With her heartbeat drumming loud in her ears, Serenna took several steps back. Vesryn arched a brow, but she only shrugged. “I like a running start.”
She sprinted forward and the edge of the peak met her—stone, sky, and then nothing at all as she leapt.
Wind tore past, sharp and cold enough to steal her breath. The weightless rush seized her stomach, lurching between terror and wonder as the mountain fell away.
Serenna snapped her wings open, the force wrenching through her shoulders before the air caught and cradled her weight. She found the rhythm of the current, her wingbeats syncing to it like a second pulse.
Through the bonds, she felt the others close behind—Vesryn’s focus like lightning trapped in a vial, Fenn’s exhilaration a flare of heat. The wind howled around them, pressing hard against her wings as Vesryn surged ahead.
Air rippled in his wake, buffeting her as he slowed, wings flaring wide before he drew to a halt. His hovering outline shimmered when Essence haloed his form, a pale glow cutting through the dark.
He lifted a hand and a portal sliced open before him. Its twin carved across the distant sky, a speck faintly rimmed in green.
Serenna arced toward the rift, folding her wings and diving through. The world collapsed in on itself—stars disappearing, motion crushed to a single point—before breaking wide open again.
Wind roared around her, the rush biting against her cheeks. They’d leapt nearly fifty miles, if her sense of distance from portal jumping before was of any measure.
Fenn shot past her, scales flashing as he dove toward the horizon, outpacing Vesryn to open the second rift. The new portal flared below them, slanting toward the lowlands in a pale seam.
Serenna tucked her wings and slipped through after Fenn, bursting into another sky. The air felt heavier here—the crisp mountain chill traded for the wet tang of earth, mist curling from the waters below.
By the third jump—Vesryn’s portal this time—the Dreadspire Range had vanished beyond the horizon. The marshlands sprawled beneath them, vast floodplains unspooling with silver channels that fractured and spread in every direction. Dawn brushed the sky in bands of grey, casting the streams in metallic light.
Fenn banked sharply, the talons at his wing tips clicking as he lifted a fist, a silent signal to halt.
With slowing strokes, Serenna steadied beside him as a shroud of cloaking darkness unfurled from his claws, rippling outward to veil her and the prince. The air dimmed further as light bent around them, their silhouettes melting into the sky, hidden from any eyes below. At least until the sun began its climb.
She followed the tilt of Fenn’s gaze. At first, the mirrored water lay smooth beneath a scattering of trees, but then shapesbegan to resolve. Long shadows took form where no forest should stand, rising from the haze.
Ships. Scores of them, strewn across the flooded plains.
They weren’t sailing.
Hulls had been lashed together into platforms, stripped of masts for scaffolds, planks repurposed into bridges. Movement rippled across them, an army already at work before the sun. Specks from this height, the figures drifted along the decks, their outlines orbited by globes of illumination.
The marsh seemed to aid their labor. Roots coiled upward to brace the timber, vines knitting across the hulls until wood and living matter fused into walls.
Even from above, Serenna felt the pulse of the earth—veins of green light weaving from ship to ship, a city born from a graveyard of vessels, rising from the mire.
“Do you think they’re building a foothold here before they push into the desert?” Serenna asked, lifting her voice to the others.
Vesryn’s eyes narrowed, wings strumming the air as he hovered. “Looks like it could become some type of fortress. And I don’t think the human legions have been portaled in yet. Their numbers are too few.”
Fenn tilted his head as he studied the area below. “Does a flower mean anything to you two?”
Serenna squinted toward where he pointed. Banners waved faintly through the haze, but the distance was too great to make out the sigil on them even with more light spilling across the ground.
“Can you be more specific?” Vesryn muttered. “Some of us weren’t blessed with whatever infernal eyesight lets you read embroidery at this height. There are dozens of noble houses. Any one of them could be funding this campaign.”
Fenn’s eyes flared as he focused. “Three petals, white as bone. The points curve like a star folding out. Probably has some tragic name, knowing elves—mourning star, or doom lily.”
Vesryn’s voice flattened. “Trillium.”
Serenna’s wings faltered, and she dropped several feet before catching herself. Cold dread sluiced through her veins. The same white petals had been tattooed across Jassyn’s brow before he’d had it magically removed. A mark that had once branded him Vallendeproperty.
“Elashor’s here?” she whispered, words going hoarse.
Vesryn drew closer, the edge of his wing brushing hers, steadying the air between them.
