A girl, scarcely more than a child, drifted closer to a female who might’ve been her mother. A young male kept glancing toward the trees—maybe watching for Rimeclaw, or perhaps plotting a way to flee.
This was no army hungry for blood, only one bracing against what might lay ahead.
“You already know me and Vesryn,” Jassyn said, then gestured to the others. “Fenn. And Lykor.”
Silence followed the last name. A few soldiers exchanged uneasy glances while the female with the braid only sneered. The leader’s expression hardened as his gaze slid over them, thumb grazing the stubble along his jaw.
“Strange company,” he murmured. “A wraith. Exiled princes. Lykor…caught between.” Hazel eyes, sharp and searching, returned to Jassyn and lingered just long enough to make him want to look away. “And a half-breed whose bloodline helped build the king’s empire.”
Jassyn held still, though something inside him flinched. Even here—realms away—his face remained a seal of the elves’ dominion. Not a person, but a lineage. An unwanted symbol of everything he’d fought to escape.
When the leader spoke again, the edge in his words honed to precision. “And now you call yourselves druids, cloaked in ancient magic once spoken of only in treasonous whispers.”
The female cut in, flicking her braid back over her shoulder. “Do you realize the bounty on you? How much we’ll be rewarded for turning all of you in?”
Lykor bared his fangs. “Try it.” His wings flared, talons clacking together as though already measuring where to strike.
Frost cracked the ground below his boots and a flail of ice coalesced in his claw, shadows threading through the spiked heads. Before he could move, Jassyn laid a hand on his arm.
Lykor’s nostrils flared, muscles tense beneath his skin, but he held.
“I believe we might be able to help each other,” Jassyn said, letting the words fall like an offering rather than a threat.
Arms folded tight across her chest, the female’s glare didn’t waver. “I don’t like this, Daeryn,” she muttered. “You know the punishments—what that dragon will do. If we don’t hand them over and word gets out, they’ll strip our Essence. Andourlives won’t be the only ones they take.”
Around her, others tensed. Glances sparked through the ranks, murmurs rippling beneath the rain, the air thick with what none dared to voice any louder.
Vesryn arched a brow. “By all means. Let’s see whose head buys the most favor.” He scoffed. “But we all know the truth. The only victor is the one wearing the crown.”
He swept a hand toward the clearing, voice turning cool. “I’ve never seen anything like this. A force trained with both Essence and earth?” His gaze narrowed as it passed over the group. “The capital and council kept knowledge of shaman power from me—even when I commanded Centarya.”
Daeryn met the words with silence, his face composed but not untouched. Jassyn recognized that emptiness—he’d worn it himself too many times to count. A defiant kind of survival, the sort that stilled breath and drilled the body to obedience until even feeling looked like it had vanished.
Something crawled out of the shadows of Jassyn’s memory, but he shoved it back down. He didn’t want to acknowledgethe truth of its teeth. Whatever thread bound them didn’t need naming.
“I grew up in Kyansari,” Daeryn said at last. “Always knew I was bound for Centarya. Every half-breed is. But the earth woke…unexpectedly in me.”
He lifted a hand, and the rain answered. Droplets drew toward his palm, threading into a slender stream that coiled once around his wrist before hardening to ice. “The details as to why don’t matter,” he murmured, “but I froze a fountain in my mother’s courtyard when I was twelve.”
His mouth twisted as he closed his fist, crushing the ice to shards. “So they sent me north instead of to Centarya. A hidden place no one is permitted to speak of. For people like us—who could wield both.”
Jassyn frowned. A hidden place for those like him and Serenna. They’d been spared only because no one had known. Because their powers hadn’t manifested where others could see.
Daeryn glanced at the female beside him. “We were taken one by one. From estates in Alari. From the human realms. From our families.” His eyes shifted to Fenn. “All those ‘deaths’ and disappearances they blamed on wraith attacks?” He released a bitter laugh. “That was the cover. Creating chaos while General Elashor’s forces smuggled us out.”
“Tell him, Daeryn,” the female snapped as she whirled to face him, fury barely leashed. “Tell him who he is. Tellourpeople why you’re risking their lives. Why you hesitate to send him back to the capital in chains like you would anyone else.”
Jassyn blinked. The name struck harder this time, piercing through layers he’d packed like armor.Daeryn.
The way Daeryn stood—balanced on the edge of confession, refusing to look away—made the air tighten in Jassyn’s lungs, every breath feeling borrowed.
“My mother was an elven highborn,” Daeryn said quietly. “A councilwoman’s daughter.”
The words meant nothing. But the way he said them did.
Jassyn shook his head before he could stop the motion, as if he’d be able to force the truth back into silence by sheer refusal.
It couldn’t be this. This wasn’t his burden to carry.
