s truly what you want,” Lykor said more quietly, “I’ll see it done.”
Rimeclaw’s gaze lingered, unblinking. Then steam rolled from his nostrils, curling through the frost between them.“Do it now,”he growled.“End me before the tyrant turns my breath against the world.”
Lykor knew heshouldend the beast. End the threat. End the ache gnawing in his chest. But with Jassyn steady beside him, a colder conviction took root in his lungs.
Not yet.
Maybe he was a fool for it, but he wanted to believe the dragon could remember how to live once unbound.
“The bargain stands when this isover,” Lykor said at last. “Then you’ll have your choice.”
Rimeclaw’s gaze flared, fractures rippling through the frozen glass of his eyes.“Then speak yourdemand, whelp.”
Lykor unfurled his wings. The maroon membranes caught the dim light between branches, veined like stained glass hammered from blood and fire. The claws at the peaks clenched as if bracing for what he dared to ask.
“Your gift,” Lykor said. “The Tidecrasher’s boon.”
A rumble cracked through Rimeclaw’s chest, wind hissing through his fangs.
“You would cast aside the Emberhart flame?
Spit on fire’s crown,
To beg the sea for something drowned?”
“I know what I’m surrendering,” Lykor said. No druid could bear two elements. “But if Cinderax is half as wise as he claims—with all that ancient memory caged in his skull—he’ll understand I’m not scorning his gift. This is necessity. Strategy.”
He stepped closer as Rimeclaw lowered his head, whether in curiosity or threat, he couldn’t tell. “Hundreds already burn with his flame. But none wield what you carry—the silence of water, the strength of frost.”
Rimeclaw’s stare sharpened, but the ice at his claws began to melt. His words coiled, venomous and low.“Why do you think you’re worthy to bear the sea?”
Lykor met the dragon without flinching. “Because I know what it means to have my mind chained—to serve Galaeryn’s will with no choice of my own.” His jaw tightened as an ache settled through his wings, but he held firm. His glance cut briefly to Jassyn. “I was freed, but I’ve never stopped defying him. Even if your fight is over—if we shatter your chains—mine isn’t. When we face him in the coming days, I’ll carry your legacy. If you’ll let it rise with me.”
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to narrow to frost and breath.
His.
