Fenn snorted softly.“That pretty princeling face of yours is wanted by your capital.”He flicked the point of Vesryn’s ear.“Or did you forget they want you mounted?”
Vesryn scowled, edging away from him on the branch.
Fenn’s grin widened.“Yourheadon a pike, obviously.”
“Discuss your pikes later,”Lykor growled.“I’ll grab their leader.”
Jassyn followed Lykor’s stare to a tall figure at the heart of the camp, standing haloed in Essence. A male, seemingly young, though difficult to tell when elven blood blunted age. Dark curls heavy with rain brushed his shoulders, and a shadow of a beard traced the cut of his jaw—rare for one of mixed lineage.
The male lifted a hand as he spoke to a female beside him. A flame slithered from the campfire and wrapped around his palm, obedient as a charmed serpent.
“How do you know he’s the leader?”Vesryn demanded.
Lykor rolled his eyes.“Because everyone else is orbiting him. And that female next to him—the one with the auburn braid who hasn’t stopped glaring at everyone? Likely his second.”
The male’s head lifted, gaze sweeping the canopy with too much precision to be coincidence. As if their invisibility didn’t exist. For a heartbeat, his eyes met Jassyn’s through the veil of leaves.
A shiver traced Jassyn’s spine.“I think—”he began, but the branch beneath his boots shuddered.
Not from any wind.
The earthpulsedand Jassyn didn’t have time to warn the others before the jungle struck.
Vines exploded upward, hissing like drawn blades. The tree pitched as leaves shredded, the forest erupting from below. Limbs speared through the canopy, moving with the intention of hunters, not the madness of the wild.
Jassyn twisted aside as a vine cracked past his cheek, the air slicing against his jaw. He flung out his hands, halting a lunging branch before it could knock Vesryn from their perch.
Shouts rose from the clearing as figures scattered. But the way they moved into formation said everything.
They’d known.
Essence sparked at the same time as the elements surged. Flames sprang from campfires, snatched by scores of waiting hands to be hurled skyward. One blast arced toward them, but the bolt of fire collided with Lykor’s answering spear of ice. The clash cracked the air, bursting into shards of steam and frost.
Another whip of fire screamed past Jassyn’s face, igniting the leaves beside him until Fenn yanked the embers to smoke with a curse.
“I think they know we’re up here!” Fenn shouted, his invisibility disintegrating as he warped aside just before a vine tore through the space where his head had been.
“Brilliant observation,” Vesryn snapped. He braced against the tree and punched a volley of shadows down. The strike cleaved through a wall of rending rising from the warriors below. “Next you’ll tell us that fire burns.”
Essence roared as a column of force erupted from the jungle floor, a whirlwind of pressure driving straight for their perch.
Lykor met it head-on. Shadows sheared through the magic, ribbons of power scattering like ash.
Vesryn struck next, darkness whipping from his fist. Soldiers dropped to the ground one after another, wrapped in rending,bound before their cries even formed. He turned to the next group, darkness constricting, then moved to seize another.
Jassyn’s jaw locked as the scene fractured below—splintering, unraveling, slipping apart beneath them. Then the world seemed to blink. A flash of knowing ignited behind his eyes, the shape of consequence arriving too vividly.
He saw what would happen. Vesryn’s shadows tipping toward destruction. Lykor’s retaliation freezing bodies where they fought. Fenn’s fire leaping, flaring, burning. Steel drawn in answer. The jungle writhing.
A potential alliance lost in a handful of heartbeats. Not because either side was wrong, but because those with him would turn defense into slaughter.
If only he could touch every mind as effortlessly as the king—silence the chaos with a single thought, bend the moment until all of them listened.
The temptation glimmered up from some dark corner of him, a treacherous bloom of power unfurling like a dark whisper. He crushed the impulse before it could take root.
If he gave in to that—if those below ever sensed it—he’d never have the chance to prove they weren’t the enemy.
He had to stop this before either side claimed the first life.
