“And when I heard the rumors,” Daeryn said, eyes locked onto Jassyn. “When word spread that you and the prince had broken free and walked out of Centarya alive, unshackled…”
“Say it,” the female hissed, interrupting him. “If you won’t, I will. Our people deserve to know who you’re protecting.”
Daeryn’s jaw flexed, but his expression didn’t waver. “Enough, Bhreena.”
Jassyn’s breath caught on every rung in his ribs. He barely felt the rain sliding cold down his spine, the ache from flight, or the hum of surrounding magic—everything lost to the roar rising inside him.
He didn’t want this. The echo. The name. The years it stripped without consent. Not here. Not now. Not with every eye watching, weighing, waiting.
Daeryn stood with a courage Jassyn had never dared to reach for. Rain ticked against armor. The silence between them broke on his next breath.
“You’re my sire.”
CHAPTER 23
JASSYN
Jassyn’s lips parted, but no sound came.
Daeryn watched him with eyes nearly an echo of his own, the proof made flesh. The same dark curl of hair. The angled line of cheek and jaw. A rangy frame already shadowed by an invisible weight Jassyn had never meant to pass on.
The likeness struck deep, twisting through him before thought could catch up.
He was supposed to stand without shaking. Steady the moment. Speak with clarity. Keep the fragile chance of alliance alive.
Not unravel the instant the past haunted and named him.
But he’d already begun to fray. The glade clenched around him like a fist, crushing the air from his lungs.
He’d known—from those family trees he and Vesryn had stolen from the Vallende estate—that others in Asharyn carried his blood. Scattered branches from the same corrupted root that none of them had chosen. Sired for their magic, their names plotted like coordinates on the capital’s map of power.
Yet none had sought him. And he hadn’t sought them. Safer that way. Easier to forget. Easier to deny.
But this male before him—spine straight, voice steady, daring to call himsire—cleaved through the walls Jassyn had built to keep the past contained.
Jassyn’s pulse pounded in his temples as the world narrowed and tilted. Even sound folded inward, swallowed by the tide breaking in his skull.
He didn’t move, limbs locking in that strange stillness that happened when instinct fled. When there was nothing left to reachfor. No anger. No magic. Not even a lie. Only the hum of panic devouring him.
Where was that scorching beastblood now, when he needed its strength the most?
Someone moved beside him. Solid. Warm. Silent.
Lykor.
He didn’t touch Jassyn or speak, only stepped to his shoulder, a wall of heat and shadow anchoring him while the world threatened to spiral away.
Jassyn didn’t look at him, yet the nearness braced him, sealing the fault line inside him before it could fracture further. In the quiet of that stance, Jassyn heard everything Lykor didn’t say—he wouldn’t let him fall.
Jassyn exhaled, ragged and trembling. Still unsteady, but not breaking with Lykor holding the line beside him.
The rain had gone quiet, but only around the two of them. It continued to fall on the others, drumming against cloaks, dripping through hair, slicking the trees.
Jassyn sensed it then, the water bending around Lykor as if the weather knew better than to intrude. Of course Lykor had drawn on Rimeclaw’s gift to give him a breath, a space where he could stand without drowning.
But hefelttheir eyes upon him, hunting for weakness. He wouldn’t give them that opening. Not when the fragile thread ofalliance—and the chance to sever Galaeryn’s hold on Daeryn’s people—might depend on it.
So Jassyn gathered all the ache, the grief, the shock, and buried it deep. He adjusted his bracers as he straightened, forging a spine of borrowed steel and the will to stand tall.
