Pressure rose through him like a tide rearing back.
Still for a heartbeat.
Then ruthless in its claiming.
He staggered as power surged through his lungs, rushed along his spine, and sank into the space where fire burned.
The flame guttered, swallowed by the hush. A drowning so calm it felt like an embrace.
Lykor’s wings twitched, the maroon of Cinderax’s gift bleeding into azure until the leathery membranes shimmered like sea glass, a glacial blue. His breath shuddered as Rimeclaw’s power settled, not fire this time, but flood.
He lifted a hand, instinct guiding the motion. From his palm, a thin stream of water rose and coiled into ice. Lykor stared, not surprised that the water obeyed, but by how natural it felt. As if some buried silence had stirred, waiting all this time beneath his rage.
Rimeclaw watched with the calm of something too ancient to read while Lykor let the ice melt between his fingers.
“I’ll wait in the lake,”he murmured, his words a soft thought.“Until he calls.”
The dragon shifted, the scales on his massive body creaking. With each step forward, frost ebbed away. Rain continued to fall, beading across his flanks.
But before a veil of mist and moss obscured him, he glanced back.“The next tide rises soon. Make certain you do not drown beneath it.”
CHAPTER 20
JASSYN
Jassyn watched Rimeclaw disappear into the pale frost rising through the trees. The quiet barely had time to settle before Lykor’s voice broke it.
“You don’t agree.”
Jassyn sighed, dragging a hand down his rain-slick face, fatigue sinking deep. “Maybe you offered Rimeclaw something noble by giving him a choice. It was…” He hesitated, studying the severe lines of Lykor’s expression. “It was what he wanted.”
It was exactly the kind of peace Lykor gave everyone but himself. He offered endings so others wouldn’t have to suffer them. Jassyn wanted him to reach for something of his own first—to rest without armor. To stop bleeding for the world as if that were the only way he was allowed to exist.
Jassyn almost let the quiet close over them, but the question burned too bright to ignore. He let it rise because he needed to know.
“Did you even want his gift?” he ventured. “Or did you ask because it was strategic?”
Lykor’s jaw tightened, wings rustling before folding back tight.
“If I’d been thinking only of strategy,” he said, voice flat, “I would’ve cut him down—eliminated the risk before he could lead the king to us or twist his power against our people.” He shook his head, the tension in his shoulders easing. “Foolish not to. But I wanted him to have another chance.” His gaze dropped to the rain pooling at their feet. “The way you freed me.”
Jassyn glanced away, the base of his wings itching against his soaked leathers. “Maybe it was hard for me to agree with,” he said quietly, blinking away rain from his lashes. “But I understand.”
“I don’t want to kill him,” Lykor murmured.
His eyes flared faintly as he extended his claw. Water gathered in his palm, rippling once before hardening into ice—a dagger, its edge catching the light.
“But people like us don’t get the luxury to want,” he said, turning the weapon over in his claw. “Not while we’re surviving.”
He let the dagger fall. It struck the ground and shattered, ice scattering across the roots.
“But surviving should be more than enduring,” Jassyn insisted. “It’s choosing what to live for too.”
He cast his awareness toward the earth and reached for the broken shards. The pieces trembled, then lifted, hovering above his palm in the rain. But he didn’t shape them into another blade.
Instead, he drew beauty from the wreckage.
Lykor silently watched as a blossom unfurled above Jassyn’s hand—frost-petaled and fragile, more suggestion than symmetry.
